Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
npr.orgI'm so glad to see the team behind Pocket Casts find success. It's one app I've never been disappointed with and supported right from the beginning.
The paramount quality of a good app is how easily it gets out of the way and lets you enjoy the content. Pocket Casts has done a spectacular job at that.
It's that vanishing breed: designed well but not overdesigned, technically solid, no hidden agenda or ecosystem to push, all for a fair upfront price. Hope they don't mess it up.
I've never seen the appeal of Pocket Casts or these almost-a-service podcast apps.
I've been using Antennapod for over a year now and it a great podcast app and does a lot of stuff the paid ones won't even do, including syncing what episodes I've listened to to gpodder.net, searching iTunes and other websites and just having an easy to use, simple UI.
It's just a shame that these FOSS apps which have much lower overheads as well, just can't market themselves as a commercial proprietary application like Pocket Casts can.
The server side crawling in Pocket Casts means it's always instantly up to date with my 50+ feeds, and perfectly synced with its web client. Seems like a full service to me.
Also in my experience, relying on small-scale FOSS apps means opening myself to the vagaries of their on/off development cycles, dealing with their underinvestment in design, and the impossibility of them spending significant resources on good old fashioned centralized backends. Of course FOSS apps have many strengths of their own (esp. in the desktop content/code creation category), but the apps on my phone are "lifestyle" - I want them to be rock solid, aesthetically pleasing, to require zero thought, and to respect my privacy, and I'll happily pay good money for that, which is something I think in this day and age should be encouraged. FOSS apps are simply a different value proposition.
> and to respect my privacy, and I'll happily pay good money for that
That's the issue for me. If it's proprietary, I simply don't trust it to keep my data secure. I have no way of knowing that myself.
And that's the great thing about gpodder too, you can host your own instance of it so you are in total control of your services.
That's why we have permission APIs at the OS level. Better than nothing. Also you say you only trust foss software to not only not maliciously spy on you but too keep your data secure. Do you really check the code for security flaws or run automated analysis tools on it?
You are describing the exact same use-case as other people are using the apps for. Antennapod + gpodder.net is your podcast-as-a-service solution, where other people are using Pocket Casts.
You mainly seem to rail against people preferring a commercial solution over a FOSS solution. The reason for that is simple, people don't care about the difference and Pocket Casts provides a better user experience that just works instead of having to cobble different parts together yourself.
I just want a solution that I know is FOSS, secure and won't use my data for analytics. I have no way of knowing that from a proprietary application so it doesn't fit my use case.
Find me an open source app that I can use on iOS, Android & the web, and sync my subscriptions and play state between them, and I’ll be glad to have a look. Until then I am very happy to pay fine developers such as these a tiny sum for their craft.
Wait, is pocketcasts supposed to sync desktop with mobile app? When I tried the desktop app it didn't do that.
If you mean the web interface, that synced perfectly with the Android app for me for years, but it seemed like it stopped syncing properly sometime last month? (Is there a proper desktop app? I'd prefer that to the using my browser.)
I've had good success with the beta web client
It does for me, but not continuously flawless. I sometimes have to close and re-open the mobile app before it skips to where I left off on the desktop app.
Antennapod and gpodder will work for the web and Android, I don't own an iOS device so I don't know of any solutions for that platform unfortunately.
To add to that, there are issues between the GPL and the Apple App Store ToS so open source apps on that platform are at a disadvantage as a result.
If the owner of the code is publishing my the app, there is no problem as they just own the code and aren’t using it under any license and aren’t bound by the GPL. Similarly an owner of GPL code can relicense it for use on the App Store. Not ideal, but it can be workable.
But that's not the case most of the time. Many apps aren't just one man operations, they pull in contributions from other authors and if it is GPL in any way, it becomes a mess to change that after the fact.
"It does everything I want"
For other people there it is; there's the appeal. It does everything they want.
Podcast players without server-side crawling can get really annoying when you're subscribed to more than just a handful of feeds.
When I was using Downcast on iOS refreshing all feeds took ages and a lot of traffic (some feeds with a lot of episodes can be more than 500 kB, that adds up when you're subscribed to 50 feeds) and since the refresh wasn't even threaded all it took was a single slow server to block the whole refresh.
Now in Overcast (which does server-side crawling) the refresh is instant and I can even get immediate notifications about new episodes.
I used to be rage against the serverside ("ugh it takes so long to refresh when I know there's an episode out!") until I realised that of my 20 or so podcasts I subscribe to almost all 20 of them have their entire back catalogue in their RSS feed
Serverside crawling means your app just needs to grab whatever's different instead of downloading 20 RSS feeds every few minutes/hours. Definitely a bandwidth saver
I did use antennapod and compared it to pocketcasts. Antennapod provided chapter support much earlier and for more file formats. But the main feature of PocketCasts is that the server syncs the feeds for you. The app instantly knows if something new arrives, but you download from the normal servers like in antennapod. Overall what antennapod lacked is the dedicated focus on quality which PocketCasts provides. It just always worked. Always. Antennapod crashed for me. Often times. And I am on the PocketCasts beta and nothing is amiss. On antennapod beta should be called an alpha, and even the normal client has its problems. The UI ux is also much worse. U intuitive. A few sprinkles of color would also be great and make it easier to navigate and set everything up. So yeah. Definitely PocketCasts. I would also love to use the desktop/browser version but the paid subscription for it wasn't even worth it for me. My smartphone is enough for that. And also it is a paid app. Support all the devs. Best 5 bucks spend on a podcatcher yet.
