Pocket Casts acquired by NPR • Hacker News Board

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#11

Post by Analemma_ » Thu, May 03, 2018, 9:02 PM UTC

MBCook wrote: post #8

gumberculese wrote: post #3

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.

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.

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#12

Post by crispinb » Thu, May 03, 2018, 9:03 PM UTC

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]

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#13

Post by dominotw » Thu, May 03, 2018, 9:04 PM UTC

I use this app every single day. Hope NPR doesn't drive down the 'NPR one' road. Not too glad about this, tbh.

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#14

Post by thecybernerd » Thu, May 03, 2018, 9:05 PM UTC

I hope they stick to their roots and keep the ridiculous change logs!

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#15

Post by eigen-vector » Thu, May 03, 2018, 9:06 PM UTC

I'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.

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#16

Post by peterjlee » Thu, May 03, 2018, 9:07 PM UTC

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.

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#17

Post by Y_Y » Thu, May 03, 2018, 9:09 PM UTC

scrooched_moose wrote: post #6

torgoguys wrote: post #4

"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.

[0] http://www.pocketcasts.com/submit

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#18

Post by crispinb » Thu, May 03, 2018, 9:10 PM UTC

peterjlee wrote: post #16

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 i…

> 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.

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#19

Post by peterjlee » Thu, May 03, 2018, 9:12 PM UTC

zsgoldberg wrote: post #7

Love Pocketcasts. Though I hope this mean they'll need to make the web app accessible

Have you tried https://play.pocketcasts.com/ ?

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#20

Post by jadbox » Thu, May 03, 2018, 9:13 PM UTC

peterjlee wrote: post #16

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 i…

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!