Spotify isn’t doing anything to podcasts. An audio program that doesn’t publish an RSS feed that I can subscribe to in my podcast player of choice isn’t a podcast. It’s also not something I’m going to waste my time listening to.
As far as Apple, Apple’s podcast directory and app are the very definition of “open”. Apple just indexes publicly available submitted RSS feeds. When you subscribe from Apple’s podcast app, the app itself polls the publishers RSS feed and plays directly from the publisher’s servers.
You can also subscribe to a podcast directly from the app using the url to the podcast - it doesn’t have to be in Apple’s directory.
Apple even offers a public API of the podcast directory that can be used by anyone on any platform.
As far as Apple, Apple’s podcast directory and app are the very definition of “open”. Apple just indexes publicly available submitted RSS feeds. When you subscribe from Apple’s podcast app, the app itself polls the publishers RSS feed and plays directly from the publisher’s servers.
You can also subscribe to a podcast directly from the app using the url to the podcast - it doesn’t have to be in Apple’s directory.
Apple even offers a public API of the podcast directory that can be used by anyone on any platform.