Everything you listed is something pocket casts does very well. And it doesn't have any overhead as far as I can see.
Yea it's been my favorite podcasting app since i found it. So glad it's NPR and such that acquired it and not a company that's going to fill it with ads (the main reason i stopped using any other apps).
No ads. Just "messages from underwriters"..
It’ll be interesting to see how it does. I wonder if you’ll still be able to auto skips the first 30s or 1min of an episode...
I just hope they break out from the NPR One model, which is like a podcast app from a universe where NPR is the only group allowed to make podcasts.
That app is more about listening to your local station or catching up on the news of the day than listening to podcasts. NPR and their affiliate stations only makes sense for that, I wouldn't worry that their goal is an NPR only podcast app.
When I recommend it to people I always describe it as "the only good app".
What does pocket casts do that makes it better than any other app?
I got the app for free from Amazon and then I heard how that hurt the company and went and bought the app on Google Play. I have never looked for another podcast player since this is next to perfect.
Good on them for the acquisition. I've always got on better with Podcast Addict which seems better optimised for my primary use-case of falling asleep listening to podcasts.
This strikes me as potentially bad news. PocketCasts is a great little app, with the characteristic advantages of being produced by a small indy outfit with no agenda beyond selling a good quality product for cash. I'll keep an open mind, but it's hard to imagine it maintaining its current user-focus and content neutrality while under the thumb of content-producers.
[Edit: there's a blog post on the topic from ShiftyJelly: https://blog.shiftyjelly.com/. It's a little misjudged in tone, maintaining their jokiness which has been enjoyable in other contexts but feels more like misdirection when a user is hoping for information on the future. Perhaps mildly reassuring though]
I mean, it wasn't acquired by a for-profit publishing house or media company (e.g. a music label, Netflix, Amazon, etc.), it's NPR. They aren't for-profit, and they generally have pretty solid products (or at least content) in my experience.
I'm not gonna say that there isn't cause for concern that an organization like NPR might not be very good at this sort of development or product, but I don't think naked greed or exploitation needs to be a significant concern. And more than any content producer I can think of, I'd trust NPR to maintain relative neutrality towards external content.
As I wrote, I'm keeping an open mind. But in the absence of information more specific than Russell's rather fluffy & evasive blog post, it's entirely reasonable to be suspicious. Don't forget that for most humans, NPR isn't just a non-profit: it's a foreign government agency (and a very corporate-infected one compared to the best public broadcasters like the BBC or ABC).
@peterjlee's other post here also suggests also that NPR's own current app is spyware. I have no idea whether or not that's true, but if so, it augurs badly.
We'll see. I'd be delighted if my suspicions turn out to be entirely wrong.
NPR isn't really a government agency. They only get about 20% of their funding from the government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR#Funding And regardless, it was not solely bought by NPR but by a combination of NPR, WNYC, WBEZ, and This American Life (two independent radio stations and a program producer).
I also wouldn't call NPR's app spyware by any means unless you call the vast majority of apps and websites spyware too.
> They only get about 20% of their funding from the government:
Your source implies less than 17% in 2009 and declining since; 50% of NPR funding was from member stations, who in turn get 6% of their funding directly from federal, state, or local government, 10% from the CPB which is mostly federally funded, and 14% from universities (which have varying shares of government funding), and 2% of NPR funding was from competitive government grants that it wins. And since 2009, your source notes several expansions of non-government revenue initiatives for NPR.
Fair point on the group purchase. It still puts the app largely in the hands of content producers, which is a potential conflict of interest.
> I also wouldn't call NPR's app spyware by any means unless you call the vast majority of apps and websites spyware too
The 'Spywareness' that matters is relative: it's not so much a matter of whether information is collected at all, but rather how much & what information, in what form, for what purpose, and who gets access. The move from an indy content-neutral app to one owned by content providers changes the incentives significantly.
We don't know what will happen, so let's face it, anything we write is just speculation. But it would hardly be unduly cynical to suspect the direction to be towards more surveillance, and less support for the openness of podcasting.
Its an app that downloads mp3 files off the internet. There’s not a whole lot of secret sauce there. There are dozens of other apps that you can use if Pocket Casts doesn’t suit you any longer.
That’s what it does now, yes, because it’s a good citizen in the open standards podcasting ecosystem. I hope it remains so.
As for other apps, I haven’t found anything that suits me as well. PC has a decent UI, is user (as opposed to publisher/advertiser) focused, and syncs between all my devices. It’s a truly great indie app. Rarely are such things improved by acquisition.
