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Designing an audio adblocker

285 points by dest 8y ago

aitva 8y ago
Great work! It is very interesting to see the different algorithms you've used and the changes you were forced to make due to legal trouble.
eyeareque 8y ago
I will be very interested to see how well this does. This has been something I wish existed for a long time. Great work! I’d much more prefer to pay the podcaster directly than to listen to ads. But this doesn’t seem to be an option.
brucemoose 8y ago
This makes me wonder, what are other viable revenue sources for content creators besides ads? Personally I don't mind listening to a few ads on a podcast because I assume it is helping the creator cover their living expenses so that they may continue creating content that I enjoy. And spoken ads (hopefully) are not tracking me, although I suppose there are ways to overlay inaudible tones that other devices can pick up, etc.
- e1ven 8y ago
  I'd like to see a model where Patreon expands into making their apps more optimized for audio/video playback. People could produce ad-free versions of their podcast for Patrons. Apple or other podcast vendors would also be in a good position to provide an open standard for subscription podcasts without ads.
  - rrdharan 8y ago
    This happens already. A few podcasts I support via Patreon have ad-free feeds that they supply to patrons as unique URLs for the RSS feeds. Presumably they can cut you off if they find that you then rebroadcast or share those URLs broadly. The Economist also does this - if you have a digital subscription you get a private/unique URL with an RSS feed serving the complete audio edition. If you cancel the subscription the feed stops working.
- rchaud 8y ago
  Agreed. I believe a lot of people have beef with online advertising primarily because of the programmatic nature of it, which hurts user privacy and site UX by causing the page content to jump around, not to mention loading new ads if the page stays open,. But, I don't have issues with podcasts where they work directly with a company to pitch a product. It's old school and it isn't as impersonal and cash-grabby as a junky website with an Adsense account. I can imagine a tool like this becoming necessary when Amazon/Google start piping in ads through their home speaker products. We just can't have nice things, I guess.
  - dwighttk 8y ago
    like they'll let you run this on your amazon/google ad-supported home speaker product...
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  > And spoken ads (hopefully) are not tracking me While I understand that there is value in physically locating you as you play it, but the fact that the spoken ad got onto your podcast means that you are in some way located, right? I've gotten area (ie. ISP that don't exist anywhere else) specific messages in my podcasts. I guess they don't get as much usage data as lot of other apps, unless the playback app shares it.
- _underfl0w_ 8y ago
  Completely agree. I use multiple ad- and tracker-blocking browser extensions, but mostly due to the tracking. Incidentally, while blocking ads online can be noticed by the serving party (to e.g. display an annoying warning) those behind the goods/services being verbally advertised are none the wiser. > There are ways to overlay inaudible tones Are you referencing prior work or was that hypothetical? There is actual prior work on this. They were able to engineer a POC that could trigger "Hey Siri" and "OK Google" inaudibly by broadcasting it with ultrasound on a harmonic of the correct frequency, but at a pitch inaudible to humans [1] [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.09537.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.09537.pdf
- singron 8y ago
  The ads might not track you, but you might be tracked when downloading the podcast and the included ads might be personalized. I've noticed that the ads in certain podcasts are completely different when downloaded from a different location while traveling.
  - _asummers 8y ago
    This is correct. I received Illinois relevant messaging on political podcasts towards the last US primary election, and it remained when in other states while traveling.
- jniedrauer 8y ago
  > what are other viable revenue sources for content creators besides ads? I don't mind paying content creators directly. I do mind allowing them to commodify parts of my mind.
- packet_nerd 8y ago
  I find ads in general, and particularly audio ones, to be a super annoying cognitive burden. I have to interrupt my train of thought and consciously block the message they're trying to pipe into my brain. I'm happy to pay for things if its low friction and reasonably priced, but will never accept being advertised to (in any form really, but especially audio and video ads). An audio adblocker seems like a great thing, and I'm excited about this. If enough of us use it, hopefully we can force creators to abandon ads and find a model where they work for us, not the ad companies. I wish there was a way to block billboards too. Back when google was making google glass, I thought it'd be possible to block out billboard advertisements someday.. to bad that didn't work. Or, just move to a state that bans them, I guess.
  - wilsonnb3 8y ago
    > If enough of us use it, hopefully we can force creators to abandon ads and find a model where they work for us, not the ad companies. Why not just stop listening to what they’re creating?
    - hopler 8y ago
      Because the content is desirable.
- xfitm3 8y ago
  Advertisements sell their product in a narrative that I don't subscribe to. I aggressively block all forms of advertising, and on the occasion when I'm forced to watch an ad I usually can't believe what I am hearing or seeing. I can't help but think that advertisements are somehow toxic to the mind.
