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I agree with your points regarding ads, but I want to point out these two are usually at odds:

> a more closed platform

> convenient to play the audio any way I feel like (i.e. no intrusive DRM)

For instance with audio in general, we've seen lots of pushes toward streaming rather than downloading, which allows the platform to control when, where, and how people listen.

I subscribe to Giant Bomb (a video games website) and they have a premium tier for content.

The podcasts are available for free, but funded by ads, or you can subscribe to the premium feed where the ads are edited out.

Ah good old videogames.com.

Yeah premium podcasts are already a thing. There's no need to "figure out an API to let people use their license keys on third party players", it's simply HTTP Basic authentication embedded in the URL. Should work just about anywhere.

I'm also a premium subscriber; while they used to use basic HTTP auth, they've since switched to generating revocable, per-user keys. It's both better for security and easier for podcast clients to manage.

By "revocable, per-user keys" do you mean each user is given a unique URL to download premium content from or is some type of cryptographic DRM being leveraged?

Yup; you get a URL to the premium feed with a unique hash on the end.

I'd imagine it's a token in the request headers

I doubt it's request headers since that would require the podcast player to set them. Putting it in the URL itself would make it work with every player on the planet.

Oh nice. I was a premium subscriber for years but never bothered using the premium podcast URLs. The ads can be pretty funny.

I am 100% with you on the ads model, I think the internet would be a better place without all of the unnecessary tracking and crazyness used to make ads more effective.

I love the trend toward premium versions of things that are ads free, if I don’t want to be tracked and have annoying ads I should have that option. I think the internet overall would be a much better place if every service offered this.. pay for the service and escape the ads madness.

Totally agree on the rev share as well and I think that should be democratized much more so.. it should be possible for things to remain open as well as for creators to get paid

I don't have a problem with podcast advertisements because it's essentially a return to the old way of doing advertising, free of tracking and crazyness. Like on terrestial radio or in newspapers. That means advertisers need to make the ad relevant to the podcast somehow, because it's the only heuristic they have. Podcast players always have skip forward and back buttons, anyway.

The podcasts can be hosted by the owner (for example on Libsyn) but the syndication platforms copy and rehost them most of the time. SoundCloud, Spotify, etc.