101–110 of 204 posts
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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"..
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.
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 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.
> 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:…
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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 sp…
> 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…
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.
> 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:…
Just tell people to use a FOSS podcast app like Antennapod and to avoid closed silo listings and move on.
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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 overh…
For other people there it is; there's the appeal. It does everything they want.
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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 als…
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 sp…
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.
> 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:…
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.
> 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:…
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 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:…
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.