- heretoo 8y ago
  > This makes me wonder, what are other viable revenue sources for content creators besides ads? people willing to pay for content worth paying for
- nofunsir 8y ago
  Other viable revenue sources must include, and I mean this seriously, having a full-time job and doing podcasting on the side. Something that does not generate revenue (easily) is often referred to as a hobby, r&d, or fun. I'm much more interested in the podcast that is made for fun, than one made for profit. If you end up producing value to others with your hobby, and you decide to ask for value in return, by all means, do so, and provide a non-de-platformable method of compensation.
  - hopler 8y ago
    So you also prefer art, food, clothing, software, and housing created by hobbyists?
    - nofunsir 8y ago
      Food, clothing, software as part of an integrated system, and housing, no.
- TillE 8y ago
  Patreon. There are quite a few which have never run ads and are making bank. The ideal format, arguably popularized by Chapo Trap House, is that you have a weekly free show and then at least one weekly bonus episode.
  - hopler 8y ago
    Having a free tier of service is not a new concept.
shittyadmin 8y ago
I'd be really excited and willing to pay much more than the normal mobile app price to have this for my podcasts. Nothing pisses me off quite like the time waste that is podcast advertising. I skip them, but I was dreaming of a system like this...
- dest 8y ago
  Hi, author here. Thanks for your message. Please submit your podcasts on https://github.com/adblockradio/available-models https://github.com/adblockradio/available-models
  - shittyadmin 8y ago
    Is the preference to bulk submit a single issue for a list of 6-10 podcasts or make individual issues for each?
    - dest 8y ago
      Please do it individually, thanks!
  - driverdan 8y ago
    Are there instructions for training so we can contribute our own models? I've been wanting to play with ML and this seems like a fun way to do it. I read the write up and briefly looked at the repos and didn't see training instructions.
    - dest 8y ago
      Training is not open source (yet?). Among other questions, there is an issue with the copyrighted dataset that needs discussion.
- ucaetano 8y ago
  > Nothing pisses me off quite like the time waste that is podcast advertising. Why would you be more willing to pay to an app developer who will shut down the revenue stream for the content creator, than to listen to the ads and therefore fund the content creator?
dirtyid 8y ago
Detecting speech and music is particularly intriguing for different variable playback speed for speech bits and 1x for music bits.
- dest 8y ago
  I do not understand your sentence :/
  - kevinh 8y ago
    I think that they're saying it would be interesting to use music detection to have the podcast playback switch from an accelerated playback speed during speech to normal speed when music is detected.
    - dest 8y ago
      OK, this makes sense, good idea
3rdkulturekyd 8y ago
Like the sound of this!!
anhonestopinion 8y ago
I like ads on podcasts: not invasive, support the shows and can't put malwares on my pc. Honestly I find an adblock for podcasts a total dick move (outside of the intellectual exercise part of course).
- CivBase 8y ago
  > Honestly I find an adblock for podcasts a total dick move If you expect payment for a service, give your "customers" an opportunity to support you directly. It can be a premium account, merchandise, or even a simple donation service. Don't force your "customers" to become the product. I don't see why podcasts should get a pass.
  - drewg123 8y ago
    The annoying thing is that I like NPR podcasts, and donate to NPR. However, they don't have any premium option AFAIK.
  - smilesnd 8y ago
    Their is a difference between ads and forcing someone to be a product. The tracking software in JS ads is what turns someone into a product in my opinion.
  - the_watcher 8y ago
    Many podcasts actually do offer this, either via a Patreon or something like Stitcher Premium. One podcast I listen to (and subscribe to their Patreon) has mentioned that only ~10% of their listeners subscribe and that ads are a much larger source of revenue for them (even doubling subscribers wouldn't make up for this gap).
    - Marsymars 8y ago
      > One podcast I listen to (and subscribe to their Patreon) has mentioned that only ~10% of their listeners subscribe and that ads are a much larger source of revenue for them (even doubling subscribers wouldn't make up for this gap). This is interesting, but isn't be an argument against offering a pay-for option. I expect the paying subscribers are more valuable per user, so any user you convert to paying increases your revenue.
jonbarker 8y ago
The reason ads for podcasts don't deserve blocking and are OK is that they are completely opt-in. You have to enter a code or go to a URL in order for the podcaster to get credit.
JamesBaxter 8y ago
I probably wouldn't use this as I would feel bad about it but as a UK listener I've listened to SO MANY adverts from American podcasts for products I can't buy. I pay for stitcher premium and export the feed to an app that's actually useable. I recently paid to support Thrilling Adventure Hour on patreon and find it pretty crappy they still have adverts on the paid feed.
- Jonnax 8y ago
  I remember listening to a podcast (can't remember the name) but the adverts were tailored to my location. I think the MP3 gets generated based on location.
  - samfriedman 8y ago
