have just been in the process of rage uninstalling this app due to the ads
To be clear, it's not just that they added ads, but they are obnoxiously in the main active screen while things are playing. Made me also disrespect Automattic as well as this seems very poor behaviour on their part.
To play devil's advocate here, clearly there are hosting costs and maintenance costs beyond a one time mobile app payment 14 years ago.
Kinda sped read the article so apologies if I missed it, but why does the author here feel so entitled to something that clearly the company feels unreasonable to continuously maintain? They're clearly a struggling business, it feels like this author has a personal vendetta against the company and would rather they go out of business than break a 14 year old promise made from an entirely different internet economy era.
As a pocket casts user idk why it even costs money to run this app. Just developer cost? Almost all the work is just local on the device and fetching the RSS feed? Anyone else know why this needs external servers at all?
> You were a pay-once app. Released in 2011, pay once each for Android, iOS, and Web and keep for life.
You know. I approve the pushback on enshitification. But there’s something weird about righteous fury over an app which literally costs money to run didn’t provide free updates for literally decades on what probably cost like $5.
This has nothing to do with the content of the article, but is anyone else annoyed by that link style, or is it only me? To me, the link style where the underline partially overlaps the baseline of the text (not just characters with descenders like g and q and y, but the actual baseline so that it overlaps nearly all characters) harms readability.
I'm also not a huge fan of the way hovering over the link turns it into a highlight on the word, but that's not a huge readability issue because the highlight covers the entire character. But having the non-hovered link underline be fat, so that it partially overlaps the baseline of the characters, means that those characters are superimposed on two different backgrounds, pale blue and pale red, and that harms readability.
This site isn't the only one that does this, or I might not be complaining. It's a style that seems to be popular, and I really don't know why. It's a bad idea and people should stop doing it.
I switched to Pocket Casts because the official Apple app changed their UI to a recommendation feed instead of a plain timeline. I only listen to podcasts on a single device, anyone have suggestions for alternatives? I don't mind paying a one time fee, but this should really be a mostly (completely?) cloud-less app.
$800,000 net loss? What in the mismanaged business world are you even doing? I've built feed aggregators in the past... I just can't understand where the costs ar.
Are they rehosting all the audio and that's bandwidth costs? Even then it seemed high.
Just a note: Overcast is written and maintained by one person - Marco Arment - including server maintenance and has been for over a decade. He also created his own non scammy ad platform that just lets companies buy banner ads based on the category of the podcast.
You get very little extra for the $15/year subscription fee. That’s not a complaint. You get all of the features that most people care about in the Fred version.
It’s available for the iPhones, iPads and the web with full CarPlay support and it syncs podcasts to the Apple Watch.
He did learn from his mistake of making Instapaper a one time payment and sold it.
For those who don’t know, he was the cofounder of Tumblr.
lifetime, no-ads deals that are supposed to sustain a for-profit company are mostly a scam, unless it's a free tier designed to upsell (e.g. Dropbox). That's it.
I purchased this app way back in 2014 when I did Android dev FT. I had no idea about the history until recently when I began seeing ads. Comapnies should be prohibited by Google Play Store or someone else from rug pulls like this, otherwise it will become a normal business strategy. What's to stop someone from building an app fast by selling lifetime ad free, then when they build a user base, selling to a large company who does this? Nothing. That's what.
They should be forced to publish a new APK with a different name to change monetization strategies or honor what people paid for. This is fraud and theft.
I am one of the later subscribers, but I was subscribing for 16 EUR/y, when they've bumped the subscription to eye-watering 45 EUR. So far they have respected the deal and I am still paying the initial amount.
I am sympathetic with author, but unfortunately it is also one, if not the best podcast app technically. It has this 0-bullshit UI which does what you expect without enforcing some maddening organization patterns (Castro) of fancy UI with hilarious amount of bugs (looking at you, Overcast).
It has the "mark as played" button, also in car play.
It is the only one I've found capable to pull the episode on Apple Watch over network, instead of relying on pre-caching from phone app.
I would be very sad if PocketCasts goes out of business.
P.S.: I checked and it seems that Overcast also has cellular streaming on AW - I need to test it again.
I worked for a company that did audio streaming and the problem is that cloud providers' bandwidth is expensive af, only option is to own your machines in a datacenter and negotiate bandwidth prices with an ISP
I'm almost a week late but they don't stream audio from their servers. Your device pulls directly from RSS feeds which individual podcasts are in charge of maintaining and paying hosting costs.
They do have a few online features they run, like syncing your subscribed podcasts and listening progress and whatnot, and I think they have their own index of RSS links for searching, but nothing compared to streaming audio.
Anyway, as of today they backtracked on showing ads to people who purchased the app before it went free. I guess they're claiming it was a bug, which I don't really believe but I don't care as long as they undid making the app ugly.
I've been following the whole upset about the banner ad. As a podcast app, 90% of the time I have it in the background, and I'm not doomscrolling on the app. So the banner ad doesn't really bother me.
