In summer season 2021, iOS 14.5 launched a significant change to Apple Podcasts with implications many podcasters should still not notice. With that replace, your viewers on Apple Podcasts is not getting your podcast immediately out of your RSS feed, however from a proxy. And that has some doubtlessly dangerous implications!
What’s a proxy?
A proxy is normally a substitution that stands within the center and serves a duplicate of your podcast to your viewers. In podcasting, these are the 2 most typical varieties of proxies:
- A feed proxy: This serves a duplicate of your podcast RSS feed to your viewers as an alternative of their getting your RSS feed immediately out of your authentic supply (just like the PowerPress feed or a feed out of your podcast-hosting supplier).
- A media proxy: This serves a duplicate of your podcast media information to your viewers as an alternative of their getting your episode media immediately out of your authentic supply (like your podcast-hosting supplier).
Media proxies will not be widespread they usually could make correct analytics troublesome and even unimaginable. You would possibly bear in mind how Stitcher used to obtain just one copy of your episodes, re-encode them, and serve their copies. That is a media proxy. Stitcher did that to be able to save bandwidth, however they’ve since stopped utilizing a media proxy and have switched to full “passthrough.” Spotify, nonetheless, nonetheless serves podcast media from their servers for some podcasts and Luminary made a foul first impression after they launched with a media proxy for all podcasts, however Luminary corrected it later. (It could be greatest if all apps supported passthrough, as most apps do.)
Feed proxies are extra widespread. You’ve got truly already used a feed proxy when you ever used FeedBurner or Podcast Mirror. Apparently, FeedBurner’s replace in 2022 (sure, they really made some main updates!) now calls every feed a “proxy,” which I believe higher communicates what FeedBurner is offering.
While you use a feed proxy and publish its feed, like from FeedBurner or Podcast Mirror, that service is internet hosting your RSS feed, getting the most recent updates out of your supply. For instance, if you observe The Audacity to Podcast in a podcast app, you are getting the feed from https://feeds.podcastmirror.com/theaudacitytopodcast, which is a proxy feed for https://theaudacitytopodcast.com/feed/podcast/ (and I’ve set that authentic feed to redirect to the proxy).
Why use a feed proxy?
Feed proxies have a number of advantages for each you and your viewers.
First, they prevent bandwidth by serving a cached, high-performance copy of your feed from a content-distribution community (CDN) as an alternative of immediately out of your web site. This could save a ton of bandwidth—much more than your media information use!
Contemplate this instance. Think about your RSS feed is 0.5 MB, you’ve gotten 100 podcast followers, and also you publish one 30 MB episode per week. Your 100 followers would every obtain that 30 MB file as soon as, leading to slightly below 3 GB of bandwidth per week.
However what concerning the 0.5 MB RSS feed? Most podcast apps have defaulted to checking feeds each hour. So meaning 100 units are checking and doubtlessly redownloading your feed each hour. Even at solely 0.5 MB, the feed’s bandwidth may complete greater than 8 GB per week!
This bandwidth-savings for you is likely one of the largest causes to use your podcast-hosting provider’s feed or a feed proxy, as an alternative of internet hosting the feed by yourself server.
The second advantage of a feed proxy is on your viewers. A proxied feed is normally hosted on a CDN, which distributes copies of the feed throughout the globe, permitting for sooner downloads irrespective of the place your viewers is. Plus, this retains the feed on-line and shielded from any instability your web site may need.
Podcast-hosting suppliers (like Captivate, Libsyn, or Buzzsprout) already create high-performance, CDN-hosted feeds on your podcast. However when you do not use your internet hosting supplier’s feed, then I extremely suggest utilizing a feed proxy (Podcast Mirror is my high suggestion, and it is free from Blubrry!).
In brief, I believe feed proxies are good for you to make use of!
Now that what a feed proxy is and its core advantages, I would like to indicate a doubtlessly darkish facet of when a podcast app (and never you) makes use of its personal feed proxy, which turned a notable difficulty when Apple launched iOS 14.5.
What did iOS 14.5 change?
The Apple Podcasts catalog offers millions of podcasts. While you take a look at a podcast within the catalog, you see the listing of episodes from that podcast. For Apple Podcasts to supply a quick expertise, they should obtain the knowledge out of your feed to serve an optimized copy inside their app. That is why we have usually seen the criticism {that a} new episode did not present within the Apple Podcasts catalog instantly after it was revealed; it would not present till Apple Podcasts up to date its personal cached copy of the feed.
