Spanish public broadcaster RTVE is blocking podcasts of its national radio station, RNE, from some third party podcast apps.
But unusually, the company still publishes open RSS feeds for all its shows - so shows appear in every podcast app that uses them. The broadcaster has chosen to deliberately block specific podcast apps from downloading the audio.
One such podcast app that RNE is blocking is AntennaPod, a free podcast app on Android. It’s one of the most popular apps on Android - and in Spain, 78.8% of Spanish mobile phone users use Android mobile phones.
Users have discovered that RNE is specifically blocking AntennaPod, based on the app’s user-agent, which is correctly set for every download. It’s unclear why: the app contains no advertising, and is open-source. It’s free to download, and acts in accordance with the unwritten contract between podcast publishers and apps.
“We will review the case of AntennaPod,” said J. Javier Hernández Bravo from RTVE, in an email to Podnews, after we asked for comment. He told us: “RNE Audio continues to publish open RSS feeds, and at the same time, it has decided to block some third-party podcast applications from downloading audio. Many of those platforms were making money from our content.”
There are no podcast platforms that Podnews is aware of which charge for access to open RSS feeds. (We’re always grateful to hear of any). Some podcast apps contain display advertising, but this is not the case for AntennaPod.
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RNE had just told us that some companies were “making money” of RNE’s content - but then gives three examples of those that do. Spotify makes money off podcast content by aggressively marketing premium upgrades to its music app, and in some cases playing audio advertising before and after episode audio. YouTube puts advertising in front of podcast content, and markets a premium version. And even Apple Podcasts makes money off podcast content by exclusively being available as an app on iPhones and Macs, which only Apple sells.
AntennaPod does none of these things: so why is it blocked?
Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250721123131/https://podnews.net/article/rne-blocks-open-rss