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Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
- OedipusRex 8y agoThis was my go to podcast app on Android, excited to see how NPR does with it.
- cerberusss 8y agoExcited? Prepare for spying and personalized ads. Why else would a media company buy a podcasting app?
- gumberculese 8y agoThe 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).
- MBCook 8y agoTry 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.
- Analemma_ 8y agoSeconding Overcast - it has traditionally traded blows with Pocket Casts as the best 3rd party podcast app on iOS, but I like it better for the smart speed and voice boosting features.
- crispinb 8y agoOvercast is continuing to go against the podcast industry grain by making privacy a distinguishing feature (https://marco.org/2018/04/27/overcast42 https://marco.org/2018/04/27/overcast42). Good move. It's not useful to me as I have Android as well as iOS devices, but if I was Apple-locked, I'd be having a serious look at Overcast.
- zulrah 8y agoI agree overcast is miles ahead of pocketcasts.It protects privacy of the users, smart speed is awesome (removing silences and thus saving tons of time) and app is not laggy as pocketcasts was
- muddi900 8y agoVolume boost is part of pocketcasts as well
- archagon 8y agoI 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.
- pvg 8y agoWhat's the principle involved here? Not liking something being a business?
- archagon 8y agoI'm uncomfortable with the fact that Marco would frequently proclaim his support for indie development, but was also willing to outright lose money in order to undercut his competition and dominate the podcast market. (In his own words.) Yes, if you have a lot of money, you can acquire tons of customers by releasing your app for free and using a half-hearted "patronage" model. Most developers don't have that option. It might make good business sense, but doing it while saying you care about the indie scene strikes me as hypocritical. (I concede that this is perhaps a petty and uncharitable interpretation of events, but it really miffed me when it was happening.) As for subscriptions, I simply hate that business model with a passion and will do almost anything to avoid it.
- ghshephard 8y agoThe question with Overcast, is whether it will be able to compete in the open market with Marco's almost quixotic desire to avoid any form of tracking whatsoever. He won't even track stop/start/listen actions, and now he's eliminating tracking pixels (https://marco.org/2018/04/27/overcast42 https://marco.org/2018/04/27/overcast42) - all very admirable, but by foregoing all the obvious revenue opportunities, will he be able to make it up by attracting a large enough audience who will purchase/subscribe to his app so that he can continue to develop it? Is privacy an important enough attribute for the podcast listening audience?
- Cenk 8y agoHe also runs ads in Overcast, so he’s not relying on subscriptions alone.
- foodstances 8y agoAnd a popular podcast that makes him $5500/week in sponsorship revenue (x3 ads per show but /3 hosts).
- tptacek 8y agoThis is the weirdest critique of an app I've ever read on HN. Overcast isn't tracking users enough?
- LeoPanthera 8y agoThat's funny, I've had the exact opposite impression. The only thing I don't like about Apple Podcasts is that, by default, there's no way to play episodes chronologically, independent of podcast. But you can add this feature by creating a "station".
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoTry PocketCasts, it's amazing!
- julianz 8y agoI've never used the Apple one, but Pocket Casts is the only app I've ever paid for on four platforms (Android, iOS, Windows Phone and the web player) and not regretted it at all. It's a gem.
- fencepost 8y agoI'm only on 3 (no iOS), and while I wouldn't say that I regretted the purchase on Windows Phone, it certainly wasn't because it was a solid performer there - it was a purchase to show support and encourage development. I've always worried a bit that Shifty Jelly's model would prove unsustainable with money from new sales needed to continue paying for their servers and I've felt at times that they were strapped for resources, so this overall seems positive to me.
- driverdan 8y agoThe past few years? iTunes and Apple's podcast app have always been terrible.
- CharlesW 8y ago> The Apple podcast app has gotten continuously worse over the past few years Can you name a few specific ways in which you think this is true? (I personally think it's come a long way from the awful skeuomorphic reel-to-reel metaphor, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.)
- torgoguys 8y ago"Pocket Casts users will continue to enjoy: A wide variety of podcasts from hundreds of national and international producers;" I hope this is just an unintentional underrepresentation of how many podcast producers are out there (many thousands, not just hundreds) and doesn't mean they're limiting which podcasts can be listened to in Pocket Casts.
- scrooched_moose 8y agoIt's possible it's just a count of how many podcasts are included in the "Discover" section. I don't know what the process for getting added to that is. It covers almost all of the "big" podcasts, but there are a handful of local ones I've had to add manually.