Earlier than iOS 14.5, this was merely a show difficulty that will ultimately go away, however it might not have an effect on your followers. We used to say that your followers may have entry to your latest episodes as quickly as your RSS feed was up to date, even when that episode did not present within the cached Apple Podcasts catalog. That is as a result of—earlier than iOS 14.5—your viewers was subscribed on to your RSS feed.
However iOS 14.5 modified that, and I’ve some considerations!
With iOS 14.5, Apple sought to make the podcast library (the place you’ve gotten all of the exhibits you observe) match the expertise of the podcast catalog (the place podcasts can be found for locating and including to your library by following them). The Apple Podcasts catalog nonetheless works the identical because it did earlier than, however now anybody who follows your podcast from the catalog is getting your podcast feed (not the media information themselves) from Apple’s feed proxy as an alternative of immediately out of your feed.
First, this brings large efficiency advantages! Let’s return to my instance of your podcast with 100 followers. As an alternative of these 100 followers checking your podcast feed doubtlessly each hour of every single day, the Apple Podcasts servers now try this on your followers and push any updates to the 100 followers utilizing Apple Podcasts. This reduces the bandwidth and computing wants from 100 checks each time to only one. And this infinitely scales up with out rising demand in your server! 10,000 checks from 10,000 followers at the moment are 1 verify by Apple’s servers. (That one verify by Apple’s servers continues to be executed steadily to be able to catch new episodes as quickly as potential, but it surely’s one server in search of new episodes as an alternative of tons of or 1000’s of separate units.)
And anybody who adopted your podcast from the catalog earlier than iOS 14.5 was migrated to utilizing Apple’s feed proxy, so you do not have to ask your viewers to unfollow and refollow simply so that you can get the efficiency advantages.
The doubtlessly darkish facet of Apple’s (or any app’s) personal feed proxy
These first few months following iOS 14.5 had been fairly tough! Many podcasters would see their latest episodes not being out there or downloaded for a day and even longer after publishing as a result of Apple’s new system was having a very troublesome time updating thousands and thousands of podcasts or it wasn’t updating them usually sufficient. (This affected solely Apple Podcasts.)
Since then, Apple has improved their system in order that updates occur extra shortly. And one of the best factor you can do to make sure your new episodes present up on time is to publish persistently on the very same time with every episode as a result of Apple’s system appears to be taught when to count on new episodes. So when you publish at 8:00 am each Monday, stick with that schedule each time, as a lot as potential! Most publishing instruments now let you schedule when a brand new episode publishes, in order that makes it simpler to be persistently exact. (This may not be affordable for each podcast, particularly TV aftershow podcasts that must publish their episodes ASAP on the identical evening the TV episode airs.)
Nonetheless, you would possibly nonetheless see some delays from if you publish an episode to when it exhibits up in Apple Podcasts (each within the catalog and on your followers).
However there is a doubtlessly darker facet to this that extra individuals must know, and I’ve some robust opinions about it!
Through the use of their very own feed proxy on your present, Apple Podcasts now has (however won’t use) communist-level management over your podcast! Since your viewers who adopted your podcast by way of Apple’s catalog now will get your podcast from Apple’s feed proxy, as an alternative of immediately from your feed, Apple may doubtlessly:
- forestall your viewers from downloading a specific episode,
- forestall your viewers from receiving any future episodes of your podcast (successfully “canceling” your podcast),
- and even exchange one in all your episodes or media with their very own!
So if Apple does not like your podcast, they now have the ability to utterly disconnect you out of your viewers on Apple Podcasts, with out you or your viewers ever realizing!
However would Apple truly use this energy?
I am going to cite a controversial instance. A number of years in the past, podcaster Alex Jones noticed a number of of his exhibits (most notably InfoWars) kicked out of podcast apps and directories. (That is not a remark for or in opposition to Alex Jones or any of the claims for or in opposition to him.) That occurred earlier than iOS 14.5. So when his present was kicked out of Apple Podcasts, that eliminated it from the catalog, which prevented new followers from with the ability to discover his present within the catalog (manually including the RSS feed would nonetheless work). The expulsion did not have an effect on his current followers again then as a result of they might proceed getting his episodes from the RSS feed to which they had been immediately linked. (Nevertheless, I think the present won’t work for these followers anymore after iOS 14.5, however I could not discover somebody to assist verify this. So please let me know if in case you have first-hand expertise!)
