Y'all y'all check it, I just found the new revolutionary radical technology! They're called jpegs! No one company can control them, they're too powerful! /s
Pocket Casts did some update I didn't like so I switched to Podcast Republic and haven't looked back. I do have Spotify Premium aswell but that is and always will be for music only.
i stopped using pocket casts when they started adding pay for features into the main UI but disabled. i'd bought pocket casts but up until that point i was glad it was made free as it was the best podcast app for android, now i use antennapod, and it's fine.
Probably putting Apple Watch and file features behind a sub. That happened ages ago but they really haven’t change the UI since I’ve been using it for a decade (or so).
Just an illustration of what the article is talking about; I can switch to another app and still get the same podcasts. Not the case with Netflix, Spotify, HBO and so on.
There are still platform exclusive podcasts, like on Spotify, but they don't seem too prevalent. Podcasters seem to make most of their dough either through advertising sections, or having supporter exclusive feeds.
Universe Today, a space news podcast and website, gets almost all their funding through patreon, and without many "exclusive" feeds. Mostly it's personal Q&As and an ad free feed.
It's a bit of a rare beast, but their goal is to completely end advertising, and go all listener funding, and they claim they're close.
The same goes for a lot of YouTube channels.
In fact, I opened a Patreon account just to show a little monthly support for an excellent, criminally underrated creator of videos on astronomy and its' history, ParallaxNick.
Among other topics, the guy recently finished a four-part series on Galileo, a two-parter on Kepler before that, a single on Copernicus before that. By my calculations, I'm guessing a six-part masterpiece on Newton is right around the corner.
YouTube is an entirely different beast. Even if they personally don't have ads, the platform itself runs ads and provides money to the creators based on those ads (or YouTube Premium subscription fees).
Podcasts don't usually have a "platform" that supports them, many of them are self-hosted, and the podcast app is just an aggregator with no middleman inserting ads or passing the listener data on to anyone else.
Heck, the fact that RSS feeds in general still exist is amazing and a wonderful way to get an unfiltered source of news, information, and entertainment.
YouTube is an entirely different beast. Even if they personally don't have ads, the platform itself runs ads and provides money to the creators based on those ads (or YouTube Premium subscription fees).
This could be fixed if everyone hopped onto Peertube, but that's unfortunately not happening anytume soon
I mean, the only podcasts I've ever supported through patreon were small operations, most of them already didn't have ads, and their paid feeds were mostly just them bullshitting on microphone.
In fact, exclusive podcasts have been performing really badly recently. That's why there have been a ton of layoffs in media - it turns out people won't voluntarily trap themselves in walled gardens.
I don’t know if this counts, but I have the Waking Up podcast subscriber RSS feed, just googled for it. That said, Im pretty sure if you write an email to Harris stating you can’t afford it right now but would like to listen anyway, you will get it free anyway. At least the app is like that, but IIRC that has been his method for the podcast too.
Thanks, good to know. At the moment I'm just plugging my phone into my computer and passing .opml files around which feels fine for the moment... and very secure.
