Lucas Shaw and Mark Gurman for Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. plans to fund original podcasts that would be exclusive to its audio service, according to people familiar with the matter, increasing its investment in the industry to keep competitors Spotify and Stitcher at bay.
Executives at the company have reached out to media companies and their representatives to discuss buying exclusive rights to podcasts, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the conversations are preliminary. Apple has yet to outline a clear strategy, but has said it plans to pursue the kind of deals it didn’t make before.
MacDailyNews Take: Speech different? Apple seeks to build its own communication channels…
With something as close to commodity as podcasts, I would think it counter-intuitive to be exclusive to any single audio service. More so if that audio service is not platform agnostic.
Tim Cook and Co have ignored Podcasts even though Apple invented the category. Seems a little late but I guess better late than never. Tim Cook seems to be late on a lot of things. Music Streaming, Video Streaming, Cloud Storage, updating products. Apple is a very different company now.