Apple's Big Move in Podcasting
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An unsolicited prediction of what The Big A will do next. Well, even if they don\\u2019t, then they really should.\\n\\n
Despite what you might think, not one second of Apple\\u2019s podcasts are actually hosted by Apple. \\u201cBut how can that be\\u201d, you may ask, \\u201cwhen they \\u2018host\\u2019 hundreds of thousands of them?\\u201d It\\u2019s simple. When you download a podcast \\u2018from Apple\\u2019 what you are really doing is using them as an index\\u200a\\u2014\\u200aa pointer, if you will\\u200a\\u2014\\u200ato a file located somewhere else. That\\u2019s why you might find some podcasts really sparkle on iTunes, downloading quickly and streaming promptly, while others really stink. I know because I\\u2019ve done it both ways. Incidentally, not stinking is a great way in increase download counts, as I eventually discovered.
\\n\\nBut I\\u2018m ahead of myself...
\\n\\nListen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. A version of this essay previously appeared on Medium on April 24th, 2017. On June 10, 2017, Apple announced Podcast Analytics which will be launched later this year. This is very close to at least one aspect of what was predicted in this essay. (header photo: Shunichi Kouroki via Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)
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