- Y_Y 8y agoYou can submit podcasts to them to get added[0]. They added my tiny podcast without any hassle. [0] http://www.pocketcasts.com/submit http://www.pocketcasts.com/submit
- mey 8y agoYou can plug in a feed url to the add section for podcasts they don't know about.
- thedarkginger 8y agoPocketCasts is interesting because arguably the Discover section is less central than other apps (I can't remember the last time I used except to do searches for new shows vs. other apps where the main page is loaded for recommendations of shows I don't care about). I wonder if that changes.
- scrooched_moose 8y agoSo is this basically a confirmation they're giving up on NPR One? It hasn't been updated for 7 months, after about 24 straight monthly updates. If so, I wonder if they're going to cram livestreaming into Pocket Casts. That'd be enough for me to switch to something else, I much prefer apps that do a single thing extremely well.
- hsljekskfh 8y agoi wouldn’t be surprised, almost nobody just listens to npr, and why would you want another podcast app just for some podcasts?
- pflats 8y agoNPR 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-its-podcasts-or-npr-one-on-air/ http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/03/npr-decides-it-wont-promote...
- pnutjam 8y agoIt was also missing a setting to only download on wifi. It blew through a couple gigs of my data on my drive home once, background data. I wasn't even using it.
- drb91 8y agoThey should be afraid. I went podcasts only as quickly as I could because the local reporting was so low quality.
- icebraining 8y agoBut we're talking about NPR affiliated stations. Doesn't their news reporting come from NPR?
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- zsgoldberg 8y agoLove Pocketcasts. Though I hope this mean they'll need to make the web app accessible
- peterjlee 8y agoHave you tried https://play.pocketcasts.com/ https://play.pocketcasts.com/ ?
- extra88 8y agoThe text fields on the sign-up form [0] are unlabeled, the submit button ("Register") doesn't visually show keyboard focus, and almost nothing has sufficient color contrast; that doesn't bode well for the actual player's accessibility. Also, the <form> element has a completely unnecessary role="form" ARIA attribute which suggests accessibility has crossed someone's mind but also that it's likely errors of consequence have been or will be made. [0] https://play.pocketcasts.com/users/sign_up https://play.pocketcasts.com/users/sign_up
- fencepost 8y agoIt's been a couple years and I don't recall if he was associated with NPR, WBEZ or both, but a meetup I sometimes go to had someone from "there" speaking about accessibility and giving the impression that it was actually a pretty serious matter for them.
- paulgb 8y agoThis is the first time a product I use daily has been acquired that didn't leave me with a sinking feeling. Congrats to the team!
- lintroller 8y ago> Pocket Casts will operate as a joint venture, with founders Philip Simpson and Russell Ivanovic in leadership roles and the existing staff and developer team remaining in place. > “We turned them down because the unique thing about this opportunity is the mission driven nature of these organizations. They want what’s best for the podcasting space, they want to build open systems that everyone can use.” The initial headline had me worried but I like the tone of the press release and have no reason to doubt the intentions of Shift Jelly or NPR. I hope they continue to improve what I feel is the best medium to consume podcasts that currently exists.
- mort96 8y ago"What's best for the podcasting space" is more scary than it sounds tho imo. A lot of business people would consider web-like analytics "the best for the podcasting space", even though it would be horrible for podcast listeners.
- ascorbic 8y agoWould it though? I'd be happy to podcasters to have aggregated figures on listens, skips, pauses etc, as long as it's not linked to me. It could improve podcasts, ads, and probably increase their revenue, which I'm all in favour of.
- corobo 8y agoOne of the stats could be "How many ads can we cram in per 30 minutes before people stop listening"
- lintroller 8y agoI agree that it's a potentially miserable reality however if I'm still capable of skipping forward, and it means that my favorite podcasts and creation networks are able to sustain themselves, I'm okay with this outcome.
- crispinb 8y agoThis 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 ShiftyJelly: https://blog.shiftyjelly.com/ https://blog.shiftyjelly.com/. It's a little misjudged in tone, maintaining their jokiness which has been enjoyable in other contexts but feels more like misdirection when a user is hoping for information on the future. Perhaps mildly reassuring though]
- BookmarkSaver 8y agoI 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.
- gascan 8y agoYou 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...
