MediaShift: How Does iTunes Pick Featured Podcasts?

Mr. Glaser's point addresses a primary concern for small podcasters, that being the ability to consistantly gain access to the millions of listeners that are beginning to catch on to this new method of content distribution.

From Apple's perspective, it obviously makes sense to leverage their position as the premier destination to find new podcasts. Cross-promotianal efforts to build audience members seems logical especially in light of the recent decision of Apple to offer the Rick Gervais podcast downloads for $2.00 per episode.

While subscriptions for the show will plummet, a small devoted audience will remain. These are the only subscribers that Apple cares about, the one's that open their wallets. The writing is on the wall regarding their decision to select podcasts from corporate content providers. The reasoning is simple:

Point # 1 Corporate podcasters such as Disney, MTV, Warner, Nascar, MLB, ESPN, HBO, Washington Post, etc all have exclusive licensing rights to their content.

To Apple's defense, the reason that many of the sports podcasts are from "name brands" such as ESPN, MLB and Nascar is probably because these entities own the broadcast rights to their content. Apple needs to know that when a person subscribes to a podcast of World Series highlights that they are not going to come into the middle of a "digital rights lawsuit" because the content of the podcast was pirated by an unauthorized distributor.

The point is, if Apple is going to offer downloads of video highlights of major sports such as Nascar, NFL, NBA, MLB or the NHL, they are going to have to only offer it through distributors who own rights to that content.

Point # 2 Corporate podcasters are not going to "fadecast". According to Apple's website, they are looking for stable content producers that have something unique to offer.

From the iTunes homepage:

"In addition, featured podcasts must be regularly updated with new episodes. We occasionally feature a podcast after its first episode, but we generally like to see podcasts with at least 3 episodes, and we like to see that the most recent episode has been added in the past month. Ideally, the episodes should be released on a regular and predictable basis. More than 100 podcasts are submitted every day, so it is impossible to feature all of the good ones."

Apple can be fairly certain that podcasts from major content providers will be continually produced because of the mutual interests of both Apple and the content provider which leads to....

Point # 3

Apple (in my opinion) is going to begin moving to a pay per podcast model of distribution. While, it makes sense for Apple to offer free podcasts via iTunes right now, they are clearly goign to become more selective towards those podcasts which have an established or "built-in" audience (ex: Ricky Gervais Show).

Apple is not in the business of providing free content. They currently use a pay per download model for music, there is no reason to think that they won't migrate over to the same format for podcasts. By offering content created by corporate distributors means they get the following:

* Stable, consistant content
* Recognizable content from "trusted" brand names
* Built in audience
* Obvious inter-corporate synergies (movie-soundtrack tie in's, music industry cross-promotional benefits, access to news distribution, etc)
* New revenue stream for ecstatic shareholders via monetization of content they simply host.

This is bad news for individual podcasters who thought they were going to make a fortune creating podcasts that were going to be distributed on iTunes. However, it could be a coup for other aggregators such as PodShow and other smaller aggregators (wink, wink)as consumers are forced to hunt for less expensive and more "alternative" programming from other sources.

I can't speak for the big media podcasts that have been featured. But for Indepent podcasts that have been featured such as:

Skepticallity
EatFeed
5 Minutes With Wichita
Escape Pod
and Podcast411 (my podcast)

None of us paid to be featured.

While it may seem more big media podcasts are being featured - it may more be an issue of lack of time by the people at Apple. It is safe for them to feature something from MTV, ESPN or Disney. No need to listen. But for indipendent podcasts they need to take the time to listen to many different podcasts before finding ones that meet their criteria.

Yes it is much more fun to come up with conspiracy theories - but I think the truth is much simpler.

Rob @ podCast411