> They only get about 20% of their funding from the government
This statement by defenders of NPR always cracks me up. "Only" 20%? Why, that's "only" $445 million, or a mere "$1.35 per citizen," as the President and CEO of PBS put it recently. (Per citizen, not per taxpayer.)
So, what percentage of the funding for NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, and Fox comes from the government? Or, what service does PBS provide that the others don't?
Oh wait, that's right, they're "neutral." That one only makes me laugh harder.
NPR had $208 million in revenue in 2016. Even if you assume that 100% of funds from member stations and universities were really from the government, less than $67 million of their funding came from the government. The actual estimates are that around 11%, or around $22 million comes from the government.
I have no clue where you get the idea that NPR has a budget over over 2 billion per year, but you are way off.
Oops, the $435 million figure is for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, my mistake. My point is that government should have no role in producing or broadcasting what purports to be news. Journalism was called "the Fourth Estate" for a reason, but has lost any credible claim to that title during my lifetime. Public funding for "news" is always a bad idea, and in the U.S. has created an interlocking group of companies (CPB, NPR, public tv, et al.) that are incapable of publishing anything that doesn't align with one party in particular.
Australian here, government 100% funds the ABC and the reporting produced is better than the commercial networks of 7, 9 and 10.
It also funds most of the SBS, a foreign language service meant to foster multiculturalism and introduce foreign cinema and television to those who wouldn't normally have easy access to it. And they do a lot of English language subtitles for smaller foreign releases.
Well, they are not neutral in many cases. But, they are not always presenting political shows. Also, do you think ABC, CBS, CNN, or Fox are more factual? Clearly, none of them are neutral. Neutrality is impossible but fact-based reporting is possible. I accept that they cannot be neutral but still support.
You could even say it might be the perfect ownership. Though I didn't believe it at first, podcasts have taken hold & don't look like they are going away any time soon, and you might even argue they are the future of public broadcasting & public radio...
I like the tone. It comes across as a normal guy who is excited about his product extolling the virtues of what was probably a very hard decision.
I use pocketcasts daily and share your unease at anything changing. But. It looks like things may stay broadly the same so maybe we have nothing to worry about?
It seemed to me a bit dismissive of user concerns they clearly anticipated. I've always enjoyed ShiftyJelly's release notes in the past though, so maybe they're just being their usual selves. Either way, only time will tell.
There's also Russell discussing it on the Material Podcast (https://www.relay.fm/material/149). That gives me hope (but it is a shame to hear he won't be on the podcast as often).
> Pocket Casts is an enormous opportunity to improve discovery for listeners, provide podcast producers with better insights
Translation: we're going to start tracking listeners' behavior.
> And yet despite this remarkable renaissance, the listening experience — particularly around discovery — has remained virtually unchanged. Pocket Casts will enable us to forge a closer relationship with our listeners
Translation: the podcast ecosystem being built on open, decentralized standards limits what we can do (see above), so we're going to use the market position we just acquired to "extend" it with proprietary features.
Cynical fatalism plays better when the supposed perpetrator isn't NPR. Speaking of organizations I would trust with my personal info, it's hard to think of any better.
Pocket Casts never tracked anything. Why is it now okay to start tracking me? Does NPR do something better than anything other large organization?
How could you possibly know pocketcasts never tracked anything? I am a pocketcasts user and I'd be surprised if they weren't tracking my usage of the app.
From their privacy policy, they at a minimum track what you subscribe to: What information do you collect about me? Your username in the form of an email address, and password; Your podcast subscriptions, episode data and settings configuration; Your unique device identifier, device language and licence validation data; Pocket Casts web service also uses cookies and like technologies to keep you logged in.
Should you choose to generate a support request from within the Service, we may generate an attachment containing additional data to assist in addressing your support request which you’re welcome to view prior to submission.
You do not know that they are going to start tracking you.
What do you think "provide podcast producers with better insights" means?
Little difference from the charts they already put up today?
I think you are exactly right. NPR pushed NPR One in order to track users. It failed miserably. So now the plan is to join with other big networks and buy a successful podcast app to then try again. It will likely degrade Pocket Casts and I am disappointed with this news.
NPR One currently has twice as many installs than Pocket Casts on Android, and it's inclusion of podcasts seems secondary to listening to live radio or recent news stories. That being their plan seems unlikely.
If you're so concerned about a 'podcast ecosystem being built on open, decentralized standards limits' then why are you even talking about a proprietary app in the first place? You're trying to set up a strawman here that you yourself say that you don't agree with.
Just tell people to use a FOSS podcast app like Antennapod and to avoid closed silo listings and move on.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. It's the underlying protocols that are open and decentralized here (RSS/Atom). An app doesn't have to be FOSS to participate in that ecosystem, and the nature of the protocols as they stand ensure Antennapod, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or what have you are all on equal footing with regard to accessing content. Compare to the DRM-encumbered, monolithic-platform-dominated state of other media like movies/TV.