    I've seen this too. A politics podcast I listen to on Spotify played me some targeted get-out-the-vote messaging about my local & state races in November. I'm assuming Spotify provides them that data via customer's billing addresses. Or maybe they get it from location sharing via Waze (which has Spotify integration).
  - l9k 8y ago
    I also did hear American ads when listening to a foreign podcast in a non-English language. It seems like the ads are added to the audio file at the start and the end of the podcast. (I use Player FM)
  - sethhochberg 8y ago
    A lot of audio ad broadcast software uses a combination of audible or inaudible tones to act as "triggers" to mark a location where an ad can be injected using some kind of location/time/etc aware data, the ad itself is very rarely baked into the stream unless it is something you're listening to a host read themselves. In podcasts, the ad injection software will often pause the audio at the point where the ad tone occurred while it plays the ad, and resume it afterwards for continuity. AdSwizz's AIS suite is one example of the tools commonly used for this: https://www.adswizz.com/ad-insertion-suite/ https://www.adswizz.com/ad-insertion-suite/ (I work in the internet radio space, lots of old-school internet radio streams are similar).
polskibus 8y ago
I wonder if this could work with Spotify free tier.
- dest 8y ago
  OP here. Feel free to tinker with this!
- helb 8y ago
  I've tried this a few years back when Spotify started repeating some annoying ad over and over. It's quite "low-tech" compared to adblockradio, but it worked pretty well. https://github.com/serialoverflow/blockify https://github.com/serialoverflow/blockify
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baldfat 8y ago
Personally I want the same option I get from Google. I can see ads on YouTube or I can pay for an ad free YouTube. Now a creator will put their own ads inside the video is up to them. Personally I like when they put them at the end, like Smart Everyday does. If there was an outlet where I can just pay for ad free podcast I would be happy to do it. It also would pay far more than what ads pay. I still remember the release of YouTube Red was how this was hurting creators but it was a cynical argument that paying actual money would pay less than a paying customer.
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
I aggressively block ads and all other forms of tracking in my browser, but I have to admit that I don't generally have a problem with podcast ads. Listening to some podcaster blather on for a minute about some product or service at least gives me the warm fuzzy feeling that they're earning something for their efforts. More podcasters really do need to get on the premium ad-free model though. I pay money to make ads go away on a few platforms (YouTube, Spotify etc) and would gladly put my money where my mouth is and do the same for podcasts. Websites, too, if anyone can come up with a decent way to make it work - AND STOP TRACKING ME!
- givinguflac 8y ago
  I agree but generally avoid podcasts that are heavier in ads. As for website ads, Ars Technica has an interesting subscription that stops ads and tracking.
- jeena 8y ago
  I agree and also pay for YouTube, Thunderbird (donations) and a couple of podcasts (via patreon) which do not have ads. Interestingly mostly american podcasts have ads, the German and Swedish ones don't.
- cortesoft 8y ago
  > Listening to some podcaster blather on for a minute about some product or service at least gives me the warm fuzzy feeling that they're earning something for their efforts. You don't feel the same way about a website? What is different about podcasts? Genuinely curious, because I have a similar initial reaction but am not exactly sure why.
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    I'm not the person you're asking, but most websites offload the ads to a different service on a different server. It's the difference between your favorite podcast performer reading some copy, and a movie on TV fading out to showcase the great deals at Luke's Honda Dealership & Taco Shop Come On Down For The Tastiest Deals In Town. It also strongly indicates that the podcast author has vetted the ads, and is at least implicitly approving of the product; on the web, it's very likely that the author has absolutely no idea what ads are being shown to their visitors.
drewmol 8y ago
Hey op, my 2¢: just mute them, everywhere. Duplicate the audio stream, detect ads, use that to mute the volume of whatever is playing the ads.
- dest 8y ago
  It's what I do on adblockradio.com/player I am currently working on Sonos / Google Home / Amazon Alexa
  - drewmol 8y ago
    > Sonos / Google Home / Amazon Alexa Interesting, are you planning to mute Sonos/Home/Alexa by analyzing it's audio output stream? If so: do you plan to use the devices audio controls? Are you planning on using the Sonos/Home/Alexa microphone for detection of other sources?
    - dest 8y ago
      I plan to "man in the middle" the HTTP stream.
- amelius 8y ago
  It would be cool to have a bluetooth speaker that has an embedded ad blocker (muting or e.g. replacing the audio by favorite songs).
  - dest 8y ago
    What would be your psychological price point for such a product?
    - amelius 8y ago
      At most 1.5 times the price of a conventional speaker.
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Espadrille 8y ago
Seems interesting, I will try it. If it is working I may finally listen again to radio in my car after having stopped it for many years.
notafraudster 8y ago