- crispinb 8y agoAs I wrote, I'm keeping an open mind. But in the absence of information more specific than Russell's rather fluffy & evasive blog post, it's entirely reasonable to be suspicious. Don't forget that for most humans, NPR isn't just a non-profit: it's a foreign government agency (and a very corporate-infected one compared to the best public broadcasters like the BBC or ABC). @peterjlee's other post here also suggests also that NPR's own current app is spyware. I have no idea whether or not that's true, but if so, it augurs badly. We'll see. I'd be delighted if my suspicions turn out to be entirely wrong.
- dominotw 8y agoI use this app every single day. Hope NPR doesn't drive down the 'NPR one' road. Not too glad about this, tbh.
- thecybernerd 8y agoI hope they stick to their roots and keep the ridiculous change logs!
- eigen-vector 8y agoI'm so glad to see the team behind Pocket Casts find success. It's one app I've never been disappointed with and supported right from the beginning. The paramount quality of a good app is how easily it gets out of the way and lets you enjoy the content. Pocket Casts has done a spectacular job at that.
- simcop2387 8y agoYea 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).
- vanattab 8y agoNo ads. Just "messages from underwriters"..
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- as-j 8y agoIt’ll be interesting to see how it does. I wonder if you’ll still be able to auto skips the first 30s or 1min of an episode...
- brownbat 8y agoI 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.
- boomboomsubban 8y agoThat 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.
- peterjlee 8y agoI'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 it. They've been open about what data they're collecting and I honestly don't mind NPR knowing about my podcast listening habits.
- crispinb 8y ago> What they want is the usage data like where they pause, where they skip, etc. That's exactly what I don't want > These data were traditionally not available to podcast publishers because podcast is really just an mp3 file uploaded to some server. Good. Long may it remain so.
- wpietri 8y agoI don't want them to have individual data, but I'm fine with them having anonymized statistics. Knowing what people are doing with things you make is such a valuable tool for making it better.
- jrwiegand 8y agoI agree in theory but what else can be made better about podcasts? Is it worth the trade off for everyone's data? These are questions I believe were asked and answered with NPR One. Also, anonymized data is still data and that derived information can be very powerful.
- daveFNbuck 8y agoPeople 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.
- izacus 8y agoAnd now they'll "adjust business strategy" and make it a bloated Ad ridden pile of crap most likely. These aquisitions never end well.
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoI hope not. I bought my first copy for Android back at version 3. When I moved to iOS, it was the very first app I bought. I'll buy it again if it keeps ads away.
- DoofusOfDeath 8y agoI believe you mean "... underwriter ridden pile of crap ..."
- roywiggins 8y agoNPR's own One app isn't a bloated ad-ridden pile of crap, why would they take PocketCasts in that direction?
- hrktb 8y agoAgree the fear of ad is unwarranted. Now isn’t NPR’s app pretty heavy on user tracking and is also used to A/B test contents and formats ? I love NPR’s content, yet I am still worried about my favorite posdcast app getting aquired. I guess there will still be overcast if it goes down badly, but that would be a shame.
- disillusioned 8y agoAre you... not familiar with NPR? It's a non-profit public radio entity. It's some of the least-ad-ridden content available on the planet and a tremendous resource.
- rhacker 8y agoThis is what I was thinking - I was trying to stretch my imagination to see how NPR would do this and couldn't.
- 8y ago
- DanCarvajal 8y agoI sure how they don't cram in a requirement to also be a local station supporter to use certain features in the app. I think that's a big misstep of the PBS app.
- mrbonner 8y agoI am so glad my donation to NPR went to good use!
- nickwanninger 8y agoFrom the article: "New York Public Radio's investment in Pocket Casts was made possible, in part, by Cynthia King Vance and a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York." I don't think it was from donations, but I could be wrong
- DoofusOfDeath 8y agoNote the phrase "in part".
- gramstrong 8y agoYou can't donate to NPR (at least, not easily)... You can argue that donations to local NPR stations helps free up revenue for NPR the organization, but donations don't directly translate in to anything that NPR does.
- sid-kap 8y agoIs 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...
- talisnotnpr 8y agoTAL <> NPR Good luck with that reading comprehension.
- icebraining 8y agoOld 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.
- Cenk 8y agoYou can also listen to TAL in the TAL app - although it’s not a very good app and pretty buggy at times. Built by Black Pixel (https://blackpixel.com https://blackpixel.com).
