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Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

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Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#151
post #21

Neat software, but I think this is less defensible than other ad blockers. With web ad blockers you protect against tracking, privacy violations and potentially malware and thus don't see "unacceptable ads". In contrast this seems to be about blocking ads just for the sake of blocking ads.

I can't be the only one who literally can't stand the sound of radio advertising. They make a point of using as many annoying and attention-grabbing sounds as possible, not to mention the cheap and cheesy jingles. I'll often find myself turning the radio down to the second-lowest volume it goes, so I can turn it back up when there's actual music. Equally often I turn it down and then forget about it for the rest of t…

Since (commercial, music-based) radio in the US became dominated by a handful of companies running syndicated programs, I just found myself moving away from it in general.

Too little variety, no real local personality, basically none of the things radio was great at doing.

When I'm in the car now, it's all a mix of public radio/podcasts for news and discussion and Shoutcast-type streaming radio for music. I do sometimes pull up specific stuff from my personal uploaded music collection on Google Play Music or find something else I want to hear on YouTube, etc. but not often.

The funny thing is that I've found more streaming "radio" stations that do a better job of (the things I liked about) radio than actual radio stations do. It dropped off a lot since the '00s when the cost of legally running a station skyrocketed but it still beats the endless Clear Channel wasteland on the FM dial.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#152

I have mostly given up on Radio when I am driving my car ( Thanks Bluetooth and Amazon music). It has gotten worse over the past few years. I live in Delhi, India, and we have our fair share of Radio channels here. Over the last ten years, I have noticed a pretty interesting ( disturbing ? ) trend in the Ads that are streamed across all the Radio channels. Back when the whole Radio scene was just starting up, the ads…

I've recently been to Romania and rediscovered radio. I haven't listened in a decade due to ads, but seems like at least one station there manages to keep a good balance: https://www.dancefm.ro/ - their ads are relatively rare and not obnoxious (I guess not understanding the language helps).

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#153
post #7

I think the podcasts i listen to will not work, the moderators speak the ads themselves. Luckily it‘s easy to skip ahead 15 seconds at a time. At least ads in podcasts cannot track me so i don‘t feel i have to block them for that reason alone.

Also, there's difference between a company sending in a clip to be played, and actually having the presenter say the ad out loud themselves.

The latter is unthinkable on commercial radio, where separating ads from 'content' is a skill unto itself.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#154
post #81

I absolutely hate advertising on the radio. But thank goodness in "socialist" Scandinavia I have several ad-free radio stations to choose from. We've got a tax-funded national broadcaster (used to be a fee on radio ownership, then TV ownership before, but now it's tax funded) and some volunteer-run organizations that have their own radio station. Our national broadcaster also has a world feed from other national broa…

> But thank goodness in "socialist" Scandinavia I have several ad-free radio stations to choose from. It is naive to say that they are "ad-free". They are free from classical ads, but they are politically very left. More than 50 percent(!) of the journalists employed by Public Radio SR and Public Television SVT are voting for the Green Left, a party which has only 4% of the national voters. The journalists are hence…

If there is a political bias here, it's not major and mostly affects non-news items like columnists and opinion pieces. The news reporting is mostly pretty neutral.

In comparison to American commercial news outlets like Fox News, it is very neutral indeed.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#155
In the same way that the mp3 changed the music industry, bittorrent changed how Hollywood made movies adblockers are going to reshape how the internet works.

Because adblockers drive down the value of ads so substantially companies will give up on trying to pay their overhead costs by using advertising and instead switch to a Netflix like subscription model.

The irony with this is that once you’ve had to log in to a site with payment information your privacy and anonymity are completely erased and you’ve often given the provider the ability to run background and credit checks on yourself.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#156
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are already making content without monetizing it, and have been for decades. As alien a way of thinking as it may seem to some, many human beings do not need a bizarre system of 'market-based incentives' to get anything done at all. They just do it, out of passion, boredom, to learn, or to share with friends. Are you seriously implying the 'young kid starting out' has Youtube monetization all setup in order, o…

I don't remember many young video creators before Youtube. You know what Youtube runs on, right? It's not just the creators who get money from ads.

Young video creators have been around but not at this scale because youtube or instagram props them up and makes them influencers. They have no life experience and yet are influencing millions of other young people. The sad part is that everything is shocking content to get their visitors up. This is broken imo and can’t lead to anything good. Of course, few of them become millionares

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#157
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we don't need yet another penis enlargement startup?

I'm not talking about that garbage. I'm talking about the mom and pop stores. The catering service, the stationery shop, etc.. These services are competing with shit (other ads) right now. Wouldn't it be nice if we could clean up the ecosystem and have these companies benefit?

If I need a catering service or a stationery shop I do a search and look for the websites, not the ads (which are blocked anyway). I don't see how ads disappearing would prevent them from getting business through their website.

At the moment everyone "needs" ads because everyone else does it. If this cancer would disappear then everyone is on a level playing field and can attract business by ranking well on search engines, etc.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#158
post #3

Hello, author of Adblock Radio here. Thanks for posting this. I can answer questions if you have any. You can read more on the context of this project in this article: https://www.adblockradio.com/blog/2018/11/15/designing-audio...

I just tried it and it worked so well I started laughing maniacally

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Closely study some ads sometimes, they are incredibly psychologically manipulative. Also, study the 101 of the domain. Like the famous Cialdini's book Influence: Science and Practice , or Cliff Ennico's How To Sell Anything To Anybody talks. Moral bankrupcy is in the very DNA of the practice, so no surprise that most ads just reflect this.

> Moral bankrupcy (sic) Ironic you'd bring up ethics in a discussion of ad blockers. Considering how radio & podcasts depend on sponsorship, isn't it unethical to remove ads that pay for the content? Effectively it is stealing. https://current.org/2019/09/podcast-sponsorship-revenues-con...

Is leaving the room during a television commercial break also stealing?

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#160
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will make content as a hobby, but you won't see people doing it on the level (frequency or quality) they have been today. Internet likes and shares are nice but if they won't pay the bills, and a lot of creators will prioritize their time accordingly.

I have a hard time believing that someone on HN, a crowd whose primary job involves using free software and whose primary hobby is reading Wikipedia articles , would just idly speculate about things against the most blatant contrary evidence. But then, this being HN, this sort of speculation is to be expected, heh.

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