This year’s first Apple event ‘Spring Loaded’ is just hours away, and it is speculated that the Cupertino tech giant will announce the Apple Podcasts subscription on April 20. Vox’s Peter Kafka shared on Twitter that he is certain Apple will introduce paid tier of its podcast app.
Podcast is a booming industry, and Apple is competing with rival music streaming service, Spotify to earn a lucrative market share. Therefore, the iPhone maker is adding new audio series like ‘The Line’, ‘Kids and Family’ podcasts. The Cupertino tech company also purchased the ‘Scout FM‘ podcast app to offer a radion-like podcast experience and it was competing with Sony in the bid to acquire the Wondery podcasts app for $300 million.
As discovered in iOS 14.5, Apple is expected to introduce the Apple Podcasts subscription plan
Earlier, Steve Moser of 9to5Mac found that in iOS 14.5 Apple had redesigned the Apple Podcasts UI by replacing the Listen Now tab with an account button. He wrote that “show notifications were moved there and I imagine unsubscribing from paid notifications will move there too.”
It was also discovered that Apple Podcasts had changed the ‘Subscribe to Podcast’ button with a more positive ‘Follow Podcast’ option which most of the leading podcast apps like Spotify, Amazon Music, and Stitcher are already using.
While we are here: Pretty sure Apple is prepping its own podcast plan – a paid subscription service – on Tuesday. pic.twitter.com/w12tWqg0yo
— Peter Kafka (@pkafka) April 18, 2021
The alleged Podcasts subscription service is reported to include premium programs by acquiring exclusive rights to different podcasts. Bloomberg reported that Apple was planning to produce original podcasts to complement Apple TV+ programs and is also working on standalone content which would be later adapted into Apple TV+ content.
The Podcasts subscription service is expected to put it head-to-head against Spotify which already has exclusive rights to popular podcasts like ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ to attract new subscribers.
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