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Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

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Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#191

Post by vostrocity »

scrooched_moose wrote: post #171
icebraining wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we're talking about NPR affiliated stations. Doesn't their news reporting come from NPR?

A good example is Morning Edition, which cuts back and forth between the national feed and local reporting. You'll have 3 minutes of "Korean War Ended", 2 minutes of "Mueller Investigation", then 5 minutes of "Help Minnesota Public Radio pick the best lake in the state - listen to why Mike thinks it's the one he grew up on". The local stuff is so bad I've mostly stopped listening as well. Wish there was a way to only…

The local news is one reason I like to stream the local station on TuneIn rather than NPR's various apps. Where else do I hear local news from in this day and age?

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#192

Post by daveFNbuck »

eddieroger wrote: post #188
daveFNbuck wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People with these statistics will be making things better for themselves and for advertisers. This may often coincide with making things better for users, but the type of data you're talking about is mostly useful for making it harder to skip ads.

I like my free, RSS-shared MP3 files as much as the next listener, but these things aren't free to produce, just like PocketCasts isn't free to make. Podcasters sell ads, and advertisers rightly want something in return. If ads are easy to skip, they have no assurance that they're getting anything for their money, so the money dries up, and the podcast goes under. There is always going to be a game of back and forth…

I prefer the direction it's going in now where most podcasts I listen to have an option to subscribe to pay the podcaster more directly. This does not require turning my player into spyware yet it keeps the podcasts going.

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#193

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

eddieroger wrote: post #190
ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #187

I love NPR, I love Pocket Casts. But it feels weird to me knowing that I donated money to NPR, and that money might be used to purchase a private company.

They use donated money to pay people to write NPR One. If you think of this as an acquihire, is it any different?

You are right and technically it is not.

I just feel like when they are doing the on air campaigns the plea's feel like they are desperate. Without your support this content wouldn't exist.

I just don't really expect them to have the budget to make that content, and ALSO make sure I can enjoy it in an application that is better than Apple's default podcast app. Or Stitcher on the web.

I enjoy the app, and I am glad they are making sure its available. But they next time I hear that they desperately need my money to continue... I'm going to think... "Ya, do you really?".

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#194

Post by eddieroger »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #193
eddieroger wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They use donated money to pay people to write NPR One. If you think of this as an acquihire, is it any different?

You are right and technically it is not. I just feel like when they are doing the on air campaigns the plea's feel like they are desperate. Without your support this content wouldn't exist. I just don't really expect them to have the budget to make that content, and ALSO make sure I can enjoy it in an application that is better than Apple's default podcast app. Or Stitcher on the web. I enjoy the app, and I am glad t…

For what it’s worth, I’m with you on donations. But consider that not all NPR affiliates need money in the same way, and in the same way as NPR itself. My local affiliate definitely does need the money, for example, so I donate to them. WBEZ and WNYC are in much more affluent areas with different members. Likewise, those stations generate content that member stations pay for - again, mine doesn’t. There are lots of factors at play with how public radio is funded, and I wasn’t terribly surprised that either of two stations had sufficient funds to use here, not NPR national.

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#195

Post by synchronise »

m_fayer wrote: post #158
synchronise wrote: post #102

Earlier 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…

The server side crawling in Pocket Casts means it's always instantly up to date with my 50+ feeds, and perfectly synced with its web client. Seems like a full service to me. Also in my experience, relying on small-scale FOSS apps means opening myself to the vagaries of their on/off development cycles, dealing with their underinvestment in design, and the impossibility of them spending significant resources on good ol…

> and to respect my privacy, and I'll happily pay good money for that

That's the issue for me. If it's proprietary, I simply don't trust it to keep my data secure. I have no way of knowing that myself.

And that's the great thing about gpodder too, you can host your own instance of it so you are in total control of your services.

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#196

Post by synchronise »

simonh wrote: post #147
synchronise wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antennapod and gpodder will work for the web and Android, I don't own an iOS device so I don't know of any solutions for that platform unfortunately. To add to that, there are issues between the GPL and the Apple App Store ToS so open source apps on that platform are at a disadvantage as a result.

If the owner of the code is publishing my the app, there is no problem as they just own the code and aren’t using it under any license and aren’t bound by the GPL. Similarly an owner of GPL code can relicense it for use on the App Store. Not ideal, but it can be workable.

But that's not the case most of the time. Many apps aren't just one man operations, they pull in contributions from other authors and if it is GPL in any way, it becomes a mess to change that after the fact.

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#197

Post by synchronise »

dtech wrote: post #155
synchronise wrote: post #102

Earlier 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…

You are describing the exact same use-case as other people are using the apps for. Antennapod + gpodder.net is your podcast-as-a-service solution, where other people are using Pocket Casts. You mainly seem to rail against people preferring a commercial solution over a FOSS solution. The reason for that is simple, people don't care about the difference and Pocket Casts provides a better user experience that just works…

I just want a solution that I know is FOSS, secure and won't use my data for analytics. I have no way of knowing that from a proprietary application so it doesn't fit my use case.

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#198

Post by m_fayer »

synchronise wrote: post #195
m_fayer wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The server side crawling in Pocket Casts means it's always instantly up to date with my 50+ feeds, and perfectly synced with its web client. Seems like a full service to me. Also in my experience, relying on small-scale FOSS apps means opening myself to the vagaries of their on/off development cycles, dealing with their underinvestment in design, and the impossibility of them spending significant resources on good ol…

> and to respect my privacy, and I'll happily pay good money for that That's the issue for me. If it's proprietary, I simply don't trust it to keep my data secure. I have no way of knowing that myself. And that's the great thing about gpodder too, you can host your own instance of it so you are in total control of your services.

That's why we have permission APIs at the OS level. Better than nothing. Also you say you only trust foss software to not only not maliciously spy on you but too keep your data secure. Do you really check the code for security flaws or run automated analysis tools on it?

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#199

Post by CNJ7654 »

While I am happy for Russell and the rest of the Shifty Jelly team, this acquisition does worry me. Historically, NPR hasn't been the most unbiased source of information, and allowing them direct access to who can and cannot be seen on the discovery feed could easily kill the diversity of views that the platform enjoys right now.

Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

#200

Post by [deleted] »

Accacin wrote: post #183

I was quite happily using the Podcast iOS app until iOS11 where they completely ruined it. Someone recommended that I buy Pocket Casts and I've been using it ever since. One thing that annoys me, when I go to a new Podcast I like to listen from the beginning, and Pocket Casts marks old episodes as "Played" so it's hard to go through and listen to them in order as I forget where I've gone to. Any solution for stopping…

[deleted]
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