A response to some of the many arguments expressed in this thread: "Then don't listen to it". Alternatively, I'll do what I do now, which is listen to it but skip the ads and wait for software that can automatically skip them to come around, which is the same thing I did for websites. "That's selfish" Yes, just like the millions of people who use adblock software on their browser. Of course adblock software came after web browsers built in popup blockers in response to the X-10 Spycam being 50% of web advertising circa 2001-2003, so really you could argue the web browsers are selfish and we're all selfish if we don't turn off the popup blockers. Really, even if a website says "By using this website, we're going to install malware on your computer", you're selfish if you reject the malware. If selfish means that I make decisions that make things better for me at the expense of others, then yes, I am selfish when it comes to ads. I view ads as toxic and bad for my health, and I take measures to avoid them. "But it'll lead to the collapse of podcast publishing". Maybe. Of course publishers repeatedly said adblocking would lead to the collapse of the web, and as best as I can tell mostly idiots doing a pivot to Facebook Video caused what collapse did occur (because, as selfish actors, they pursued a greater revenue stream at the expense of quality and integrity -- oops, turns out there's no money there because the numbers are all fake.), Adblocking also ushered in sustainable models for journalism, blogging, etc. Certainly all the websites I read have found alternate revenue models just fine. Maybe that's because the ones that didn't went under, but I apparently didn't notice. If podcasting collapses and goes back to the dark ages of being a non-commercial hobby medium like it was three years ago, like, okay? "Stop comparing podcasts to websites, podcast ads aren't as bad" Maybe, but you don't get to decide for me my threshold for ignoring or blocking ads. Ads weren't as bad when I started using AdBlock Plus in 2004, but they were bad enough for me to decide to use it. Others may have had their breaking point later because they are less sensitive to ads. Some people might still browse the web with ads on and claim they don't care. You do you. The strange thing to me is people expressing that they'd rather block ads, but they're too noble to do so, so they get mad at others for blocking ads? Uh, okay?
- smacktoward 8y ago
  > "That's selfish" Yes, just like the millions of people who use adblock software on their browser. Yes, that's exactly correct! Just like them, you are selfish. Just because "millions of people" do something doesn't make it morally right. > Adblocking also ushered in sustainable models for journalism, blogging, etc. This would be news to most working journalists, of which there are a lot fewer now than there used to be (see http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/30/newsroom-employment-dropped-nearly-a-quarter-in-less-than-10-years-with-greatest-decline-at-newspapers/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/30/newsroom-emp...). Even high quality publications like the New York Times have been struggling for a decade-plus now to figure out a way just to break even online. The ones that have done best are the ones that have put up paywalls, which is kind of ironic when you realize that the only thing HN readers hate more than seeing an ad is hitting a paywall. The only other model that has proved sustainable is selling the publication to become the personal toy of some billionaire, which is fine as long as you're OK with all the news you get being subject to the whims of a few billionaires. > If podcasting collapses and goes back to the dark ages of being a non-commercial hobby medium like it was three years ago, like, okay? At least you're honest about your entitlement to stuff you love being more important to you than whether or not the people who make that stuff can make a living at it. So there's that.
microdrum 8y ago
This is fantastic. Can we use this as a proxy when we input RSS feeds into our podcast apps? I use Overcast on iOS, for instance. I'd love to remove all audio ads from Overcast, both dynamically inserted and normal "live reads," which are also fairly toxic.
- microdrum 8y ago
  I should note the dev of Overcast has his own podcast, which is replete with TONS of ads! I don't want to listen to these ads at all. I guess may as well add this feed to the training set.
- dest 8y ago
  Dynamically inserted ads could be automatically removed. Live reads are more difficult. It would require natural language processing, which is out of reach for now (but help is welcome!) Adblock Radio as a proxy is totally feasible (Pi-Hole like https://pi-hole.net/ https://pi-hole.net/). I am currently working on this.
goodmachine 8y ago
"I started Adblock Radio in the end of 2015, a few months after completing my PhD studies in fusion plasma physics." Now I feel sad.
- dest 8y ago
  What makes you sad? The fact that there is not enough funding for fusion plasma research? Or my unconventional career choices? :)
fpgaminer 8y ago
Great article, thank you for sharing. About the machine learning model; forgive me if any of these questions were covered in the article: 1) Why classify as three categories (music, talk, ads) versus just two (ads, content)? Seems like that might help simplify things, since I assume all we care about is whether something is an ad or not. 2) So based on the description you're feeding 4 seconds worth of buffer into the model for classification, every second; the model being a stateless RNN. I'm curious, did you try just using a (1D) CNN instead? That would allow you to use a more robust architecture, versus RNNs which tend to be finicky. (And RNN doesn't seem to provide benefit, since you aren't using its state, other than potentially being a smaller model). 