This is the exact opposite of what Marco just did with the recent release of Overcast. They even spoke about it on Accidental Tech Podcast this week. He's actively working against allowing people to track podcast listeners more than what they can get from straight HTTP downloads of their shows.
I think I've tested all the major podcasts app out there, paid for their subscriptions etc... The one that was clearly over the others has always been Pocket Casts. I'm also a subscriber of https://play.pocketcasts.com, their web platform. I just love them. I'm really happy that they've made the money they deserve (or I hope they did anyway).
That being said, I don't feel confident at all that NPR will now respect my privacy as much as Pocket Cast, the company. I'm really scared that NPR will change the app like all those media companies do when they acquire something good - that is transforming the tool into an ad machine, or at the minimum something to track users.
Despite the blog post where they announce that nothing will change, I hope Pocket cast's team will continue their good work and resist the pressure of a media company.
The NPR One app does collect statistics such as when do user start and stop podcasts etc. I remember them mentioning the app in a couple of their podcasts and how they use that data to improve their podcasts. It's very likely that they will use Pocket casts for that purpose and it's probably why they bought Pocketcasts, since so few people use the NPR One app.
And this is precisely why I find this news unpleasant. Now I'll need to find another podcast app.
The notion is valid but users clearly don't want to be tracked. NPR One lost and they still continue to push it and will likely convert Pocket Casts. I find the news discouraging at best.
"clearly don't want to be tracked" is probably relative.
To be honest I would totally be cool with letting podcast producers know when I play a thing and pausing and whatnot. I think it might be useful to them for improving things and making stuff be better cut.
The counterpoint is that this stuff would probably also be used for ads. But there's already ads in the podcasts? I'm pretty desensitized to targeted ads at this point...
Podcast Addict (android only i think) has always been my go-to app. Even paid for 'donate' version even though it doesn't really do anything extra I think. Really recommend it to anyone who wants to try something else.
I'd give Downcast a shot. It's been my go to podcasting app for years and it's regularly updated. It has never asked me login or any other information. It's not a silo either: you can import and export podcasts lists.
Podcast Republic for Android is really great.
I've been frustrated with many free podcast apps so I paid for Pocket Casts and I've been happy since. I think it's a smart move by NPR et al. What they want is the usage data like where they pause, where they skip, etc. These data were traditionally not available to podcast publishers because podcast is really just an mp3 file uploaded to some server.
NPR has the NPR One app but I guess not enough people are using it. They've been open about what data they're collecting and I honestly don't mind NPR knowing about my podcast listening habits.
> What they want is the usage data like where they pause, where they skip, etc.
That's exactly what I don't want
> These data were traditionally not available to podcast publishers because podcast is really just an mp3 file uploaded to some server.
Good. Long may it remain so.
I don't want them to have individual data, but I'm fine with them having anonymized statistics. Knowing what people are doing with things you make is such a valuable tool for making it better.
People with these statistics will be making things better for themselves and for advertisers. This may often coincide with making things better for users, but the type of data you're talking about is mostly useful for making it harder to skip ads.
I like my free, RSS-shared MP3 files as much as the next listener, but these things aren't free to produce, just like PocketCasts isn't free to make. Podcasters sell ads, and advertisers rightly want something in return. If ads are easy to skip, they have no assurance that they're getting anything for their money, so the money dries up, and the podcast goes under. There is always going to be a game of back and forth between ads and avoiding them, and this is just the next move, if it even happens.
I prefer the direction it's going in now where most podcasts I listen to have an option to subscribe to pay the podcaster more directly. This does not require turning my player into spyware yet it keeps the podcasts going.
I agree in theory but what else can be made better about podcasts? Is it worth the trade off for everyone's data? These are questions I believe were asked and answered with NPR One. Also, anonymized data is still data and that derived information can be very powerful.
The only caveat to this is their insight into advertisements. Lets say a podcast runs ads during its first 5 minutes, they can now tell exactly how many people are listening or skipping those ads and may be incentivized to start putting ads in the middle of podcasts, or implement some sort of non skip-able interruption.
Exactly my thoughts. I'm currently using a different podcast app that has a neat "fast forward 30 seconds" feature that I only ever use to skip ads.
It's annoying enough having to get my phone out of my pocked to press the fast forward button. If the ads were unskippable, I'd switch apps immediately.
Or they can make the ads less annoying. For the most part NPR podcasts are pretty good for having "not worth skipping" ads that are a few seconds long.
I also love Pocket Casts, particularly with the "skip pauses" feature. Often podcasts are full of short pauses... to date, I have saved 9 hours of time with the feature enabled!
I’ve saved 18 hours, and over 2 days by playing at 1.5x speed! Whoa. I listen to podcasts more than I thought!
I too am a podcast addict and listen at 2x-3x on most of my podcasts (the non fiction ones).
According to Pocket Casts, variable speed has saved me 281 days, 2 hours. Removing silence 3 days, 23 hours.
