Ongoing Apple Podcasts Subscription & Channel Problems — Has Anyone Else Dealt With This?
Hi everyone — I’m reaching out in hopes that someone here may have experience with serious Apple Podcasts Connect subscription/channel issues, or advice on how to get problems properly escalated within Apple.
I have an existing Apple subscription for my podcast Drift Off Bedtime Stories for Adults that had been functioning properly for over 2 years. I attempted to create an Apple Podcasts channel in order to add an additional premium audiobook show under the same subscription structure.
During this process, I initially encountered an ID-related issue where my existing show would not appear as available to add to the channel. Apple later appeared to resolve that issue, but shortly afterward many existing subscribers lost access to premium content despite still having active subscriptions through Apple.
Apple later appeared to restore subscriber access on the backend, but the channel itself then disappeared publicly from the Apple Podcasts app.
More recently, I attempted to follow Apple’s instructions for properly adding a show to an existing subscription/channel structure. However, the workflow no longer behaves as documented. My main show once again does not appear as selectable to add to the channel, I’ve received backend/application errors inside Podcasts Connect, my subscription banner is now missing for new subscribers on some devices, and some subscribers are still experiencing playback/access problems.
Buzzsprout believes the issue is happening within Apple’s backend systems themselves, so unfortunately they do not have access to directly resolve it.
At this point I’m mainly wondering:
- Has anyone experienced something similar with Apple subscriptions/channels/show IDs?
- Were you eventually able to get it resolved?
- Is there a better way to get these kinds of issues properly escalated within Apple?
The long delays between Apple Support responses have honestly been very difficult, especially since this issue is affecting paying subscribers and subscription income.
I would truly appreciate any insight or shared experiences. Thank you so much.
Joanne