Recently, Apple had held a closed meeting with the top seven podcasters Apple has to discuss various issues regarding the company and the podcaster community. As per the reports of The New York Times, the company allowed these podcasters to meet with various employees of Apple and state to them the issues podcasters have in their field of work. Held at the Apple headquarters at Cupertino, this was a rare opportunity provided to the podcasters by Apple to discuss their problems.

The very first issue stated by the podcasters was revenue. According to them, podcasters cannot earn through the subscriptions they provide on Apple iTunes. The main reason which does not allow them to earn revenue was due to the fact that they are unable to access listener data from iTunes. Though Apple has access to this data and can work accordingly, the podcasters have to work blind. According to the report, one podcaster commented that the fact that they don’t have any podcast data is quite shocking to the podcaster’s community.

Another issue the podcasters face is the lack of sharing features available in iTunes. Stated as “cumbersome” in the report, the Apple sharing service with other social media is truly inefficient. This makes it difficult for the podcasters to market their data through the various social media portals and thus they can reach a limited number of audiences. Another complaint put forward by the group was that of Apple backing only a single podcaster over others. The company basically allows high levels of promotions to only one employee and no more.

As a final closing of the meeting session, Apple stated that though they would try to improve the scenario which the podcasters presently face, they cannot promise any change.