But when that scenario had occurred after iOS 14.5, then Jones’s followers on Apple Podcasts would have utterly stopped receiving his new episodes. It could have regarded like Jones had utterly stopped podcasting! He would not have been capable of get even a “Resubscribe right here” announcement episode out! He would have been utterly minimize off despite the fact that his viewers would have nonetheless had his podcast of their libraries.
This identical form of factor would occur if a podcast was kicked out of Apple Podcasts for keyword-spamming or chart-manipulation: no contact with the viewers till the podcast was restored to Apple Podcasts.
This additionally occurs if you willingly deactivate a podcast by way of your Podcasts Connect account.
I reached out to Apple for an official response to this and my considerations, however they declined to remark.
Spotify, Stitcher, and a few others additionally use their very own feed proxies
Apple is not alone on this apply, they usually’re truly not the primary to work this fashion, both. It is solely that they are probably the most outstanding podcast app to swap from direct connections to utilizing their very own feed proxy.
Stitcher was in all probability the primary to make use of their very own feeds for podcasts (and for the file, Stitcher was additionally the primary podcast app to kick out Alex Jones’s present), however Spotify additionally does this for some podcasts. And I believe Google Podcasts and Amazon Music / Audible do, too (although I have not examined these as exhaustively as I did for Apple Podcasts).
Howdy, censorship?
When a podcast app has its personal proxy of your podcast feed, that offers them management over what your viewers will get from you. Thus, this makes your podcast not protected from company or authorities censorship.
Earlier than you suppose this can be a concern for less than conspiracy theorists, I urge you to comprehend that it may have an effect on anybody. Think about if Apple needed to crack down on leaks mentioned within the MacRumors podcast. Or think about if Spotify needed to stop your viewers from listening to about different streaming music companies. Or think about in case your state or nation begins forbidding content material deemed unlawful in that state or nation and will get these podcast apps to censor your podcast. (Some nations already block all express content material, and it looks like China—the place there isn’t even a word for “censorship”—blocks virtually all the pieces, even The Audacity to Podcast!)
So this may have an effect on you, irrespective of your political leaning!
Will Apple, Spotify, Google, Amazon, and others truly train such censorship? I believe the chances are extraordinarily low, however they have executed it earlier than (like with Alex Jones’s exhibits, exhibits which have mentioned a specific virus from 2019, and a few conditions I do know of), and now Apple has larger management to do it once more.
However remember the fact that that is solely within the context of what you add from every app’s catalog. Apple Podcasts and almost all different podcast apps nonetheless permit customers to manually add any RSS feed to their private libraries, and the app is not going to have any management over it. (For my part, to be a good podcast app, the app should permit guide additions like this. So sure, meaning I do not take into account Spotify to be a good podcast app.) So even when a podcast was publishing unlawful content material, even Apple nonetheless helps you to manually add it to your library in Apple Podcasts.
I believe it’s doubtlessly of their rights for any of the podcast apps to disallow explicit content material in their very own catalogs. If Apple needed to ban all podcasts about Android or Home windows working programs from showing of their catalog, they’ve the suitable to take action! There are many different podcast apps that may filter or censor in a different way, or by no means. So audiences nonetheless have a selection, and podcasters can nonetheless construct an viewers. There may be additionally a good case to make in opposition to any form of free-speech censorship (no less than within the USA) when a specific platform or service is utilized by a big portion of the market. In different phrases, when one thing turns into a “public city sq.” of the Web. And such freedom-protecting laws is already in progress.
In the event you really feel you’ve gotten a reputable purpose to be afraid of company or authorities censorship, then promote solely direct technique of including your RSS feed as an alternative of selling catalog listings. In the event you do that, you may have to simply accept that you simply will not get any scores, opinions, rating, or proprietary analytics from these catalogs as a result of the manual-addition course of normally bypasses any catalog options.
