[remh]

it's the list of feeds that is hosted by apple (think of it as a search engine for podcasts), not the actual feeds or media files.

[dpedu]

Ah, my app doesn't have a directory of feeds. It requires that I add urls directly.

[thaumasiotes]

This would only matter in any way if you think that listening to podcasts is primarily a hobby that people engage in for its own sake. If you think they listen to some podcasts and not other podcasts because they care what's in the podcasts, why would they care if Apple hosts a list of podcasts?

[remh]

discoverability, if a friend talks to me about a podcast I could be interested in, i'd rather just have the name of the podcast than a full URL. Here i can just use any podcast app that integrates with Apple podcast service and type the name of the podcast i want to listen to.

Your question is the same as: "Why do you care if $YOUR_SEARCH_ENGINE (google, kaggle, duckduckgo) hosts a list of websites?"