(@rustyshelf, if you're out there, how do I rank? :-) )
2.2x and silence skipping. I've saved 180 hours according to podcast addict on the silence skipping alone and probably another 400 on speed.
I'm at 42 days 5 hours total. I love love love Pocket Casts stats, and think they should be more prominent.
I've listened to 37 days, 9 hours total, and have saved 28 days 22 hours.
- 1 day 5 hours from skipping - 25 days 19 hours from variable speed - 1 day 12 hours from remove silence - 8 hours 28 minutes from skipping intros
I'm most surprised by hour much "remove silence" has saved me.
You should give AntennaPod a chance, very lightweight and allows for new podcasts to be added. It is open source and has is actively developed.
Additionally you won't have any new requirement to create a new account or pull analytics from your listening habits as you mentioned towards the end.
AntennaPod looks nice, but I do use the Web version of Pocket Casts a lot. It wouldn't be too hard to switch back to gPodder and Rhythmbox, but I love that state syncs between the Android app and web player. It will be hard to let Pocket Casts go (if it does become a spy).
Source for AntennaPod: https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod
I'd really love to use AntennaPod but they're missing the key smart playlist feature I love from BeyondPod. I don't even have to open the app most days and I can easily switch to a different set of podcasts when my wife is in the car. Does AntennaPod have anything similar that I'm missing?
I always wonder why they refuse to put their news onto a feed except through NPR One. I've just been going without...
So is this basically a confirmation they're giving up on NPR One? It hasn't been updated for 7 months, after about 24 straight monthly updates.
If so, I wonder if they're going to cram livestreaming into Pocket Casts. That'd be enough for me to switch to something else, I much prefer apps that do a single thing extremely well.
NPR One was toxic for NPR (the national company) in their internal politics. Smaller local stations fought back against having to promote the app on their broadcasts out of fear it would drive their local listeners away.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/03/npr-decides-it-wont-promote...
It was also missing a setting to only download on wifi. It blew through a couple gigs of my data on my drive home once, background data. I wasn't even using it.
They should be afraid. I went podcasts only as quickly as I could because the local reporting was so low quality.
But we're talking about NPR affiliated stations. Doesn't their news reporting come from NPR?
A good example is Morning Edition, which cuts back and forth between the national feed and local reporting.
You'll have 3 minutes of "Korean War Ended", 2 minutes of "Mueller Investigation", then 5 minutes of "Help Minnesota Public Radio pick the best lake in the state - listen to why Mike thinks it's the one he grew up on".
The local stuff is so bad I've mostly stopped listening as well. Wish there was a way to only get the national component.
The local news is one reason I like to stream the local station on TuneIn rather than NPR's various apps. Where else do I hear local news from in this day and age?
Anyone try "Podcast Republic". That's my go to podcast app.
I really hope they don't fuck this up. I use this app every day.
"Pocket Casts users will continue to enjoy: A wide variety of podcasts from hundreds of national and international producers;"
I hope this is just an unintentional underrepresentation of how many podcast producers are out there (many thousands, not just hundreds) and doesn't mean they're limiting which podcasts can be listened to in Pocket Casts.
It's possible it's just a count of how many podcasts are included in the "Discover" section. I don't know what the process for getting added to that is.
It covers almost all of the "big" podcasts, but there are a handful of local ones I've had to add manually.
You can submit podcasts to them to get added[0]. They added my tiny podcast without any hassle.
You can plug in a feed url to the add section for podcasts they don't know about.
PocketCasts is interesting because arguably the Discover section is less central than other apps (I can't remember the last time I used except to do searches for new shows vs. other apps where the main page is loaded for recommendations of shows I don't care about).
I wonder if that changes.
The Apple podcast app has gotten continuously worse over the past few years, I'm excited to see that 3rd parties are picking up the slack, but I'm still pretty disappointed that Apple has neglected one of the most important aspect of the phone (for me, anyway).
Try Overcast, I’m a big fan.
I finally gave up on the Apple app years ago after it was unable to sync my place for the 1200th time.
Never had that issue with Overcast.
I like Marco Arment and I admire his convictions, but I've avoided Overcast on principle because of a) his initial willingness to burn cash in order to gain as many users as possible (at the expense of third-party apps like Castro), and b) the app's gratuitous subscription model. I hope he keeps up the good work, but I also really hope that PocketCasts continues to be a worthy opponent.
What's the principle involved here? Not liking something being a business?
I'm uncomfortable with the fact that Marco would frequently proclaim his support for indie development, but was also willing to outright lose money in order to undercut his competition and dominate the podcast market. (In his own words.) Yes, if you have a lot of money, you can acquire tons of customers by releasing your app for free and using a half-hearted "patronage" model. Most developers don't have that option. It might make good business sense, but doing it while saying you care about the indie scene strikes me as hypocritical. (I concede that this is perhaps a petty and uncharitable interpretation of events, but it really miffed me when it was happening.)
As for subscriptions, I simply hate that business model with a passion and will do almost anything to avoid it.
