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Pocket Casts goes open source

ma.tt

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Re: Pocket Casts goes open source

#11

Post by Karsteski »

iscrewyou wrote: post #8
Karsteski wrote: post #5

I really like Pocket Casts. I have basically used it every day since 2014.i don't really like that I bought it years ago, then they switched to a subscription model and I lost access to the one feature I cared about, which was syncing to their webapp. Always leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and it really made me not want to support any more young companies.

I paid for Pocket Casts back in the day. When they switched to subscriptions, they grandfathered me to the Pocket Casts Plus as a lifetime user. I have access to the web app and it syncs the podcasts as well as the play position. Are you referring to something else?

I didn't get grandfathered in. I never saw whatever notification or email they sent out. I only saw last year that that was what happened, and by then I was obviously too late. Obviously, having paid for an online product and having it stolen from me is something I will never forget.

Re: Pocket Casts goes open source

#12

Post by tapoxi »

reustle wrote: post #10
iscrewyou wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I paid for Pocket Casts back in the day. When they switched to subscriptions, they grandfathered me to the Pocket Casts Plus as a lifetime user. I have access to the web app and it syncs the podcasts as well as the play position. Are you referring to something else?

> When they switched to subscriptions, they grandfathered me to the Pocket Casts Plus as a lifetime user. iirc we were only grandfathered in for 3 years.

they fixed that and made it permanent.

Re: Pocket Casts goes open source

#14

Post by jimmySixDOF »

After being a user for many many years, I just recently tested out to Snipd [1] and have not looked back since. Pocket Cast were great but I don't see them innovating. With Snipd there is almost always a full text transcript available including a surprisingly accurate AI generated Table of Contents to cue through. Then I can easily save a transcribed clip of some section I am listening to for export to a TfT program like obsidian. Not sure how I ever lived without these features now I am used to them lol.

[1] https://www.snipd.com/

Re: Pocket Casts goes open source

#17

Post by bestham »

Karsteski wrote: post #11
iscrewyou wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I paid for Pocket Casts back in the day. When they switched to subscriptions, they grandfathered me to the Pocket Casts Plus as a lifetime user. I have access to the web app and it syncs the podcasts as well as the play position. Are you referring to something else?

I didn't get grandfathered in. I never saw whatever notification or email they sent out. I only saw last year that that was what happened, and by then I was obviously too late. Obviously, having paid for an online product and having it stolen from me is something I will never forget.

No one stole anything from you. An online service you are not continuously paying for is not a service where you are the customer.

Re: Pocket Casts goes open source

#18

Post by nl »

bestham wrote: post #17
Karsteski wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't get grandfathered in. I never saw whatever notification or email they sent out. I only saw last year that that was what happened, and by then I was obviously too late. Obviously, having paid for an online product and having it stolen from me is something I will never forget.

No one stole anything from you. An online service you are not continuously paying for is not a service where you are the customer.

Wow. That's a new take on the old trope "if you aren't paying you aren't the customer".

It's obviously untrue. For many services the marginal cost of supporting a paid user on an ongoing basis approaches zero.

I'd imagine this is one. They presumably store some subscription and profile data and that's about it.

Re: Pocket Casts goes open source

#19

Post by stavros »

This is great news, I love Pocket Casts. Unfortunately, with Spotify acquiring Gimlet, a good chunk of good podcasts has become paywalled, and can't be listened to with any player. On top of that, Spotify absolutely sucks for podcasts, I can never find what I've listened to and what I haven't.

Re: Pocket Casts goes open source

#20

Post by bestham »

nl wrote: post #18
bestham wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one stole anything from you. An online service you are not continuously paying for is not a service where you are the customer.

Wow. That's a new take on the old trope "if you aren't paying you aren't the customer". It's obviously untrue. For many services the marginal cost of supporting a paid user on an ongoing basis approaches zero. I'd imagine this is one. They presumably store some subscription and profile data and that's about it.

But each added user should not only cover the marginal cost but alt least the average cost. If we disregard that there can be several tiers of users and price models, it might stand to reason that each user at the least on average have to bring in as much money as they cost the service to serve. Many customers brought this up when Maciej Cegłowski had a fixed price model for perpetual Pinboard, he just bushed this off but has since come begging oldtimers for more money. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s tiresome to have the same journey with every service you want to depend on. This is a trait of the VC world of “we figure out profitability after we have all the customers”.
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