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Show HN: Adblock for Podcasts
This is a small app that achieves surprisingly good podcast adblocking. It transcribes the podcast, identifies ad segments in the transcript, then creates a new version of the podcast without the ads.
- clay_the_ripper 2y agoThis is something I would use - not to steal but so I could listen to certain podcasts for sleep. The host intros and ads for this certain podcast are terribly distracting from what is otherwise incredible content.
- maxglute 2y agoI'm hoping now that Google Podcast moved to Youtube Music which can be added to Youtube Playlist, podcast listeners are going to figure out sponsorblock applies. I wonder if that's also why a bunch of my podcasts haven't migrated to Youtube.
- davesmylie 2y agoOther use case is relistening to old podcasts - about half the stuff I listen to is historical which lends itself well to a relistening 10 years later. The content may well be still relevant but the ads are surely not. The other podcasts I listen to are current and mostly ad supported - this isn't great for them
- vsnf 2y agoRight now someone, somewhere, is thinking of a way to use this to identify the ad portions in old podcasts and overlay new, perpetually relevant, dynamic ads.
- ephimetheus 2y agoThis is already being done. Same as geo targeting dynamically inserted ads based on the IP of the downloading client.
- wrboyce 2y agoThey use the IP! That explains why I was getting Spanish ads for a few days after returning home.
- crtasm 2y agoMy podcast downloader is always on an IP from another country, I don't mind the ads nearly as much when I can't understand a word they're saying!
- OptionOfT 2y agoI lived in CA and got advertisements for Ralphs. I spent some time in Sedona and all of the sudden I got the same advertisements, same jingle etc but instead of Ralphs it was Fry's. That definitely threw me off.
- alexriddle 2y agoI'm fairly sure that most podcast platforms now include dynamic ad segments - I listen to a few and whilst some (usually where the hosts record ads themselves) seem to have static ads, others definitely have ads which are updated automatically
- vsnf 2y agoYeah for sure. But is it being done for the huge back catalog of much older podcasts? Maybe the big players already have teams of people hunting for old ad breaks, but this could alleviate the burden.
- klondike_klive 2y agoIt's a shame - other countries' ads often strike me as quaint, hilariously awful, at best amusingly weird, and I'm willing to tolerate them to a point. But when an ad breaks in that's obviously targeted based on my location it feels ingratiating, dirty, offensive.
- Larrikin 2y agoNot listening to ads is never stealing
- coryfklein 2y agoRight? Every player comes with those "skip forward 30s" buttons, and surely the creators and advertisers are aware that many folks tap that button anyway.
- mgrandl 2y agoThat is awesome! I will give it a shot :)
- pixelesque 2y agoIf this uses pydub which uses ffmpeg under-the-hood, I guess it re-encodes the .mp3s rather than "losslessly" snipping out frames of audio without re-encoding?
- jdr23bc 2y agoThat's right. Also adds a fade on the ad transitions. I haven't noticed a drop in quality.
- camelcat 2y agoThis is great! I'd love this to be integrated into my podcast app (AntennaPod) just like Sponsorblock for YouTube.
- longitudinal93 2y agoThank you for AntennaPod. It's a wonderful app.
- interblag 2y agoThis is interesting as a technical PoC but also feels a bit unethical. The moral case for ad blocking on the web seems pretty clear: online advertising is built on massive exploitation of user privacy, has horrible UX, and is often implemented so poorly that it tanks pageload performance. In short, I understand why people use ad blockers on the web. Podcasts though? In RSS-based podcasting, which is what this tool targets, you're typically getting a reasonable quality audio ad, with limited tracking, targeted broadly at the category of people who might listen to a particular podcast; it's about as unobtrusive as advertising gets. Widespread circumvention of those ads could really hurt the ecosystem, which would be particularity frustrating given that podcasting appears to still be a viable space for small scale creators to do great things (e.g. San Charrington and the TWIML AI podcast) TLDR cool demo but everyone should please think carefully about if or when to use this tool.
- panarky 2y agoIs it unethical to fast-forward through ads? How about if I turn the volume down during ads, is that morally wrong? Maybe I play ads at regular speed and volume, but I think about something other than the ads while they play, is that wrong? Perhaps a truly ethical consumer would listen intently to every ad, rewinding every time their mind wanders, pausing the audio every few seconds to take copious notes.