The question with Overcast, is whether it will be able to compete in the open market with Marco's almost quixotic desire to avoid any form of tracking whatsoever. He won't even track stop/start/listen actions, and now he's eliminating tracking pixels (https://marco.org/2018/04/27/overcast42) - all very admirable, but by foregoing all the obvious revenue opportunities, will he be able to make it up by attracting a large enough audience who will purchase/subscribe to his app so that he can continue to develop it? Is privacy an important enough attribute for the podcast listening audience?
This is the weirdest critique of an app I've ever read on HN. Overcast isn't tracking users enough?
He also runs ads in Overcast, so he’s not relying on subscriptions alone.
And a popular podcast that makes him $5500/week in sponsorship revenue (x3 ads per show but /3 hosts).
Seconding Overcast - it has traditionally traded blows with Pocket Casts as the best 3rd party podcast app on iOS, but I like it better for the smart speed and voice boosting features.
Overcast is continuing to go against the podcast industry grain by making privacy a distinguishing feature (https://marco.org/2018/04/27/overcast42). Good move. It's not useful to me as I have Android as well as iOS devices, but if I was Apple-locked, I'd be having a serious look at Overcast.
I agree overcast is miles ahead of pocketcasts.It protects privacy of the users, smart speed is awesome (removing silences and thus saving tons of time) and app is not laggy as pocketcasts was
Volume boost is part of pocketcasts as well
I've never used the Apple one, but Pocket Casts is the only app I've ever paid for on four platforms (Android, iOS, Windows Phone and the web player) and not regretted it at all. It's a gem.
I'm only on 3 (no iOS), and while I wouldn't say that I regretted the purchase on Windows Phone, it certainly wasn't because it was a solid performer there - it was a purchase to show support and encourage development.
I've always worried a bit that Shifty Jelly's model would prove unsustainable with money from new sales needed to continue paying for their servers and I've felt at times that they were strapped for resources, so this overall seems positive to me.
That's funny, I've had the exact opposite impression. The only thing I don't like about Apple Podcasts is that, by default, there's no way to play episodes chronologically, independent of podcast. But you can add this feature by creating a "station".
> The Apple podcast app has gotten continuously worse over the past few years
Can you name a few specific ways in which you think this is true? (I personally think it's come a long way from the awful skeuomorphic reel-to-reel metaphor, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.)
The past few years? iTunes and Apple's podcast app have always been terrible.
Try PocketCasts, it's amazing!
> Audio veteran Owen Grover will serve as CEO of Pocket Casts. Grover previously served as Executive Vice President and General Manager at iHeartRadio, and before that as Vice President of Programming and Marketing at Clear Channel Music & Radio. Pocket Casts will operate as a joint venture, with founders Philip Simpson and Russell Ivanovic in leadership roles and the existing staff and developer team remaining in place. To ensure development aligns with the mission-driven ethos of public radio, the board will be comprised of representatives of the public media leaders.
Well, that sucks.
I just have to say it: This is one GOD DAMN good app. I've been using it for years and the only issue I have with it is that I've got to pay again to download it on my iPhone after switching from Android.
In a world full of free stuff, this is the only piece of paid software that makes my day better. They deserve this.
The comments in here (and the article title) make it sound like it’s just NPR involved.
Important to note that it’s not NPR per-se, but a group including NPR.
> Pocket Casts will operate as a joint venture, with founders Philip Simpson and Russell Ivanovic in leadership roles and the existing staff and developer team remaining in place.
> “We turned them down because the unique thing about this opportunity is the mission driven nature of these organizations. They want what’s best for the podcasting space, they want to build open systems that everyone can use.”
The initial headline had me worried but I like the tone of the press release and have no reason to doubt the intentions of Shift Jelly or NPR. I hope they continue to improve what I feel is the best medium to consume podcasts that currently exists.
"What's best for the podcasting space" is more scary than it sounds tho imo. A lot of business people would consider web-like analytics "the best for the podcasting space", even though it would be horrible for podcast listeners.
Would it though? I'd be happy to podcasters to have aggregated figures on listens, skips, pauses etc, as long as it's not linked to me. It could improve podcasts, ads, and probably increase their revenue, which I'm all in favour of.
One of the stats could be "How many ads can we cram in per 30 minutes before people stop listening"
I agree that it's a potentially miserable reality however if I'm still capable of skipping forward, and it means that my favorite podcasts and creation networks are able to sustain themselves, I'm okay with this outcome.
I use this app every single day. Hope NPR doesn't drive down the 'NPR one' road. Not too glad about this, tbh.
From the same company that has also created arguably the best and most accurate weather app for Australia.
Yep - PocketWeather is also great. ShiftyJelly has been a standout in the Aus indie dev scene
I was quite happily using the Podcast iOS app until iOS11 where they completely ruined it. Someone recommended that I buy Pocket Casts and I've been using it ever since.
One thing that annoys me, when I go to a new Podcast I like to listen from the beginning, and Pocket Casts marks old episodes as "Played" so it's hard to go through and listen to them in order as I forget where I've gone to.
