The interesting thing about the distributed RSS nature of podcasts is that Apple let it happen. The entire podcast ecosystem rests upon the shoulders of Apple's podcast directory, which Apple has been freely hosting and allowing everyone to use rather than choosing to lock it down. For the longest time Apple's podcast client was by far the biggest player in the industry, so they had a lot of power to change this if they wanted to.
Given Apple's general money-grubbing ways (see: the App Store), this is somewhat surprising. Presumably the podcast directory product happens to be owned by someone in the org who has some idealistic commitment to it being open, and/or the overall podcast industry is too tiny for them to think it's worth the hassle to push monetizing it.
(Now Spotify's the biggest podcast platform, I gather, and I think we should all be glad that they don't have the power to just do unhindered monetization of podcasts because of Apple's counterbalancing them.)
Given Apple's general money-grubbing ways (see: the App Store), this is somewhat surprising. Presumably the podcast directory product happens to be owned by someone in the org who has some idealistic commitment to it being open, and/or the overall podcast industry is too tiny for them to think it's worth the hassle to push monetizing it.
(Now Spotify's the biggest podcast platform, I gather, and I think we should all be glad that they don't have the power to just do unhindered monetization of podcasts because of Apple's counterbalancing them.)