3) AFAIK there are loss functions which penalize false positives (in this case, penalizing incorrectly tagging content as ads). Was this experimented with? 4) This one is more of a curious idea: 4 seconds worth of buffer might lack enough context, which we can see play out in some of the failings alluded to in "Future improvements". So I'm curious... Suppose, if your architecture isn't set up this way already, that you've got a layer before your final layer that's just a little bit bigger than the number of categories. Say, 32 features. (A lot of RNN architectures are built with an output matrix that's HiddenState => Outputs (n=3). So I'm suggesting HiddenState => Embedding [n=32] => Outputs [n=3]). Train that architecture like before. Now, take that trained model and chop off the output layer so that its output is those 32 element vectors. We can now build a secondary, context model on top of it. It takes as input those 32 element vectors (one vector per second) and outputs the same classifications (ad/not-ad). But since its input is much smaller, you can train an RNN with a much, much deeper BPTT. Hopefully this model can not only be more intelligent by using context, but also take the place of your hysteresis. Since the underlying model is fixed, you can pre-compute its outputs on your dataset, so there's absolutely no cost while training the higher order model (and the pre-computed dataset will be really tiny; 32 elements every second would be only 100mb for your 10 day corpus.) Now, this is somewhat dependent on your corpus being of the nature "here's a long section of audio where the ad is tagged precisely". i.e. it can just be a mixed bag of "this whole audio segment is ad/not-ad". If you don't have that kind of data you'd need to create it (assuming my crazy idea is worth the effort). Hopefully you wouldn't need much. This higher order model shouldn't need to be very complex, which means it doesn't need a big corpus. Or you could try to use a CTC loss function, in which case you just need a dataset that's large chunks of audio and vague labels like "this length of audio has 1 ad somewhere in it." By the way, this isn't intended as advice; I'm by no means a domain expert here. I'm really just thinking out loud. And since none of the other comments at the time of this writing are discussing anything other than the morality of this software, I thought I'd take the time to inject some more technical discussion. > hip-hop music, easily mispredicted as advertisements Well given the endemic use of name dropping and product placement in popular hip-hop, I'm not sure that's a misprediction ... :P Joking aside, one thing that might be useful is to find a stream with positively no ads (e.g. Spotify Premium, Apple Music, etc). Play that through a trained classifier. If the classifier ever detects an ad, add that audio sample to your corpus.
nimbius 8y ago
Its worth investigating the increased use of Subaudible tones to demarcate commercials. These subaudibles are originally intended to be captured by your phones and tablets in order to allow the company to track you across multiple devices through their microphones. the tones are also used to detect commercial ad presence for analytics companies or suites used by advertisers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaudible_tone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaudible_tone One could use these tones to 'detect' a commercial and avoid it, or strip out these tones entirely to promote operational security amongst devices.
- dest 8y ago
  Interesting! Thanks for sharing. This might be a criterion among others, as there will always be ads that do not have subaudible tones.
- deleted 8y ago
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- cwkoss 8y ago
  >One could use these tones to 'detect' a commercial and avoid it, or strip out these tones entirely to promote operational security amongst devices. Or one could layer superfluous erroneous tones into every stream to poison the dataset.
  - dest 8y ago
    Good point. Note I have designed Adblock Radio to rely on audio only, so that it gives the smallest possible margin for radio operators to circumvent it. I do not rely on metadata, nor do I use the usual time schedules for ad breaks.
    - shkkmo 8y ago
      That's great, but can't you use the subaudible tones as an additional blocking metric? Or even as an assessment metric to flag potential false negatives?
Animats 8y ago
I built a device to do this many decades ago. An electronics magazine published a schematic for a "voice/music discriminator". This was a simple analog circuit that ran the audio through a low-pass filter and then detected sharp cutoffs. Voice has those, but music without lyrics doesn't. It's not perfect, but it cuts off ad blithering before it gets annoying. (I should find that thing. It's in my garage somewhere.)
- dest 8y ago
  I would be really curious. I some day you find it please drop me an email!
jccalhoun 8y ago
I would really like this if only because I listen to a radio station through iheartradio and they run the same 3-4 commercials during breaks for weeks at a time. Just give me some different ads and I might not want to skip them!
andjd 8y ago
Panoply has developed software for podcasts that allows them to inject targeted ads into downloads, which makes podcast advertising closer to the nightmare that we see on the web. However, that could offer another avenue for ad-blocking. If you download multiple podcasts from different IPs, you can isolate the ads by finding the parts of the audio that are different.
- joshfriend 8y ago
  That's a great idea if the injected ads are exactly the same length and always get put in the same place. If you have a 30 second ad in one download and 40s in another, 10 seconds of legitimate podcast audio gets interpreted as an advertisement.
  - jldugger 8y ago
