Change in Apple podcasts to cost companies "millions"
Small reprogramming, big impact: Apple's podcasts client no longer preloads much by default. This costs content producers and platforms reach.
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Does a podcast already have reach if a user has only subscribed to it and the respective show has been automatically downloaded by the podcast app? This question is the focus of a dispute between Apple and several content producers over a change to the company's popular client for audio broadcasts. According to the companies involved, "millions" are at stake.
iOS 17 results in 31.1 million fewer downloads
As the British business medium Proactive reported this week, the issue came into the spotlight when the London-based AudioBoom Group announced its figures. The company, a podcast platform operator that is also active in the podcast marketing business, announced that it had posted a total turnover of 9 million US dollars less than expected. The reason for this was a change made by Apple in iOS 17 as part of its Podcasts app.
The number of downloads of podcasts from the group, whose platform is used by providers such as BBC Radio, AP, Premiere League, Yahoo and actor Stephen Fry, fell by 31.1 million in the second quarter. However, this decline is "in line with the industry average", as all podcast companies were affected. In total, AudioBoom recorded 94.8 million downloads, compared to 125.9 million in the same quarter last year. Nevertheless, revenue per 1000 downloads rose by 38 percent to 60.09 dollars - the reason was obviously that the reduction in downloads made individual downloads more valuable.
Actually a sensible change
The change made by Apple means that "following" (previously: subscribing) a podcast no longer automatically leads to a large number of episodes being downloaded. As these downloads count for marketing purposes, the (apparent) reach has previously increased. With iOS 17, Apple is taking a more sensitive approach to bandwidth (and storage space) and reducing the number of downloads by default. As many users do not change the default settings, this leads to the aforementioned effect that AudioBoom noticed.
It was clear months ago that this would happen. At the time, the company Podtrac found that the top 20 podcasters were recording almost 25 percent fewer downloads compared to the previous year. From the user's point of view, this is actually a good thing, as it means the app doesn't fill "forgotten" podcast subscriptions with new content that users don't want anyway. But sometimes it can also be bad for users: Namely, when they are offline and looking around in their library but hardly find any downloads. Apple recently added transcripts to the Podcasts app.
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