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.
+ social features of Breaker.
Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
131–140 of 204 posts
Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I've had good success with the beta web client
Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
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.
Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
#136i use pocket cast everyday.
Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
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?
Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
#138> 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:…
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.
Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
#139Pocket 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!!!"
Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
#140Is 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.