- tripplethrendo 8y agoI really hope they don't fuck this up. I use this app every day.
- borplk 8y agoTime to look for alternatives? Call me a cynic but I have a feeling their bias (and questionable tech capabilities) will drive it down to the ground.
- muddi900 8y agoHey cynic
- amasad 8y agoHow does M&As work for non-profit? Like, obviously from this, a non-profit can acquire a for-profit but can a for-profit acquire a non-profit?
- matthewmcg 8y agoIt's unusual because a non-profit doesn't really have an owner (stockholders). But it is still a corporation and many states in the U.S. (non-profit and for profit corporations are created under state law) allow a non-profit corporation merge with a for-profit entity. The transaction is treated like the non-profit sold its assets to the for-profit buyer and then wound down by donating the proceeds to other non-profits.
- robinhood 8y agoI think I've tested all the major podcasts app out there, paid for their subscriptions etc... The one that was clearly over the others has always been Pocket Casts. I'm also a subscriber of https://play.pocketcasts.com https://play.pocketcasts.com, their web platform. I just love them. I'm really happy that they've made the money they deserve (or I hope they did anyway). That being said, I don't feel confident at all that NPR will now respect my privacy as much as Pocket Cast, the company. I'm really scared that NPR will change the app like all those media companies do when they acquire something good - that is transforming the tool into an ad machine, or at the minimum something to track users. Despite the blog post where they announce that nothing will change, I hope Pocket cast's team will continue their good work and resist the pressure of a media company.
- hsljekskfh 8y agoi’ve been using podcruncher for years. at $2 i’m very satisfied with it. what does pocket casts have that it doesn’t?
- newen 8y agoThe NPR One app does collect statistics such as when do user start and stop podcasts etc. I remember them mentioning the app in a couple of their podcasts and how they use that data to improve their podcasts. It's very likely that they will use Pocket casts for that purpose and it's probably why they bought Pocketcasts, since so few people use the NPR One app.
- zbrozek 8y agoAnd this is precisely why I find this news unpleasant. Now I'll need to find another podcast app.
- jrwiegand 8y agoThe notion is valid but users clearly don't want to be tracked. NPR One lost and they still continue to push it and will likely convert Pocket Casts. I find the news discouraging at best.
- devmunchies 8y agoI 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.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- paragraft 8y agoNo they charge per platform. I've bought it 3 times (Android, iOS, web).
- manigandham 8y agoThe 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.
- fluxsauce 8y agoCan 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.
- manigandham 8y agoThe 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.
- fluxsauce 8y agoI haven't experienced the sync problems, but I believe you. Also, I use mobile the majority of the time so it's entirely possible I just don't use that feature enough to experience that pain. > find the words inside the audio of any episode Woah, that I didn't know about!
- kfnic 8y agoAnother annoyance about the sync is that it is only recent episodes that are synced. When you get a new device you lose the status of most of your episodes.
- zaatar 8y agoHow does Pocket Casts compare with Breaker?
- ngold 8y agoI 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.
- javiayala 8y agoMy favorite podcast player + my favorite radio/podcast station = Future Greatness! (I hope) I just came here to say how much I enjoyed reading the list of changes every time there is an update. There is always something super funny in there. I really hope they keep doing that!
- qzervaas 8y agoThe comments in here (and the article title) make it sound like it’s just NPR involved. Important to note that it’s not NPR per-se, but a group including NPR.
- Dowwie 8y agoThe storytelling format podcasts shows have replaced evening television in my household. I guess we've reverted to the time of old fashioned night time radio shows. Good old fashioned entertainment in 2018.
- flaque 8y agoThis is adorable. I like this. Good for Pocket Casts, I'm glad to be a user.
- sengork 8y agoFrom the same company that has also created arguably the best and most accurate weather app for Australia.
- crispinb 8y agoYep - PocketWeather is also great. ShiftyJelly has been a standout in the Aus indie dev scene
- mintplant 8y ago> 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: the podcast ecosystem being built on open, decentralized standards limits what we can do (see above), so we're going to use the market position we just acquired to "extend" it with proprietary features.
- asfasgasg 8y agoCynical fatalism plays better when the supposed perpetrator isn't NPR. Speaking of organizations I would trust with my personal info, it's hard to think of any better.
- jrwiegand 8y agoPocket Casts never tracked anything. Why is it now okay to start tracking me? Does NPR do something better than anything other large organization?