The argument on a "lifetime subscription" also does not really apply here. The app was a one-time purchase and then made free somewhere in 2019. Their logic was that early app purchasers would still receive the same set of features when the app was made free and a subscription was introduced. Source https://support.pocketcasts.com/knowledge-base/lifetime-acce...
Basically, purchasers didn't lose any features in 2019 onwards. The purchase was also for the entire app, not just an ad-free version, as there were no ads to begin with.
I bought the app back when it was just three developers. Things started going down hill after NPR acquired them.
I switched over to Spotify. The only gripe I have with Spotify is when my phone encounters a dead spot, Spotify puts up a modal "You're offline" and loses my place in the podcast.
Howdy! There might be a misunderstanding: Anyone who has ever paid for Pocket Casts, even before Automattic acquired it, should not see ads. If you did, that's a bug and we'll fix it.
Longer context: At Automattic, we take very seriously the sustainability of the promises we make to users of our products, including serving trillions of free requests to WP.com, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and many other services over the years.
We want every product to be self-sustaining, so it doesn't rely on my benevolence, but instead has an engine of value creation and capture that can be something we continue to maintain and support for decades to come. We really do think long-term, as evidenced by our 100-year plan on WP.com.
The Pocket Casts business model is similar to that of many other products, featuring a free version with ads and a paid upgrade with additional features and no ads, much like Spotify, YouTube, and others.
As a matter of engineering ethics, I don't believe in "lifetime" purchases, and we don't create new ones at Automattic, but we have honored the legacy people who paid a one-time fee to Pocket Casts when they were a startup with basically what we call a "Champions" account, which is a lifetime you-get-the-best-of-whatever-we-sell deal. There are only a few thousand of these folks, so it seemed better to try and make it more of a gift than attempt to migrate people to what is actually a sustainable business model, which is a recurring subscription.
We open-sourced Pocket Casts after acquiring it because I believe that in the podcasting world, it's vital to have an open-source alternative to proprietary distribution networks.
Are you lying or just not aware of what is going on in your own company? I paid for Pocket Casts many years ago and am now seeing ads. I just emailed support and got a form email that basically said, "Nah, pay us $40 a year."
I also purchased the lifetime no-ads option, and now get ads. Support says you have to buy a subscription. This is a widespread issue that seems to be affecting most if not all users. If you check the reviews on the play store there are many hundreds of 1 start reviews over the last few days and the app rating has dropped from 4.2 to 3.7.
A thread was also pointing out in the google support forums for another app that did the same thing, ignoring a no-ads purchase and forcing a new subscription, and google asked to report the app from the store as this violates their terms of service
> There might be a misunderstanding: Anyone who has ever paid for Pocket Casts, even before Automattic acquired it, should not see ads. If you did, that's a bug and we'll fix it.
This is not true for people, like me, who only bought the Android version. We were not tagged with "Champion", but this was stated: "you’ll still have access to the mobile app features you paid for".
This was in the description of the app at the time:
"There are many more powerful, straight forward features help you make Pocket Casts yours and in case you were wondering, here’s what Pocket Casts DOESN’T have: ads, episode limits, pushy trials, feature bloat or plugins.
It. Just. Works."
Now I have ads, and when I try to dismiss them I am greeted with a pushy sales pitch for a subscription.
Life is too short for this, and I've moved on to another app. But perhaps this is insightful as to why some users are frustrated and upset.
Hi Matt, I originally paid for the Google Play version back in 2011 and the iOS version in 2012, but unfortunately I am also seeing adds now. Thank you for commenting publicly here, when I wrote to support I just got an automatic response. It seems that I am also affected by the bug. Would you please be able to fix the issue with my account? Thanks again.
Not a good month for me and entertainment. First I drop twitch turbo because they started showing ads and their support said, it happens nothing they can do about it.
Now I need a new podcast app after using Pocketcasts since 2016.
Any Suggestions for iPhone that I can easily move to from pocketcast?
This is a great way to sour many customers for all products automatic owns. I don’t buy the “it must be a bug story.” They just flipped the switch and only deal with the squeaky wheels for people that complain.
Did I expect free updates and features forever. No, Only the bare minimum to keep it running.
Hell, if it was owned by a small company or an individual I wouldn’t mind donating to keep it maintained once in a while. I don’t feel the need for a subscription for a podcast app. The fanciest feature I’ve used in the past 10 years is the sleep after 15 min options.
Saddest is that they are advertising their own apps. Good to know which one to avoid.
33 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 77.3 ms ] threadTo be clear, it's not just that they added ads, but they are obnoxiously in the main active screen while things are playing. Made me also disrespect Automattic as well as this seems very poor behaviour on their part.
Kinda sped read the article so apologies if I missed it, but why does the author here feel so entitled to something that clearly the company feels unreasonable to continuously maintain? They're clearly a struggling business, it feels like this author has a personal vendetta against the company and would rather they go out of business than break a 14 year old promise made from an entirely different internet economy era.
You know. I approve the pushback on enshitification. But there’s something weird about righteous fury over an app which literally costs money to run didn’t provide free updates for literally decades on what probably cost like $5.
