Assorted Other ‘Spring Loaded’ Announcements ⇥ tidbits.com

Michael E. Cohen, TidBits:

With Apple Card Family, a service available starting in May 2021, two people can co-own one Apple Card, sharing and merging their credit lines and benefiting equally from the shared credit history. In addition, Apple Card Family lets parents share an Apple Card with their children — including setting spending limits and controls — using an updated Family Sharing service.

This sounds like it will be helpful for, say, a couple where one person has major student loan debt or does not have a great credit history; but, now that their finances are shared, that person can benefit from the better collective credit rating.

Alex Guyot, MacStories:

During today’s keynote event, Apple announced their new Apple Podcasts Subscriptions service. Launching in May in over 170 countries, the service will allow users to subscribe to premium podcasts directly from the Apple Podcasts app. Premium shows will offer access to various perks for users, such as removing ads, releasing shows early, or providing exclusive content.

Ashley Carman, the Verge:

Initial partners include Pushkin Industries, QCODE, and NPR. It appears that content creators will have to pay Apple $19.99 per year in order to offer subscriptions, and Apple will take 30 percent of revenue for the first year of a subscriber’s lifetime and 15 percent for the years following. This means that if a subscriber only subscribes for one year, a podcaster will have given Apple 30 percent of that revenue. Podcasters are incentivized to keep subscribers around longer.

Podcasters will have to upload their subscription content through Apple’s backend, not through RSS and their hosting provider. Their regular feed, however, can still operate through RSS. Because the subscription content goes through Apple, podcasters also won’t receive specific data about their paying listeners, like their email, names, or contact information. Apple essentially owns the relationship.

The Podcaster Program Agreement appears to have a some requirements worth paying attention to if you are interested in joining. One thing I did not see in there is an exclusivity requirement. That means you can have a Patreon and a paid Apple Podcasts tier, and upload the same paid-only materials to both.