Editor’s note: The podcast industry’s growth to this point has been fueled almost entirely by advertising dollars. But just like the web before it — where free news sites have put up paywalls and monthly streaming subscriptions have gone mainstream — it’s clear that at least some of its future health will depend on getting payments directly from listeners.
What shape paid podcasting will take is a hot subject of debate these days. Will a listener’s attachment most often happen at the individual show level — something like the ecosystem of Patreon-supported podcasts today? Will there be a new set of HBO- or Netflix-style aggregators who promise quality and scale, like what Luminary aims to be? Can models that work for a weekly podcast that runs ad infinitum also work for short-run blasts of audio genius?
But no matter which approaches gain traction, there’s a critical technical issue to be addressed. Namely: Podcast fans listen across a bunch of different apps on…