I dunno. It just kinda rubs me the wrong way.
I'm also not a huge fan of the way hovering over the link turns it into a highlight on the word, but that's not a huge readability issue because the highlight covers the entire character. But having the non-hovered link underline be fat, so that it partially overlaps the baseline of the characters, means that those characters are superimposed on two different backgrounds, pale blue and pale red, and that harms readability.
This site isn't the only one that does this, or I might not be complaining. It's a style that seems to be popular, and I really don't know why. It's a bad idea and people should stop doing it.
Are they rehosting all the audio and that's bandwidth costs? Even then it seemed high.
You get very little extra for the $15/year subscription fee. That’s not a complaint. You get all of the features that most people care about in the Fred version.
It’s available for the iPhones, iPads and the web with full CarPlay support and it syncs podcasts to the Apple Watch.
He did learn from his mistake of making Instapaper a one time payment and sold it.
For those who don’t know, he was the cofounder of Tumblr.
I use it every day. It's smooth, seamless, and FOSS.
Note that I am just a user, and not otherwise linked with them.
[0]: https://antennapod.org
Give me a good 3y or 5y deal, then we're friends.
They should be forced to publish a new APK with a different name to change monetization strategies or honor what people paid for. This is fraud and theft.
I am sympathetic with author, but unfortunately it is also one, if not the best podcast app technically. It has this 0-bullshit UI which does what you expect without enforcing some maddening organization patterns (Castro) of fancy UI with hilarious amount of bugs (looking at you, Overcast).
It has the "mark as played" button, also in car play.
It is the only one I've found capable to pull the episode on Apple Watch over network, instead of relying on pre-caching from phone app.
I would be very sad if PocketCasts goes out of business.
P.S.: I checked and it seems that Overcast also has cellular streaming on AW - I need to test it again.
They do have a few online features they run, like syncing your subscribed podcasts and listening progress and whatnot, and I think they have their own index of RSS links for searching, but nothing compared to streaming audio.
Anyway, as of today they backtracked on showing ads to people who purchased the app before it went free. I guess they're claiming it was a bug, which I don't really believe but I don't care as long as they undid making the app ugly.
The argument on a "lifetime subscription" also does not really apply here. The app was a one-time purchase and then made free somewhere in 2019. Their logic was that early app purchasers would still receive the same set of features when the app was made free and a subscription was introduced. Source https://support.pocketcasts.com/knowledge-base/lifetime-acce...
Basically, purchasers didn't lose any features in 2019 onwards. The purchase was also for the entire app, not just an ad-free version, as there were no ads to begin with.
I switched over to Spotify. The only gripe I have with Spotify is when my phone encounters a dead spot, Spotify puts up a modal "You're offline" and loses my place in the podcast.
Longer context: At Automattic, we take very seriously the sustainability of the promises we make to users of our products, including serving trillions of free requests to WP.com, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and many other services over the years.
We want every product to be self-sustaining, so it doesn't rely on my benevolence, but instead has an engine of value creation and capture that can be something we continue to maintain and support for decades to come. We really do think long-term, as evidenced by our 100-year plan on WP.com.
The Pocket Casts business model is similar to that of many other products, featuring a free version with ads and a paid upgrade with additional features and no ads, much like Spotify, YouTube, and others.
As a matter of engineering ethics, I don't believe in "lifetime" purchases, and we don't create new ones at Automattic, but we have honored the legacy people who paid a one-time fee to Pocket Casts when they were a startup with basically what we call a "Champions" account, which is a lifetime you-get-the-best-of-whatever-we-sell deal. There are only a few thousand of these folks, so it seemed better to try and make it more of a gift than attempt to migrate people to what is actually a sustainable business model, which is a recurring subscription.
We open-sourced Pocket Casts after acquiring it because I believe that in the podcasting world, it's vital to have an open-source alternative to proprietary distribution networks.
A thread was also pointing out in the google support forums for another app that did the same thing, ignoring a no-ads purchase and forcing a new subscription, and google asked to report the app from the store as this violates their terms of service
This is not true for people, like me, who only bought the Android version. We were not tagged with "Champion", but this was stated: "you’ll still have access to the mobile app features you paid for".
This was in the description of the app at the time:
"There are many more powerful, straight forward features help you make Pocket Casts yours and in case you were wondering, here’s what Pocket Casts DOESN’T have: ads, episode limits, pushy trials, feature bloat or plugins.
It. Just. Works."
Now I have ads, and when I try to dismiss them I am greeted with a pushy sales pitch for a subscription.
Life is too short for this, and I've moved on to another app. But perhaps this is insightful as to why some users are frustrated and upset.
Any Suggestions for iPhone that I can easily move to from pocketcast?
Did I expect free updates and features forever. No, Only the bare minimum to keep it running.
Hell, if it was owned by a small company or an individual I wouldn’t mind donating to keep it maintained once in a while. I don’t feel the need for a subscription for a podcast app. The fanciest feature I’ve used in the past 10 years is the sleep after 15 min options.
Saddest is that they are advertising their own apps. Good to know which one to avoid.