The increased popularity in podcasts has left Apple with little choice but to revamp the Apple Podcasts app. There’s now an all-new design alongside some fascinating new features.
New App Design
Apple has unveiled a beautiful and sleek new design for the iOS Podcasts app. Over the years, Apple Podcasts has made some pretty drastic changes to its display features. But according to Apple executives, the most recent changes to are the biggest in the company’s history.
Looking back at the old Apple Podcasts design makes the app look almost unrecognizable.
Apple has made major changes to the Podcasts app over the last twenty years to increase both the usability and overall aesthetic of the app. The updates included in Apple’s spring 2021 event focus primarily on usability.
One major update will include an updated search bar, to better assist with discovering past favorites and new suggestions. Apple Podcast users know how difficult it can be to locate an episode using nothing but your memory and the search bar.
Once you locate a program, interacting with its community and creators is now much simpler, as the pages focus on the ability to share, follow, explore, and listen with significantly more ease.
The best user addition for Apple Podcasts is the Smart Play button. If you’ve ever happened across an interesting new podcast but weren’t sure where to start, Smart Play will assist you.
Smart Play automatically detects whether a show should be played from the oldest or newest episode. This is incredibly helpful because sometimes it can be difficult to determine whether a show is an anthology or an actual storyline.
Also, after years of requests, Apple Podcasts will finally allow users to save and download individual episodes without subscribing. This is an excellent opportunity for users who want to try out a new program but might not necessarily want to listen to every new episode that comes out.
Channels
Channels act similarly to curated music playlists, but they focus on Podcast suggestions instead. Just as television channels group together TV shows of a similar nature, podcast Channels aim to do the same.
As podcasts have exploded in popularity over the last few years, the ability to group content together is much easier.
Although Apple Podcasts always offered different genres for browsing, Channels will enable users to search through niche content and creator-based suggestions. Apple Podcasts Channels will help listeners to broaden their repertoire of shows.
New Channels will be continuously added to your personalized Recommendations, meaning that finding new shows, creators, and stories will be easier than ever before.
Curations
Alongside Apple’s podcast channels, the company also wants to place an emphasis on its curated podcasts. These curated shows will capture culturally relevant events, trending episodes, and the hottest new creators, making it easy for listeners to stay connected to the podcasting community.
Apple Podcasts Subscriptions
In May of 2020, Apple will launch Apple Podcasts Subscriptions in over 170 regions. This will have major implications on a market that has mostly focused on ad-driven content for decades.
In the past, a podcast needed to be popular to secure ad revenue and income. Moving forward, creators will now have a better opportunity to act independently of advertisers. This should help create more diverse content for listeners to enjoy.
The introduction of podcast subscriptions may change Apple Podcasts as we know it, transforming it into a platform similar to Patreon. To properly understand how subscriptions will affect your personal Apple Podcast usage, let’s break this category down into two major aspects: Creators and Listeners.
Creators
Apple Podcasts Subscriptions have primarily been launched with creators in mind. Creators have the opportunity to join the Apple Podcasters program, which costs $19.99/year. This program provides creators with access to the new Apple Podcasts for Creators website, as well as the Apple Podcasts dashboard.
From there, they can create and control their podcast.
The website will help creators to focus on crafting the best podcast possible, while the dashboard primarily focuses on the front end of the show; this relates to scheduling new episodes, tracking metadata relating to the program, watching your listenership, creating new channels, and more.
The focus for creators is on allowing them to create more content with fewer challenges.
Listeners
Apple Podcasts Subscriptions for listeners will work very differently to the new content-creation platform. Instead of allowing all-encompassing access for a single yearly or monthly fee, Apple Podcasts is choosing to focus on individual subscriptions for each creator or chow, further resembling Patreon.
Listeners will have the option to pick and choose which shows they want to subscribe to.
It’s up to creators to create exclusive, ad-free content for their subscription platform. It’s then up to listeners to decide whether they want to support the creator with a subscription or not.
These subscription options will be available for major corporate creators as well as individual content makers. The price of each Apple Podcast subscription is up to the individual creator.
A Treasure Hunt for the Perfect Podcast
Apple Podcasts is focusing on the future of audio entertainment and how that will affect not only listeners but the actual creators themselves. As users continually witness major updates to Apple’s apps, finding interesting and relevant podcast topics is becoming increasingly easy.
The developments to the Apple Podcasts search bar and the inclusion of Channels should only assist in this quest for knowledge once again. Despite all of these advancements, if you’re still having trouble locating the perfect listening material, try using some uncommon ways to find podcasts worth listening to.
