121–130 of 165 posts
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Google Podcasts is TERRIBLE compared to Google Play. The UX is just so bad. You'd expect at least some podcast-specific features like mark podcast as listened.
I haven't had a smartphone in some time, but I highly recommend AntennaPod which is available of F-Droid. Not only a great podcast app, but it respects your Freedom. It's the only thing I miss about not having a smartphone.
This is hilarious. Google is trying to leverage it's search & mobile OS market positions into pushing people towards its podcast app. Unfortunately for Google it has come up against one of the few entities in the world that can just turn around and say "Fuck. That." Frankly, I think this is a monopolist tactic from Google and it should result in government investigations but I have no hope that will happen. Nice to k…
That's not quite what happens. https://podnews.net/article/bbc-blocks-google does go into the actual user experience, rather than what the BBC is claiming.
I'm a non-UK listener and use the BBC Sounds app all the time. The only thing that's unavailable are program downloads.
I don't know why BBC pushes it's sounds app so hard. I get nagged to use it every time I listen through Alexa too. There's no BBC sounds smart speaker so why do they care? What do they gain from me using the app?
As other users have pointed out metrics is probably part of this but I suspect there's also a matter of music licensing. The Sounds app has more music documentaries where they keep the music in (BBC podcasts tend to strip it out) as well as curated playlists of music. Securing licenses to broadcast copyrighted content on-line and in perpetuity has for a long while been a huge deal for the BBC and forms at least part…
I can understand older items in the back catalogue needing to be removed, but for most shows now the standard contract should include "and presented on iPlayer in perpetuity". I don't know why they'd commission a new children's show, for example, and not include such a clause?
Ah, that explains why I had a complaint from the wife that she wasn't getting new Archers episodes. (The Archers is a long running (since 1951!) BBC Radio 4 soap opera about a fictional farming community. There are a lot of people addicted to this, including the wife.) I had to avert this disaster as a wife with no Archers isn't worth contemplating, so I installed the BBC sounds app instead. It was my thought that th…
And the "Why do I need to sign in?" page is evasive. Why is it compulsory? What are they hiding?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/help/how-to-guides/sign-in/acc...
And this "Why" page doesn't even make an effort.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/usingthebbc/why-we-are-asking-you-to-s...
I don't think there's some secret conspiracy. I am a great supporter of the BBC.
But the way "TV Licensing" behaves (operated by a Capita) is so breathtakingly and openly dishonest and opaque, there is no trust left.
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If this isn’t antitrust, then I don’t know what is.
Personally I've wanted a good podcast app on Android and the Google app ticked all the boxes. Maybe Google is successful because of good product design in this case. However, I do agree the overall size of Google's influence is of concern.
This surely means Google are in a position to eat any apps lunch if they choose to. If Google couldn't release a product and have that hit the top 3 [on Android] in a few months then they have some serious problems; they'd have to majorly mess up their design or functionality, by not bothering to look at the metrics.
Now of course Google might choose to make something "innovative", but at least as far as which functions to include, and what people using podcast apps like, they're starting with a major advantage.
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Actually there is a problem with the BBC. In the UK how do you compete for news eyeballs and try and make it pay when the BBC news is for free? Imagine your business is weather forecasting, the same applies. Then there is the small matter of the license fee. Most people just pay it out of fear of being caught by one of the legendary detector vans. But you can't have a TV or a monitor that also does TV without being h…
Hassled for the rest of your days is a bit much. You email, send them a letter or call them or I think there is actually a website that you can register on which remove's them questioning you needing the license or not. I did it and i've not heard from them since. Not exactly rocket science.
That said, I still support the licence fee. Eventually they'll require your licence number for iPlayer and then they'll probably be able to cut back on the annoying spam.
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Google Podcasts is a replacement for the Podcast aspect of Google Play Music. They're splitting it into "Google Podcasts" and "YouTube Music"
Google Podcasts is TERRIBLE compared to Google Play. The UX is just so bad. You'd expect at least some podcast-specific features like mark podcast as listened.
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But this brings up a good point. What is the value of google showing you the play buttons in the search results? They're trying to keep you on google's site.
>They're trying to keep you on google's site. But why? I don't see a financial motivator here, unless there is some long-game that I'm not aware of. In theory, driving users to websites in a search result is likely just going to make Google more money from displaying ads. The only thing I can currently think of is they actually are trying to improve the user experience.
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Ah good old videogames.com. Yeah premium podcasts are already a thing. There's no need to "figure out an API to let people use their license keys on third party players", it's simply HTTP Basic authentication embedded in the URL. Should work just about anywhere.
I'm also a premium subscriber; while they used to use basic HTTP auth, they've since switched to generating revocable, per-user keys. It's both better for security and easier for podcast clients to manage.
While I understand the objections to Google self promoting their products and masking audience data I don't see how removing their podcasts from one of the most popular platforms helps with what the BBC claims to be important. "What we think is important is pretty simple. We want people to have easy access to the wide range of BBC programmes, not just a select few, and be able to discover and listen to new ones reall…
They're not. Apple Podcasts is the most popular podcast client, followed by... Spotify I believe, then 'other'.