    It works even if they don't, you just need a more intense algorithm to do similarity matching across all offsets.
    - dest 8y ago
      With maximally repeated sequences, you can https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6012115 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6012115
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    You "just" need to find all the common segments between different downloads; those are very likely to be the actual content, and not differing ads. Naturally this doesn't work very well if the pool of ads is low and you get repeats.
nnd 8y ago
I think the way to go is directly supporting Podcast makers (outside of the platforms like Patreon who have dubious censoring practices). The ad-based model is inherently flawed and luckily it seems that most podcasts providing valuable content are moving away from it.
- agentdrtran 8y ago
  Care to give some examples? Patreon allows pretty much everyone.
  - nnd 8y ago
    The has recently been a controversy with Patreon removing some content creators accusing them of "hate speech". Here is a pretty comprehensive summary: https://podnews.net/update/patreon-controversy https://podnews.net/update/patreon-controversy
  - tomp 8y ago
    Quite a few conservative “undesirables” were banned recently.
qaute 8y ago
This post is very well written! I like the colloquialism, exhaustive list of experiments (both successes and failures, to better educate others), future work and call to action, and a pervasive lack of fluff. In particular, this reads like many contemporary scientific papers, but is much clearer (I can understand everything with one pass - whoa!), albeit absent tabled data and extreme technical details. I wish more scientists wrote like this.
- dest 8y ago
  Thank you for the kind words
- SeriousM 8y ago
  That's exactly my thoughts about this post.
aquabeagle 8y ago
I want this for my TV in the form of an HDMI pass-through device that mutes the audio and/or greatly dims the picture while commercials are being played.
- dest 8y ago
  There is already software to skip TV ads. Not perfect, but good enough apparently. For a short review see https://www.adblockradio.com/blog/2018/12/10/ad-blocking-tv/ https://www.adblockradio.com/blog/2018/12/10/ad-blocking-tv/ You could set that up on a raspberry Pi, to play IPTV. A pure HDMI pass-through may be expensive because of the HDMI acquisition-side.
dexterdog 8y ago
Why not have a service that maintains metadata for popular podcasts with the timing of the commercial parts so players that know how to read it can auto-skip? The players can charge for the option and the metadata can be supplied by the content creators so they get a portion of the proceeds. If the content providers don't want to supply the information it can be crowd-sourced.
l9k 8y ago
I would suggest to integrate a simple local music player during ads and allow to select a specific playlist.
- dest 8y ago
  I would not know how to do it on the web player, such as https://www.adblockradio.com/player/ https://www.adblockradio.com/player/ Do you have an idea? On standalone players, it a really great idea and it is already being considered.
celticninja 8y ago
In the UK this is called a TV Licence, it funds the BBC radio stations (local and national) that feature no adverts at all. I cant stand commerical radio and have never listened to one through choice.
cwkoss 8y ago
Would be fun to record 'antivertisements' to replace the ads with. Ex. Instead of an Uber ad, its 15 seconds spiel about a recent scandal they've been involved in. Punishing advertising dollars is the only way to reduce marketshare of the industry in the long term.
- dest 8y ago
  This concept reminds me a nice Youtube video where the presenter suggests to associate brands with unpleasant situations in professional meetings. It's in French, but there are subtitles. https://youtu.be/AqCB6tGR3hs?t=658 https://youtu.be/AqCB6tGR3hs?t=658
donclark 8y ago
I would love to implement this on my Google Home mini when I listen to radio stations. If the radio stations are not going to provide an option to pay to not hear ads, I will gladly pay for a service to block ads.
- dest 8y ago
  I am working on a "Man in the middle" device that would filter audio streams before they reach players like Google Home.
drewmol 8y ago
made a comment when Apple acquired Shazam a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18066724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18066724 >...Unfortunately all product paths I can foresee will surely lead to targeted replacement ads, played at higher volume Any thoughts on other ways to monetize? ;-)
Fogest 8y ago
I have an automated system that is recording mixes from various radio stations and I was wondering if it's possible to get this to run on a saved file? Say I had an mp3, is there a way to run it through such program and get a resulting ad-free version?
allenleein 8y ago
The reason why audio adblocker should definitely exist: those ads will be updated one day.( Company/product shut down...)
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choocroot 8y ago
That's what I've been dreaming for ages! I've been musing about a system/software that could listen on my PC's audio and control/adjust/mute the volume when it detects ads. Such a system could also work for video content played on a PC! This system could also be implemented on a dongle-like Raspberry Pi that would take the PC's audio output (3.5mm jack in/out), process the audio, and play back the "clean" audio to it's jack output: that could be seen as an audio firewall. I think that working with analog audio (instead of official radio's streams) is the way to go to avoid legal issues: they cannot plug the "analog hole"!

