Well, crap. This feels like the first sign that the app is going to die when it doesn’t get enough money out of this price hike.
What’s a good open alternative?
AntennaPod is open source and pretty good if you’re on Android. Podcast Addict isn’t open source (I don’t think) and it’s not as pretty but it’ll be the most powerful podcast app you ever use.
I personally have lifetime plus due to having bought the app early on. I still use it regularly but don’t use the fancy web interface.
Same here. I have lifetime plus from having bought it ages ago, but I’ve simply just defaulted to listening to podcasts on my Nextcloud News app out of convenience. It has a play and pause button, and that’s mostly all I need from my podcast app.
This is kinda odd timing.
I just started using AntennaPod on Monday since I want to switch to FOSS apps as much as possible and also deleted my PocketCasts account completely.
It sucks that there is no such account in my Google Podcasts app, but uninstalled that too. AntennaPod, FTW!
I was surprised to learn that the Pocket Casts apps are open-source (Android GitHub, iOS GitHub).
This is for the older version though, IIRC
Edit: Ah, it seems I missed Automattic acquiring Pocket Casts. Would make sense they’re open source, since Automattic is a fully open source company.
I’m going to ask a legitimate question and I promise I’m not trolling but this seems insane to me and I have to ask.
Why in the fuck would anybody use a special app just for podcasts?
I just go to the website, download the show, throw it on my phone and I’m good to go. It takes very little time I don’t have anyone selling my listening data.
I’d genuinely like to know what the benefit is.
I just subscribe to a bunch of podcasts and it automatically downloads them for me. It handles keeping track of what I’ve listened to and can queue up a variety of them for easy listening like a customized radio station.
Here’s what mine looks like:
I spy with my little eyes a donut media podcast 👀
so you don’t have to go to the website and download each episode you want to listen to…
I don’t understand how going to a website once a week for under 10 seconds is a detriment?
If you listen to more than one podcast, either
- you visit once a week anyway, and just have podcasts delayed a few days from release to listen, or
- you visit every day that one of the podcasts is released, which means you may be visiting several websites every day.
Some podcasts I like to listen to the day they come out, or perhaps the next day if I don’t get to it, such as news podcasts.
Also, if you listen to even more than a few podcasts, you aren’t going to “a website” once a week, you’re going to a dozen websites once a week.
I just go to the website, download the show, throw it on my phone
That’s three steps, per podcast per episode. Not everyone has their phone set up where it’s zero-effort to copy files to the phone from their computer, so that may be a multi-step process itself.
Also, podcast apps offer some other features that to do manually either is more work, or more mental overhead:
- Favoriting episodes, so that they stay downloded: to do this manually you need some sort of filesystem hierarchy where you put favorited episodes, or keep a list of favorited episodes, or keep track some other way.
- Notifications for new episodes, for podcasts that don’t follow a strict release schedule, or those that put out “special” episodes off their typical release schedule, or even just not having to memorize which podcasts have what release schedules.
- Viewing of “show notes” inline instead of having to open the browser, navigate to the podcast’s webpage, then navigate to the episode page.
- Listening software designed for podcasts/human speech: silence trimming, speedup ratios, start/end trimming, smart chapter-based seeking and navigation, remembering where you left off. Some of these features may be available in whatever generic multimedia player you listen to podcasts in, but not all of them.
Of course, a podcast app is not required to listen to podcasts by any means. But if you listen to a lot of podcasts and value time your time, there is undeniable benefit offered by podcast apps.
Also, there are plenty of FOSS and tracker-free podcast apps, so it’s not a situation where you must sacrifice privacy for convenience.
Holy shit that price is just insane. No one is going to be willing to pay that when Spotify is cheaper by a lot…
Do people really use Spotify for podcasts? I don’t find it a great experience. Pocket Casts seems to be solid as a free app along with other alternatives (including open-source).
I’m pretty sure the only people who use Spotify for podcasts are unvaccinated Roganites
I use the free version. Though I wouldn’t pay for a aub, what do you get with it?