- jeffnappi 8y agoHow could you possibly know pocketcasts never tracked anything? I am a pocketcasts user and I'd be surprised if they weren't tracking my usage of the app. From their privacy policy, they at a minimum track what you subscribe to: What information do you collect about me? Your username in the form of an email address, and password; Your podcast subscriptions, episode data and settings configuration; Your unique device identifier, device language and licence validation data; Pocket Casts web service also uses cookies and like technologies to keep you logged in. Should you choose to generate a support request from within the Service, we may generate an attachment containing additional data to assist in addressing your support request which you’re welcome to view prior to submission.
- asfasgasg 8y ago
- brent_noorda 8y agoHope they don’t lose the funny update notes.
- emodendroket 8y agoUp to this point Pocket Casts has been an excellent app, but I'm not sure how enthusiastic I am about this news.
- pilatesfordogs 8y agoI just have to say it: This is one GOD DAMN good app. I've been using it for years and the only issue I have with it is that I've got to pay again to download it on my iPhone after switching from Android. In a world full of free stuff, this is the only piece of paid software that makes my day better. They deserve this.
- hitlin37 8y agoi use pocket cast everyday.
- asdz 8y agoPocket 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!!!"
- erlend_sh 8y agoI love Pocket Casts! Here are my top feature requests (I’m on iOS so some of these features may exist already on other platforms) - Let me search within a podcast (search titles as well as descriptions). I just found out about Planet Money but it has nearly 1000 episodes. The internet can help be find highly recommended episodes, but there’s no easy way to jump to these in the app. - please let me set playback speed. I also have a faint hope that this acquisition would allow Pocket Casts to go open source.
- remybach 8y agoThe playback speed is a feature in the Android version (pretty much the deal breaker with other podcast apps for me) so hopefully that's in progress for the iOS one too.
- bladewolf47 8y agoThere's an option to set playback speed on iOS as well. It's there in the bottom left corner of Now Playing screen.
- corobo 8y agoIt took me about a year or so before I found this functionality. No idea why it's not with the rest of the settings but heyho Play a podcast episode and tap on the "now playing" bar to open up this screen http://i.imgsir.com/1OMb.jpg http://i.imgsir.com/1OMb.jpg The settings are hiding here http://i.imgsir.com/GZAL.jpg http://i.imgsir.com/GZAL.jpg
- syntekz 8y agoHave been using Pocket Casts for my go-to for past couple of years. Deleting today.
- neolefty 8y agoWhy?
- smtpserver 8y ago"Thanks to the mission-driven nature of this partnership, and of public media overall, we'll put the needs of producers and listeners at the heart of everything we do with Pocket Casts" == We are going to add useless features, bloat the app and switch to SaaS model.
- smpetrey 8y ago> Audio veteran Owen Grover will serve as CEO of Pocket Casts. Grover previously served as Executive Vice President and General Manager at iHeartRadio, and before that as Vice President of Programming and Marketing at Clear Channel Music & Radio. Pocket Casts will operate as a joint venture, with founders Philip Simpson and Russell Ivanovic in leadership roles and the existing staff and developer team remaining in place. To ensure development aligns with the mission-driven ethos of public radio, the board will be comprised of representatives of the public media leaders. Well, that sucks.
- Accacin 8y agoI 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 the app marking these old podcasts as played?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- meej 8y agoWhen you first subscribe, navigate to the podcast and click on the '...' menu. If there are any episodes currently unplayed, the first menu item will be "Mark All Played". Go ahead and mark them all played, and then tap '...' again. The first menu item will now be "Mark All Unplayed". If you're having issues with Pocket Casts marking old episodes as played when new ones come out, go into the settings (either for the whole app, or for a particular podcast) and turn off "Auto Cleanup".
- Accacin 8y agoThanks for that, it's clunky but it works!
- ghostbrainalpha 8y agoI 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.
- eddieroger 8y agoThey use donated money to pay people to write NPR One. If you think of this as an acquihire, is it any different?
- ghostbrainalpha 8y agoYou 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?".
- eddieroger 8y agoFor 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.
- CNJ7654 8y agoWhile 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.
- 21717117 8y agoI would like to know who _has_ been the most unbiased source of news in your opinion.
- tadah 8y agoThen it will probably be made free for iOS soon (as data collection will probably be their model). Time for me to start looking for another podcasting app...