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Comment by bastawhiz | Hacker News Reader

Author here.

> wouldn't hosts have the original source material that they uploaded

As far as I'm aware, Apple never resurfaces the audio after it's uploaded, even in your dashboard. Even if they did, making someone manually download and reupload every asset for potentially hundreds of episodes is sadistic. Moreover, you physically can't leave, because your listeners won't follow you to your new hosting service.

> These users aren't there just for generic hosting, but also for the network effects.

The network effects are limited to an app with only 40% of the market. Outside the US, that number is even smaller.

> just that there is fairly old precedent

Every podcast hosting service ever has allowed you to leave their service.

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>Moreover, you physically can't leave, because your listeners won't follow you to your new hosting service.

This is patently not true. I've had to do this after a podcast host had an outage and our followers moved over because we posted on social that there was a new feed. Joe Rogan's followers moved to Spotify just fine after he removed all other traces of his show.

It's not great but you're literally getting what you pay for.

As I said, this literally doesn't apply to Apple's own service, as they don't use RSS feeds. It works with every other hosting service.

They don't need to. We didn't either since the server hosting the RSS feed was down. You just tell your subscribers to move on whatever platforms you're advertising on.

I'm assuming it wasn't anywhere close to 100% though, which a simple 301 redirect would give you.

Every podcast host I'm aware of would be happy to do that for you.

That wasn't possible as the host was completely down. I'm not sure if it was 100% but we had more followers on the new platform than the old one within the first month so most of them must have followed.

This is all Apple bringing their usual dirty tactics into an ecosystem that has historically been open. Everything Apple does is designed to keep you buying Apple products and services forever.

Except that "pod"casts have always been Apple's ecosystem. They've introduced a new product that is less open, but haven't actually stopped supporting the completely open options that have always existed.

What? Something historically being named after an Apple product doesn't make it Apple's ecosystem.

I've used Pocket Casts on Android for many years, and before that on iOS. I don't even know what the Apple podcast app looks like -- I carefully chose a podcast player that wouldn't lock me into its ecosystem. Podcasts have always been an open ecosystem, one that I greatly appreciate.

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