Considerably just like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and such
The closest instance of those sorts of practices (or potential practices) is maybe within the premium video-streaming companies. And I’ve some direct expertise just like this: the X-Recordsdata TV present.
I by no means watched the entire X-Recordsdata sequence. However I picked up the place I final left off by streaming it free by way of Amazon Prime—for some time. However then Prime not provided the present free of charge. I may solely proceed watching by shopping for or renting it from Prime.
Amazon wasn’t “censoring” the present, they usually weren’t truly disallowing me from watching it. I solely could not watch it free of charge anymore by way of my Prime Video membership. However I may lease the present, possibly discover it on one other streaming service, or borrow it from my public library.
Motion pictures and exhibits steadily depart streaming companies attributable to licenses. That merely means it’s a must to get the content material another means.
Apple Podcasts and these different high podcast platforms are related in that they are merely excluding sure content material of their proprietary catalogs and the programs fed from these catalogs (just like the Apple Podcasts search API many different apps use).
A technical apart for <itunes:block> and express episodes
A few of the 175 nations with Apple Podcasts block express content material from their catalogs. In case your present was in any other case usually “clear” or unmarked, a single express episode may get your present kicked out from these regional catalogs. Earlier than iOS 14.5, that would not have an effect on your current viewers. However now, getting kicked out of a area’s catalog disconnects you out of your viewers in that area.
There’s a slight workaround for that single-episode scenario. You might add the <itunes:block> tag to that particular episode, and that will block it from exhibiting within the Apple Podcasts catalog and thus forestall your podcast from being kicked out of these few explicit-blocking areas. In the event you did that earlier than iOS 14.5, your followers may nonetheless get that “blocked” episode as a result of they had been linked on to your RSS feed. However since iOS 14.5, your followers won’t ever get that “blocked” episode as a result of it is blocked from the feed proxy. Thus, <itunes:block> now utterly blocks that episode from Apple Podcasts followers, until they’d manually added your RSS feed.
Podcasting 2.0 supplies higher options!
Podcasting 2.0 and the open Podcast Index had been began earlier than iOS 14.5 was launched, however Apple’s replace made the necessity for Podcasting 2.0 and Podcast Index a lot greater.
I see two related options that Podcasting 2.0 supplies:
1. A censorship-free podcast catalog
The open Podcast Index catalog is free from company and authorities censorship. The aim of Podcast Index is to incorporate each podcast until opted out by the podcaster.
However even Podcasting-2.0-compliant apps can block no matter they need from their very own catalogs. And that results in one other advantage of Podcast Index. In case your present is kicked out of Apple Podcasts, it is also faraway from the search and catalog information that many different apps use, making your podcast unfindable in these apps (however not affecting your current listenership within the apps). So Apple’s actions can have an effect on many different apps. However since Podcast Index does not censor, there is no one entity answerable for whether or not your podcast seems in dozens of different apps that use Podcast Index.
2. A greater strategy to catch and distribute podcast updates
Podcasting 2.0 created the PodPing protocol, which presents an especially quick and amazingly resource-efficient system to catch and distribute updates from podcast feeds, whether or not that is merely a modified title or a brand new episode.
So as an alternative of a gradual and resource-costly farm of servers scraping thousands and thousands of RSS feeds in search of if there’s something new, PodPing supplies a means for podcast updates to be written to the Hive blockchain (do not run away!), and people updates may be monitored with a service so small and quick, you can run it on a Raspberry Pi! (Check out PodPing.cloud for more technical information.)
Wish to watch it work? Visit PodPing.watch to see the updates displayed in real time.
So what do you have to do?
I created this primarily to tell you and solely partially warn you. An important takeaways are:
- Use Podcast Mirror or one other feed proxy for feeds hosted by yourself web site server.
- Know that Apple Podcasts and another apps won’t ship your new episodes as shortly as you need, till they assist PodPing.
- In the event you’re nervous about censorship, promote solely manual-follow strategies together with your RSS feed as an alternative of selling catalog listings.
- Ask your podcast-hosting supplier and favourite podcast apps to assist Podcasting 2.0 and the PodPing protocol.
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Disclosure
This publish could include hyperlinks to services or products with which I’ve an affiliate relationship. I could obtain compensation out of your actions by way of such hyperlinks. Nevertheless, I do not let that corrupt my perspective and I do not suggest solely associates.
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