Any solution for stopping the app marking these old podcasts as played?
When you first subscribe, navigate to the podcast and click on the '...' menu. If there are any episodes currently unplayed, the first menu item will be "Mark All Played". Go ahead and mark them all played, and then tap '...' again. The first menu item will now be "Mark All Unplayed".
If you're having issues with Pocket Casts marking old episodes as played when new ones come out, go into the settings (either for the whole app, or for a particular podcast) and turn off "Auto Cleanup".
Thanks for that, it's clunky but it works!
The podcast app I really want:
The perfect syncing and playback (speed + silence) of Overcast, with the fast (older) web UI of PocketCasts, with the searching abilities of CastBox.
Someone please make this.
Can you clarify what features are missing?
I use both the Android and the Web versions of Pocket Casts and it syncs, trims silence, does speed adjustments, and so forth.
The syncing in pocketcasts is not reliable, especially between web and mobile apps. Often a played episode on mobile will still register as new on the web, even days later. Sometimes forcing a sync fixes it, but that is not 100% either.
Overcast has the syncing perfected, but it has a much worse web UI. Pocketcasts new web UI is much slower too, with more clicks, popup windows, and less information density. I use the web interface during work, when I dont have my phone and just to browse quicker so speed and functionality are important.
Castbox has a great search interface that can find the words inside the audio of any episode, which is absolutely great for discovery.
Also there should be a simple subscribe button with 2 options: subscribe from latest episode, or subscribe from the beginning. Pocketcasts has a very strange way of changing subscribing to episodes just from sorting them differently.
+1 on subscribe from the beginning! I started listening to the British History podcast this year, and so far on PocketCasts I haven't found any decent way of managing listening to 5 year old episodes other than downloading them ten or so at a time. (So there's always the next one to listen to downloaded to my phone, rather than remembering episode numbers.)
> I started listening to the British History podcast this year
OT, but if you're interested in British History you might be interested in This Sceptred Isle. Most of it isn't available on iPlayer, but it should be in the usual places.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b009t23k
There are four episodes of this available: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00qh19l/episodes/player
I haven't experienced the sync problems, but I believe you. Also, I use mobile the majority of the time so it's entirely possible I just don't use that feature enough to experience that pain.
> find the words inside the audio of any episode
Woah, that I didn't know about!
Another annoyance about the sync is that it is only recent episodes that are synced. When you get a new device you lose the status of most of your episodes.
And available on Android. I miss Overcast.
+ social features of Breaker.
How does M&As work for non-profit? Like, obviously from this, a non-profit can acquire a for-profit but can a for-profit acquire a non-profit?
It's unusual because a non-profit doesn't really have an owner (stockholders). But it is still a corporation and many states in the U.S. (non-profit and for profit corporations are created under state law) allow a non-profit corporation merge with a for-profit entity. The transaction is treated like the non-profit sold its assets to the for-profit buyer and then wound down by donating the proceeds to other non-profits.
I look forward to trying something besides the horror of the npr one app. I don't need a netflix tile for every show. I need relevant information on the show. Not a mini billboard with no information.
I sure how they don't cram in a requirement to also be a local station supporter to use certain features in the app. I think that's a big misstep of the PBS app.
I love Pocket Casts! Here are my top feature requests (I’m on iOS so some of these features may exist already on other platforms)
- Let me search within a podcast (search titles as well as descriptions). I just found out about Planet Money but it has nearly 1000 episodes. The internet can help be find highly recommended episodes, but there’s no easy way to jump to these in the app.
- please let me set playback speed.
I also have a faint hope that this acquisition would allow Pocket Casts to go open source.
It took me about a year or so before I found this functionality. No idea why it's not with the rest of the settings but heyho
Play a podcast episode and tap on the "now playing" bar to open up this screen http://i.imgsir.com/1OMb.jpg
The settings are hiding here http://i.imgsir.com/GZAL.jpg
The playback speed is a feature in the Android version (pretty much the deal breaker with other podcast apps for me) so hopefully that's in progress for the iOS one too.
There's an option to set playback speed on iOS as well. It's there in the bottom left corner of Now Playing screen.
"Thanks to the mission-driven nature of this partnership, and of public media overall, we'll put the needs of producers and listeners at the heart of everything we do with Pocket Casts" == We are going to add useless features, bloat the app and switch to SaaS model.
My favorite podcast player + my favorite radio/podcast station = Future Greatness! (I hope)
I just came here to say how much I enjoyed reading the list of changes every time there is an update. There is always something super funny in there. I really hope they keep doing that!
Is there any chance this will lead to being able to listen to old TAL episodes via RSS? It's kinda strange that TAL is buying a podcast player company but they don't want us to listen to their podcasts...
Old episodes are a source of funding (TAL sells those on iTunes and Amazon), so they don't want you using RSS to fetch them.
But you can use RSS to listen to new episodes, so I wouldn't say they don't want us to listen to their podcast.
You can also listen to TAL in the TAL app - although it’s not a very good app and pretty buggy at times. Built by Black Pixel (https://blackpixel.com).
