I have been using PocketCasts for a long time, but it’s been enshitifying for a while now. The most annoying part is the huge amount of ads that are inserted in the podcasts, and I can’t even tell if that money goes to the creators or to PocketCasts.
So any good recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
What ads? I haven’t noticed any and I use it every day, their faq says
Pocket Casts is mozilla public license btw
Alright, I might be wrong then. The reason I speculated they did that, is that it plays ads at the beginning and end of every episode that are localized to my region and up to date, even though it’s an old, foreign podcast I’m listening to. But maybe it’s the podcast itself being able to do that dynamically instead? Then I don’t mind it as much as I do want to support the creators.
Yes, podcasts have had dynamic ads since 2013. The provider inserts them when you download
Yes, the ads are inserted dynamically. I have found, however, in the past that if you use a VPN to download them and set your region to Switzerland for some reason they don’t get inserted. You will have to listen to empty silence during the length of time an ad would usually play but that’s better than the ads.
Hopefully this trick still works, if not try a different region or I guess it doesn’t work any more.
My partner noticed a ton of ads in a similar situation (listening to older podcasts). She was also under the impression these older casts did not have ads, but she is getting more and more each listen. Maybe it is the creator inserting them in older episodes, but she is trying AntennaPod, so we shall see
If the pod was bought by Wondery or the like, they’d be responsible
I had to set up a few of my subscriptions to skip the first and last 30s because of this, it’s very annoying!
I don’t think they were bought by anyone, but their distributor did recently approve them for ads. I suggested that as a possibility, but she was pretty sure it was PocketCasts inserting them. We shall see either way.
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