Apple’s podcast app will share statistics/analytics with creators and advertisers - how to opt-out (protect privacy)? I use on AppleTV and iOS the podcast app weekly. In headlines there were sad news about privacy Apple is going to let podcast creators — and advertisers — see what listeners actually like:


  A new version of Apple’s podcast app will provide basic analytics to
  podcast creators, giving them the ability to see when podcast
  listeners play individual episodes, and — crucially — what part of
  individual episodes they listen to, which parts they skip over and
  when they bail out of an episode.
  
  The reason all of that is important is that up until now, Apple has
  provided almost no data at all about podcast listening behavior — just
  the fact that someone has downloaded an individual episode.


How to opt-out of the data collection? Is there no other way than change Podcast client?
This only affects iOS11 which is currently in beta (actually, only beta 2 has been released at this time).  

We don't know if Apple will allow users to opt-out of this type of info-sharing with podcasters in the final shipping version of the OS.

The answer, for now, is no, you can't opt-out of this info sharing.  When the final version is shipped, this answer should be updated.