You can now embed any podcast on a web page with a new web player from Apple. It’s a lot like Spotify’s Play Button, but more powerful and targeted. And it could help Apple in its unexpected podcast wars.
Apple Podcast Embed Player + Marketing Tools
The iTunes Podcast Directory is the de facto universal catalog of podcasts. Anyone can submit their show, and any developer can access the catalog and incorporate it into their podcast app. It’s a fantastic resource that Apple has ignored for years. Now, Spotify is going after podcasting—and podcast advertising—in a big way, and Apple is finally starting to fight back. And that’s a good thing.
“Spotify was already the biggest threat to podcasts…” podcaster and podcast app developer Marco Arment wrote on Twitter. “They’re splitting podcasts into two worlds: Spotify’s walled garden of exclusive content and ad tracking, and everyone else’s open ecosystem, to hijack ‘podcasts’ and imply ‘on Spotify.’”
This may seem like a dumb question, but a podcast has a pretty specific definition. It’s not just “audio on the web,” otherwise even an audio-only YouTube video would be a podcast. A podcast is specifically an audio program that can be automatically and periodically downloaded by a podcast app. That’s it. If you can’t subscribe to it, and to new shows as they come out, it’s not a podcast.