- jjayj 2y agoThis is a space in which I still haven't fully formed an opinion (as I typed this response I realized I have an opinion, I'm just not totally sure what it is) so I welcome discussion. I hate advertising too, and use e.g. Sponsor Block, but I recognize that the majority of the modern internet would not exist without ads. > if I turn the volume down during ads, is that morally wrong? 30 years ago, was it morally wrong to go to the bathroom during an ad break? (IMO: no) > I think about something other than the ads while they play, is that wrong? 30 years ago, was it wrong to chat with friends during a commercial break? (IMO: no) That being said, _skipping_ the ads entirely doesn't seem (to me) equivalent to these examples. I cannot explain why I feel this way. I _think_ I still believe in _unobtrusive_ advertising - 5 to 15 seconds of ads before a 10 minute video. If the author of our favorite podcast can't get any product placement in, why will they continue producing the podcast? (Maybe in a utopia they would create the podcast because that's what they love to do - but maybe in a utopia they would prefer not to cast, and instead listen to someone else?) Idk. Some thought vomit here that maybe HN folks can help me work through.
- Animats 2y agoIs there one for videos?
- jjayj 2y agoSponsor Block for YouTube videos.
- wruza 2y agoI find SB reporters sometimes too eager and even flagged some skips due to an incorrect category. Not that it’s a mass issue, but it has to be worked on. Otherwise it’s fantastic. (SB has different categories of skips. E.g. sponsor ads, self promotion/merch, like-sub-bell annoyances and so on. You choose what you skip.)
- skeaker 2y agoThe Highlight feature (a button that takes you to a community-designated timestamp right away, intended to be placed where the primary content of the video actually starts) is particularly bad about this, though I have seen it used to comedic effect. A particularly unbearably cringe video had a highlight that jumped straight to the end so you didn't have to watch it.
- youcantcook 2y ago[dead]
- nolongerthere 2y agoHow intensive is this to run? Could it be set to run automatically for each new podcast that gets added to the original feed?
- jdr23bc 2y agoOn an M3 15 minutes of podcasts takes about 1 minute of processing. The transcription is the slow part.
- smcleod 2y agoNice work, I've raised a PR that adds support for local LLMs (Ollama, llama.cpp etc...) and a few other enhancements.
- draugadrotten 2y agoThe code is surprisingly short and compact. It looks as if if the classification could be adapted to extract "highlight" snippets from podcasts as well, which would be a usecase I would be interested in.
- shoulderfake 2y agogods work
- fnordian_slip 2y agoWhy do so many comments see not listening to / viewing ads as immoral? Even if this will become the new norm, and there are fewer advertisers and people would make less money from it, this change could be very positive for the podcast ecosystem. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and the majority are without ads or rarely include ads. They are products of passion, and not full of fake testimonials about scammy expensive multivitamins or really bad mental health services. Imho, the web was a lot better before Google and social media ruined the discoverability of small personal websites and blogs with great content, and replaced it with (nowadays AI-generated) blogspam and clickbait that is highly profitable, but ultimately worthless. We will not return to the good old times with the web. In fact I believe that the genie is not only out of the bottle, but we actually created an automated Pandora's-box-opener in the current state of AI, compete with endless unboxing videos. But maybe we can go one step back with podcasts. I believe it would be worth a try.
- andrewstuart 2y agoI don't get it. You want the podcast, you value the work, you don't want them paid?
- klunger 2y agoExactly. If you are going to use this, I believe you should also become a patron* of the podcasts you do it to. And, in that case, you often have access to an ad-free version anyway. *or "tip" or whatever other monetization channel they have. Very few rely solely on ads.
- pragmatick 2y agoWhy wouldn't they get paid? You download the whole episode, it's not different than downloading it to your phone. They don't know if you listened to the ad any more than if listening via an app without this step inbetween.
- noirscape 2y agoSponsorship money is to my understanding pretty much always paid beforehand; the marketer gives a sum of money and just for doing the ad read, the podcaster gets paid. Actual payment on clickthrough/conversion rate is pretty uncommon. The podcaster isn't harmed by anyone skipping the ads.
- rPlayer6554 2y agoThe more people that use this, the less that ads will be worth.
- shortformblog 2y agoDing ding ding. A lot of podcast authors offer ad-free versions as a paid feed to members, which to me, invalidates the ethically dubious “but the podcaster has already been paid” argument. They should be given the choice to do this. I feel like the slippery slope is immensely dangerous as it always is with these products.
- 2y ago
- creativenolo 2y agoA docker image for running on a server/homelab would be super.
- 0x2a 2y agoAlternative using SponsorBlock for podcasts on YouTube/Vimeo: https://github.com/mxpv/podsync https://github.com/mxpv/podsync
- 0x2a 2y agoAnother more recent one (on-demand instead of upfront downloads): https://github.com/ericmedina024/podcast-sponsor-block https://github.com/ericmedina024/podcast-sponsor-block
- xcavier 2y agoJust the other day I was wishing there was a uBlock but for podcasts...