285 points by dest 8y ago

Great work! It is very interesting to see the different algorithms you've used and the changes you were forced to make due to legal trouble.

eyeareque 8y ago

I will be very interested to see how well this does. This has been something I wish existed for a long time. Great work! I’d much more prefer to pay the podcaster directly than to listen to ads. But this doesn’t seem to be an option.

brucemoose 8y ago

This makes me wonder, what are other viable revenue sources for content creators besides ads? Personally I don't mind listening to a few ads on a podcast because I assume it is helping the creator cover their living expenses so that they may continue creating content that I enjoy. And spoken ads (hopefully) are not tracking me, although I suppose there are ways to overlay inaudible tones that other devices can pick up, etc.

e1ven 8y ago
I'd like to see a model where Patreon expands into making their apps more optimized for audio/video playback. People could produce ad-free versions of their podcast for Patrons. Apple or other podcast vendors would also be in a good position to provide an open standard for subscription podcasts without ads.
- rrdharan 8y ago
  This happens already. A few podcasts I support via Patreon have ad-free feeds that they supply to patrons as unique URLs for the RSS feeds. Presumably they can cut you off if they find that you then rebroadcast or share those URLs broadly. The Economist also does this - if you have a digital subscription you get a private/unique URL with an RSS feed serving the complete audio edition. If you cancel the subscription the feed stops working.
rchaud 8y ago
Agreed. I believe a lot of people have beef with online advertising primarily because of the programmatic nature of it, which hurts user privacy and site UX by causing the page content to jump around, not to mention loading new ads if the page stays open,. But, I don't have issues with podcasts where they work directly with a company to pitch a product. It's old school and it isn't as impersonal and cash-grabby as a junky website with an Adsense account. I can imagine a tool like this becoming necessary when Amazon/Google start piping in ads through their home speaker products. We just can't have nice things, I guess.
- dwighttk 8y ago
  like they'll let you run this on your amazon/google ad-supported home speaker product...
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
> And spoken ads (hopefully) are not tracking me While I understand that there is value in physically locating you as you play it, but the fact that the spoken ad got onto your podcast means that you are in some way located, right? I've gotten area (ie. ISP that don't exist anywhere else) specific messages in my podcasts. I guess they don't get as much usage data as lot of other apps, unless the playback app shares it.
_underfl0w_ 8y ago
Completely agree. I use multiple ad- and tracker-blocking browser extensions, but mostly due to the tracking. Incidentally, while blocking ads online can be noticed by the serving party (to e.g. display an annoying warning) those behind the goods/services being verbally advertised are none the wiser. > There are ways to overlay inaudible tones Are you referencing prior work or was that hypothetical? There is actual prior work on this. They were able to engineer a POC that could trigger "Hey Siri" and "OK Google" inaudibly by broadcasting it with ultrasound on a harmonic of the correct frequency, but at a pitch inaudible to humans [1] [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.09537.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.09537.pdf
singron 8y ago
The ads might not track you, but you might be tracked when downloading the podcast and the included ads might be personalized. I've noticed that the ads in certain podcasts are completely different when downloaded from a different location while traveling.
- _asummers 8y ago
  This is correct. I received Illinois relevant messaging on political podcasts towards the last US primary election, and it remained when in other states while traveling.
jniedrauer 8y ago
> what are other viable revenue sources for content creators besides ads? I don't mind paying content creators directly. I do mind allowing them to commodify parts of my mind.
packet_nerd 8y ago
I find ads in general, and particularly audio ones, to be a super annoying cognitive burden. I have to interrupt my train of thought and consciously block the message they're trying to pipe into my brain. I'm happy to pay for things if its low friction and reasonably priced, but will never accept being advertised to (in any form really, but especially audio and video ads). An audio adblocker seems like a great thing, and I'm excited about this. If enough of us use it, hopefully we can force creators to abandon ads and find a model where they work for us, not the ad companies. I wish there was a way to block billboards too. Back when google was making google glass, I thought it'd be possible to block out billboard advertisements someday.. to bad that didn't work. Or, just move to a state that bans them, I guess.
- wilsonnb3 8y ago
  > If enough of us use it, hopefully we can force creators to abandon ads and find a model where they work for us, not the ad companies. Why not just stop listening to what they’re creating?
  - hopler 8y ago
    Because the content is desirable.
xfitm3 8y ago
Advertisements sell their product in a narrative that I don't subscribe to. I aggressively block all forms of advertising, and on the occasion when I'm forced to watch an ad I usually can't believe what I am hearing or seeing. I can't help but think that advertisements are somehow toxic to the mind.
heretoo 8y ago
> This makes me wonder, what are other viable revenue sources for content creators besides ads? people willing to pay for content worth paying for
nofunsir 8y ago
Other viable revenue sources must include, and I mean this seriously, having a full-time job and doing podcasting on the side. Something that does not generate revenue (easily) is often referred to as a hobby, r&d, or fun. I'm much more interested in the podcast that is made for fun, than one made for profit. If you end up producing value to others with your hobby, and you decide to ask for value in return, by all means, do so, and provide a non-de-platformable method of compensation.
- hopler 8y ago
  So you also prefer art, food, clothing, software, and housing created by hobbyists?
  - nofunsir 8y ago
    Food, clothing, software as part of an integrated system, and housing, no.
TillE 8y ago
Patreon. There are quite a few which have never run ads and are making bank. The ideal format, arguably popularized by Chapo Trap House, is that you have a weekly free show and then at least one weekly bonus episode.
- hopler 8y ago
  Having a free tier of service is not a new concept.

