HTTP basic auth is a widely supported and widely used way of doing paid podcast feeds. Most typically the podcasts apps just require you to enter the login details in the feed URL, some fancier apps have proper UIs for entering the username / password. There is very little need to have a fancier protocol than that.
Good point, but I feel like that's not the entire picture.
One thing to think about with this is to look at what Steam did with indie games. Valve basically made full-time indie game makers survive by essentially creating an easily discoverable platform. Nowadays there are a couple extra platforms (Humble Store, G2G), so it's not a monopoly, but people have been pretty clear that Steam is the major source of revenue by far.
Do we not want that for podcasting? Being able to pay directly for high-quality content, but also having the discoverable ecosystem.
If Apple decides to tackle this (they're really close to having this with iTunes, you can buy old TAL eps or the like), then it's going to be super closed and basically the app store.
If the golden age of indie games has proven anything, it's that supporting better discovery would be a net win to the quality of content going out there. Saying "oh, well we already have this through passworded feeds" is leaving the door open for a less open solution.
Instead of saying "no because this implementation is stupid", I would much rather hear Marco offer an alternative that could be open. Though I don't know his position on paid content, really. Rallying around a more open alternative is the best way to counter a closed solution.
Right now Apple is the best placed to build good discovery (iTunes already is that for free content), so somebody needs to step up to the plate if they want to avoid Apple's content rules becoming the norm.
Consider Marco has Overcast, he's in a _very_ good position to offer an alternative solution to the problem he's talking about though.
I wouldn't mind podcasting ending up like Steam/indie games in general. Everything's a lot better than it used to be in that domain.
I don't know what advertising rates come out at cost per listener but my gut feeling is that if ATP charged a dollar instead of doing ad reads they'd pull in more. And more importantly shows that have too small of an audience to be viable through ads could become viable.
Of course, like Jason said, you can already do this. But who wants to configure their billing info across 10 different websites?
But that would take podcasting from an open platform controlled, technically, by no one. To a closed platform controlled by one company. That one company being Apple. Has Marco said - "be careful what you wish for".
I think Marco is fairly happy with how things are at the moment and doesn't want it to change. That's why he doesn't suggest anything.
Right, I'm saying that that company could be not Apple, and that the system could be built in a way so that other companies could also participate.
It doesn't necessarily have to be on a technical level. Imagine the following:
- Company starts a "distribution network" (much like current ones) for paid podcasts. You sign up, get a personallised feed to all podcasts you are currently paying for. Passworded feed maybe.
- Overcast also searches this distribution network and points that this is a paid podcast, directs to website. Alternatively, people just go to this website because it has good content or whatever
- Other distribution networks do the same thing, offering different payment strategies/genres/whatever.
Basically no technical differences from before. Same feeds, nobody controls the distribution more than currently.
It could end up with one big player, but by moving forward and giving a viable path for people who want to make discoverable paid content ("Oh I'll just throw it up onto Podscription", name's a freebee for anyone who wants to do this).
If someone else does it and gains traction to reach a critical mass, suddenly Apple can not build a closed system for this.
But if nobody does it, and Apple suddenly says 'Oh, here's our iTunes Premier Podcasts. Tap into our existing audience (but only works in iOS Podcast player)' then it's game over.
Doing nothing is giving Apple this pathway if they ever want to do it. Helping to move an alternative forward for something in which there seems to be demand will block Apple from closing everything off.
AFAIK, doing a web redirect to a purchase page for virtual goods is considered an evasion of Apple's 30% cut on in-app purchases. If Overcast tried to do that it would be pulled.
The comparison should be to the iTunes Store, Spotify of Pandora, though, not the iOS App Store. I surprised/not-surprised that podcast owners prefer control to listenership.
Or it could end up like the music store. I've never heard anyone complain about it being hard to get music published. The same could be said about books or movies.
Given that apple only deals with musicians who are represented by a label and distributor, not independent artists, I think the itunes music store would be a kind of worst case scenario for a hypothetical podcast store.
> I've never heard anyone complain about it being hard to get music published.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but if not... that is absolutely not what I have ever heard. The iTMS is brutal to independent artists and getting on it is a huge barrier to entry. It's perhaps an improvement from the 1990s system of record-label distribution (which perhaps keeps the complaints to a low volume; Apple can always point to that particular horror if the plebes get out of line), but it's in no way an open platform.
Most independent music I listen to tends to be hosted on Soundcloud, largely as a result of Apple's policies on the iTMS.
