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Is It a Good Idea for Apple to Buy Exclusive Rights to Podcasts?
The podcast industry has been flooded with big money over the last few years, as businesses and investors seek to get in on a rapidly growing media business that’s got a lot of room for audience and revenue growth. (Spotify alone is spending $500 million on podcast companies and exclusive content.)
And yet over all this time, the industry’s biggest player hasn’t made any big podcast business moves.
That player is Apple—its Podcasts app is the top podcast player, with 50 to 70 percent of the app market—and its time as a neutral supporter of the industry may be coming to an end. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and Lucas Shaw report that Apple is talking to media companies about buying exclusive rights to podcasts.
This isn’t a surprising revelation. Podcasting is an area in which Apple currently exerts a huge amount of influence. This is not to say that any new Apple podcast endeavor would be a sure thing.