There had been rumors, and there had been increasing reason to believe them. Spotify’s buzzy start to the year, in which the Swedish platform spent hundreds of millions of dollars acquiring its way into the podcast business, had begun to inspire questions about the future of Apple’s position as the dominant podcast distributor. Those questions got even louder as it became apparent Spotify was quickly becoming a strong second-place podcast distributor. Surely such an ascendance would prompt Apple to mount some sort of response. Indeed, maybe the rising competition would be so alarming that Cupertino might even begin reconsidering its longtime position as the impartial steward (and enforcer) of the open podcast ecosystem.
Well, from the sounds of a report that dropped this afternoon, the company might indeed be doing just that.
Earlier today, Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw and Mark Gurman broke the news that Apple is planning to “fund original podcasts that would be exclusive to…
