If you're like millions of people around the world, chances are, you have a favorite podcast.
You might get your daily news via a listening app, tune in during dinner to watch your favorite podcast, or follow a few religiously on your commute to work every day.
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And chances are, you're probably listening to your podcasts on one of three platforms: YouTube, Spotify (SPOT) -), or Apple (AAPL) -) Podcasts.
These three apps are the big dogs in the podcasting realm. According to statistics and market intelligence tracker Morning Consult, a majority of folks get their podcasts on YouTube -- 33% of listeners tune in on the video watching app, 24% listen on Spotify, and 12% of listeners get their pods on Apple Podcasts. Other less popular platforms include Pandora, Amazon (AMZN) -) Music, iHeartRadio, SiriusXM and Stitcher, each with less than 10% of market share.
It's not hard to understand why YouTube and Spotify are such big players in the space. Both offer unique data and insights into listening demographics, which are crucial for hosts and creators to better understand how to serve their core audience. It's also helpful for advertising for obvious reasons. Apple has not done this historically; the tech giant has been careful about sharing user data and prefers to keep everything in-house for its own proprietary uses.
Apple has also kept its podcast and music apps separately for years -- something its key competitor Spotify does not do. This can make it cumbersome for users with listening habits that span spoken and sung audio; switching between two apps for what Spotify or YouTube view as essentially the same service can be a major turn off, especially on the go.
Apple releases a key product for creators
But Apple is working on fixing at least one of these issues. Starting on Aug. 21, Apple will being letting content creators and podcasters see insights into their audience via analytics tools – for a subscription, of course.
"Creators can easily see how listeners engage with premium subscriptions and grow their audience using powerful marketing tools provided by Linkfire," Apple wrote in an official page on the release. Linkfire is an entertainment marketing and analytics platform.
"With a Linkfire account, creators will be able to generate an unlimited number of smart links to landing pages for their podcasts and measure the ways listeners engage with them — while respecting listeners’ privacy. These pages, which are easy to set up and work across devices, are designed to connect listeners to shows and subscriptions on Apple Podcasts. Creators can also link to their shows on other apps and feature related products, such as social channels, newsletters, merch stores, and live events," the site reads.
Different features will vary based on the plan a creator chooses.
Creators can use Linkfire to identify audience trends, growth, get insight into who is paying for premium offerings, who is currently using free trials, and listener conversion rates. The service will be available to all creators on Apple Podcasts, but Apple says "additional features," will be available to creators for $9.99 per month this fall.
