What is a token and why does it matter that each subscriber has their own?

A token is the unique identifier embedded in each subscriber’s private feed URL. Because each subscriber has a different URL, you can:

• Track exactly who is accessing their feed and when
• Revoke a specific subscriber’s access without affecting anyone else
• Reset a compromised URL for one subscriber without changing feeds for everyone
• See which subscribers haven’t polled their feed recently
• Change a subscriber’s membership tier without them doing anything in their podcatcher — their URL stays the same, their episode history stays intact, and they never have to re-subscribe

On competing platforms (including Patreon), there is no per-subscriber feed URL — tokens don’t exist, and this level of individual control isn’t possible.