I purchased PocketCasts app a couple of years ago but recently switched from android to iOS and never re-downloaded it. I'm sure I'd have to re-purchase it, right? or is there a way around that.
No they charge per platform. I've bought it 3 times (Android, iOS, web).
The storytelling format podcasts shows have replaced evening television in my household. I guess we've reverted to the time of old fashioned night time radio shows.
Good old fashioned entertainment in 2018.
I hope they stick to their roots and keep the ridiculous change logs!
Pocket Casts representative will say:"Now we going for new subscription model - every month only $3.99 and you can listen to unlimited podcast with CD quality!!!"
Then it will probably be made free for iOS soon (as data collection will probably be their model).
Time for me to start looking for another podcasting app...
I love NPR, I love Pocket Casts.
But it feels weird to me knowing that I donated money to NPR, and that money might be used to purchase a private company.
They use donated money to pay people to write NPR One. If you think of this as an acquihire, is it any different?
You are right and technically it is not.
I just feel like when they are doing the on air campaigns the plea's feel like they are desperate. Without your support this content wouldn't exist.
I just don't really expect them to have the budget to make that content, and ALSO make sure I can enjoy it in an application that is better than Apple's default podcast app. Or Stitcher on the web.
I enjoy the app, and I am glad they are making sure its available. But they next time I hear that they desperately need my money to continue... I'm going to think... "Ya, do you really?".
For what it’s worth, I’m with you on donations. But consider that not all NPR affiliates need money in the same way, and in the same way as NPR itself. My local affiliate definitely does need the money, for example, so I donate to them. WBEZ and WNYC are in much more affluent areas with different members. Likewise, those stations generate content that member stations pay for - again, mine doesn’t. There are lots of factors at play with how public radio is funded, and I wasn’t terribly surprised that either of two stations had sufficient funds to use here, not NPR national.
This is the first time a product I use daily has been acquired that didn't leave me with a sinking feeling. Congrats to the team!
I am so glad my donation to NPR went to good use!
From the article: "New York Public Radio's investment in Pocket Casts was made possible, in part, by Cynthia King Vance and a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York."
I don't think it was from donations, but I could be wrong
You can't donate to NPR (at least, not easily)...
You can argue that donations to local NPR stations helps free up revenue for NPR the organization, but donations don't directly translate in to anything that NPR does.
Note the phrase "in part".
Up to this point Pocket Casts has been an excellent app, but I'm not sure how enthusiastic I am about this news.
Love Pocketcasts. Though I hope this mean they'll need to make the web app accessible
Have you tried https://play.pocketcasts.com/ ?
The text fields on the sign-up form [0] are unlabeled, the submit button ("Register") doesn't visually show keyboard focus, and almost nothing has sufficient color contrast; that doesn't bode well for the actual player's accessibility. Also, the <form> element has a completely unnecessary role="form" ARIA attribute which suggests accessibility has crossed someone's mind but also that it's likely errors of consequence have been or will be made.
It's been a couple years and I don't recall if he was associated with NPR, WBEZ or both, but a meetup I sometimes go to had someone from "there" speaking about accessibility and giving the impression that it was actually a pretty serious matter for them.
This is adorable. I like this. Good for Pocket Casts, I'm glad to be a user.
This was my go to podcast app on Android, excited to see how NPR does with it.
Excited? Prepare for spying and personalized ads. Why else would a media company buy a podcasting app?
Hope they don’t lose the funny update notes.
How does Pocket Casts compare with Breaker?
Time to look for alternatives?
Call me a cynic but I have a feeling their bias (and questionable tech capabilities) will drive it down to the ground.
Hey cynic
Have been using Pocket Casts for my go-to for past couple of years. Deleting today.
Why?
i use pocket cast everyday.
While I am happy for Russell and the rest of the Shifty Jelly team, this acquisition does worry me. Historically, NPR hasn't been the most unbiased source of information, and allowing them direct access to who can and cannot be seen on the discovery feed could easily kill the diversity of views that the platform enjoys right now.
And now they'll "adjust business strategy" and make it a bloated Ad ridden pile of crap most likely. These aquisitions never end well.
Are you... not familiar with NPR? It's a non-profit public radio entity. It's some of the least-ad-ridden content available on the planet and a tremendous resource.
This is what I was thinking - I was trying to stretch my imagination to see how NPR would do this and couldn't.
NPR's own One app isn't a bloated ad-ridden pile of crap, why would they take PocketCasts in that direction?
Agree the fear of ad is unwarranted. Now isn’t NPR’s app pretty heavy on user tracking and is also used to A/B test contents and formats ?
I love NPR’s content, yet I am still worried about my favorite posdcast app getting aquired. I guess there will still be overcast if it goes down badly, but that would be a shame.
I believe you mean "... underwriter ridden pile of crap ..."
I hope not. I bought my first copy for Android back at version 3. When I moved to iOS, it was the very first app I bought. I'll buy it again if it keeps ads away.
You know it's a $4 app right?