Snippet: Amazon Reveals ‘Confidential’ Podcast Plan in Mass Email; Shows Must Agree Not to Disparage Amazon ☇

Todd Bishop for GeekWire:

Amazon Music and the tech giant’s Audible subsidiary plan to offer podcasts from third-party content providers directly on their platforms, significantly expanding their audio offerings and going head-to-head with Apple, Google, Spotify and others major podcast distribution platforms.

But first, they’ve got a PR mess to deal with.

The company disclosed the plans on Monday in a mass email to podcast content producers, including journalists and media organizations that cover Amazon, declaring that the information about its podcast plans were “confidential” without following the standard practice of first securing their agreement to treat the message as confidential. […]

Then came the real mess. Podcasters who clicked through to submit their shows discovered this clause in the content license agreement that’s a requirement to participate in the program: “Your Content may not (a) include advertising or messages that disparage or are directed against Amazon or any Service; …”

I’m not surprised. Amazon has every right to do this, but it’s not a good look. I think back to when I did a podcast (the content was much like this site), Amazon would come up in the news from time to time—does that mean we couldn’t discuss unfavorable topics about Amazon?