Yet. Spotify and others are certainly trying. I'm happy to see resistance and continued growth of the open ecosystem but we shouldn't take it for granted.
If you subscribe, always do it via Patreon or some other system outside the major streaming platforms. Apple at least will let you add outside RSS podcasts to its podcast app and there are third party apps too.
Don’t subscribe inside a major integrated streamer since that’s helping them own the entire ecosystem. If they can kill Patreon they can close podcasts.
Exactly, let’s make Patreon as big as the other platforms and everything should work out great. I hope I don’t get danged for sarcasm here, but I am so not a fan of this sentiment. All the major platforms started as upstart competitors. Google to Yahoo. YouTube to all media. Facebook to MySpace. Look at them now.
The thing saving podcasts is that they are free. They continue to be ad supported or not monetized at all. But there is a path forward where they can be monetized in other ways and still maintain the openness they enjoy today.
For now, advertising seems to be able to support at least some podcasts that are serious about being professional operations. In fact, while I'm sure no one is buying big yachts, I'm often a bit surprised by how large the staffs of some podcasts are. Of course, many podcasts are also just one or two people doing them part-time.
I don't think they're trying to get exclusives to attract people to their platform, but I don't think that means anything beyond that. When you're buying consoles if you can only buy one, you get the console with better games. But almost all podcast platforms are free to join and get podcasts from, so if someone listens to Joe Rogan or some other show (for free) on spotify it doesn't create a barrier for participation on any other podcast. The platforms are just buying audience with exclusivity deals, but nobody is locked in.
