And now they'll "adjust business strategy" and make it a bloated Ad ridden pile of crap most likely. These aquisitions never end well.
You know it's a $4 app right?
Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
51–60 of 204 posts
Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
#52I look forward to trying something besides the horror of the npr one app. I don't need a netflix tile for every show. I need relevant information on the show. Not a mini billboard with no information.
Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
#53The 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.
Can you clarify what features are missing?
I use both the Android and the Web versions of Pocket Casts and it syncs, trims silence, does speed adjustments, and so forth.
Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
#54The 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.
And available on Android. I miss Overcast.
Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
#55I've been frustrated with many free podcast apps so I paid for Pocket Casts and I've been happy since. I think it's a smart move by NPR et al. What they want is the usage data like where they pause, where they skip, etc. These data were traditionally not available to podcast publishers because podcast is really just an mp3 file uploaded to some server. NPR has the NPR One app but I guess not enough people are using i…
I always wonder why they refuse to put their news onto a feed except through NPR One. I've just been going without...
Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
#56This strikes me as potentially bad news. PocketCasts is a great little app, with the characteristic advantages of being produced by a small indy outfit with no agenda beyond selling a good quality product for cash. I'll keep an open mind, but it's hard to imagine it maintaining its current user-focus and content neutrality while under the thumb of content-producers. [Edit: there's a blog post on the topic from Shifty…
I mean, it wasn't acquired by a for-profit publishing house or media company (e.g. a music label, Netflix, Amazon, etc.), it's NPR. They aren't for-profit, and they generally have pretty solid products (or at least content) in my experience.
I'm not gonna say that there isn't cause for concern that an organization like NPR might not be very good at this sort of development or product, but I don't think naked greed or exploitation needs to be a significant concern. And more than any content producer I can think of, I'd trust NPR to maintain relative neutrality towards external content.
Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
#57The 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.
Can you clarify what features are missing? I use both the Android and the Web versions of Pocket Casts and it syncs, trims silence, does speed adjustments, and so forth.
The syncing in pocketcasts is not reliable, especially between web and mobile apps. Often a played episode on mobile will still register as new on the web, even days later. Sometimes forcing a sync fixes it, but that is not 100% either.
Overcast has the syncing perfected, but it has a much worse web UI. Pocketcasts new web UI is much slower too, with more clicks, popup windows, and less information density. I use the web interface during work, when I dont have my phone and just to browse quicker so speed and functionality are important.
Castbox has a great search interface that can find the words inside the audio of any episode, which is absolutely great for discovery.
Also there should be a simple subscribe button with 2 options: subscribe from latest episode, or subscribe from the beginning. Pocketcasts has a very strange way of changing subscribing to episodes just from sorting them differently.
Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
#58The Apple podcast app has gotten continuously worse over the past few years, I'm excited to see that 3rd parties are picking up the slack, but I'm still pretty disappointed that Apple has neglected one of the most important aspect of the phone (for me, anyway).
The past few years? iTunes and Apple's podcast app have always been terrible.
Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
#59This strikes me as potentially bad news. PocketCasts is a great little app, with the characteristic advantages of being produced by a small indy outfit with no agenda beyond selling a good quality product for cash. I'll keep an open mind, but it's hard to imagine it maintaining its current user-focus and content neutrality while under the thumb of content-producers. [Edit: there's a blog post on the topic from Shifty…
I mean, it wasn't acquired by a for-profit publishing house or media company (e.g. a music label, Netflix, Amazon, etc.), it's NPR. They aren't for-profit, and they generally have pretty solid products (or at least content) in my experience. I'm not gonna say that there isn't cause for concern that an organization like NPR might not be very good at this sort of development or product, but I don't think naked greed or…
You could even say it might be the perfect ownership. Though I didn't believe it at first, podcasts have taken hold & don't look like they are going away any time soon, and you might even argue they are the future of public broadcasting & public radio...
Re: Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
#60I purchased PocketCasts app a couple of years ago but recently switched from android to iOS and never re-downloaded it. I'm sure I'd have to re-purchase it, right? or is there a way around that.
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