Ashley Carman at The Verge details a lot of complaints about Apple Podcasts Subscriptions:
But in the months since Apple Podcasts’ announcement, podcasters say the platform has failed them in various ways. For a company that prides itself on functionality, design, and ease of use, the new backend’s bungled launch is a mess. Podcasters say Apple Podcasts Connect, which they’re required to use in order to take advantage of subscriptions, has a confusing interface that often leads to user error scenarios that have them pinging Apple at all hours of the day in a panic — one podcaster’s entire show was seemingly archived until Apple stepped in to help and explain what happened.
I talked to Apple reps about this back in June, and basically made all the points raised in the article. The weaknesses of Apple’s initial subscription offering, most particularly the burdens placed on podcasters to use Apple’s limited back-end tools, were apparent the moment the feature was announced.
The real question is, who at Apple decided this product was good enough to be released? Especially given the related changes made to the Podcast app that managed to break podcast updates in a serious and lasting way.
This is turning into one of those cases where Apple’s relative inattention to podcasting from 2005 through 2020 is seeming more and more like a golden age.