Mike Peterson
Apple on Monday launched a new embeddable web player for its Podcasts, giving creators, marketers, and listeners new options for sharing and playing podcast content.
As first spotted by TechCrunch, anyone can create an embeddable web player from either the Apple Podcasts Preview page or the Apple Podcasts Marketing Tools portal.
The web player is customizable and includes the most recent episodes of a single podcast. It's also interactive, allowing listeners to play an entire episode without moving to another app or webpage. Users can also use the web player to open the Apple Podcasts app so that they can learn more about a program or add it to their subscriptions.
Each embed player is responsive and will adapt to various interfaces on macOS, iOS, or other operating systems. They also feature the full suite of playback controls and show notes.
Listeners can also generate embed codes through the Share icon on the Preview page for a show or individual episode. Apple said that the new feature should be available broadly starting Monday.
As an example, here is the embeddable web player for the AppleInsider Podcast.
Apple added web playback support for its podcasts platform back in April 2019. The new feature on Monday will allow users to create embedded web players for any of Apple's more than 1.5 million shows.
The new marketing tool comes amid increasing competition from platforms such as Spotify, which has invested heavily in its podcast platform. Spotify also offers embeddable web players for its podcasts.
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
Malcolm Owen
Andrew Orr
William Gallagher
Sponsored Content
7 Comments
Is there STILL not a next button on Podcasts in iOS 14?
im on an iPhone 5s so I can’t fell.
It’s sad seeing the company that invented Podcasts sabotaging their own platform. Even knockoffs like Google adopted the “Pod”cast name. They couldn’t call them GoogleCasts or something? Sad.
While Apple didn't invent the podcast format/concept, I'm glad they were an early champion of it, and I'm especially glad that they didn't force monetization of the entire genre the way Spotify, Google, and others are trying to do. I certainly don't mind podcasters making money from ads or Patreons (et al), but the fact that nearly all podcasts are completely free to listen to is a wonderful gift that helped grow the format into a bonafide internet success story -- one that is now mainstream enough to support monetization for high-quality podcasts.