shittyadmin 8y ago

I'd be really excited and willing to pay much more than the normal mobile app price to have this for my podcasts. Nothing pisses me off quite like the time waste that is podcast advertising. I skip them, but I was dreaming of a system like this...

dest 8y ago
Hi, author here. Thanks for your message. Please submit your podcasts on https://github.com/adblockradio/available-models https://github.com/adblockradio/available-models
- shittyadmin 8y ago
  Is the preference to bulk submit a single issue for a list of 6-10 podcasts or make individual issues for each?
  - dest 8y ago
    Please do it individually, thanks!
- driverdan 8y ago
  Are there instructions for training so we can contribute our own models? I've been wanting to play with ML and this seems like a fun way to do it. I read the write up and briefly looked at the repos and didn't see training instructions.
  - dest 8y ago
    Training is not open source (yet?). Among other questions, there is an issue with the copyrighted dataset that needs discussion.
ucaetano 8y ago
> Nothing pisses me off quite like the time waste that is podcast advertising. Why would you be more willing to pay to an app developer who will shut down the revenue stream for the content creator, than to listen to the ads and therefore fund the content creator?

dirtyid 8y ago

Detecting speech and music is particularly intriguing for different variable playback speed for speech bits and 1x for music bits.

dest 8y ago
I do not understand your sentence :/
- kevinh 8y ago
  I think that they're saying it would be interesting to use music detection to have the podcast playback switch from an accelerated playback speed during speech to normal speed when music is detected.
  - dest 8y ago
    OK, this makes sense, good idea

3rdkulturekyd 8y ago

Like the sound of this!!

anhonestopinion 8y ago

I like ads on podcasts: not invasive, support the shows and can't put malwares on my pc. Honestly I find an adblock for podcasts a total dick move (outside of the intellectual exercise part of course).

CivBase 8y ago
> Honestly I find an adblock for podcasts a total dick move If you expect payment for a service, give your "customers" an opportunity to support you directly. It can be a premium account, merchandise, or even a simple donation service. Don't force your "customers" to become the product. I don't see why podcasts should get a pass.
- drewg123 8y ago
  The annoying thing is that I like NPR podcasts, and donate to NPR. However, they don't have any premium option AFAIK.
- smilesnd 8y ago
  Their is a difference between ads and forcing someone to be a product. The tracking software in JS ads is what turns someone into a product in my opinion.
- the_watcher 8y ago
  Many podcasts actually do offer this, either via a Patreon or something like Stitcher Premium. One podcast I listen to (and subscribe to their Patreon) has mentioned that only ~10% of their listeners subscribe and that ads are a much larger source of revenue for them (even doubling subscribers wouldn't make up for this gap).
  - Marsymars 8y ago
    > One podcast I listen to (and subscribe to their Patreon) has mentioned that only ~10% of their listeners subscribe and that ads are a much larger source of revenue for them (even doubling subscribers wouldn't make up for this gap). This is interesting, but isn't be an argument against offering a pay-for option. I expect the paying subscribers are more valuable per user, so any user you convert to paying increases your revenue.

jonbarker 8y ago

The reason ads for podcasts don't deserve blocking and are OK is that they are completely opt-in. You have to enter a code or go to a URL in order for the podcaster to get credit.

JamesBaxter 8y ago

I probably wouldn't use this as I would feel bad about it but as a UK listener I've listened to SO MANY adverts from American podcasts for products I can't buy. I pay for stitcher premium and export the feed to an app that's actually useable. I recently paid to support Thrilling Adventure Hour on patreon and find it pretty crappy they still have adverts on the paid feed.

Jonnax 8y ago
I remember listening to a podcast (can't remember the name) but the adverts were tailored to my location. I think the MP3 gets generated based on location.
- samfriedman 8y ago
  I've seen this too. A politics podcast I listen to on Spotify played me some targeted get-out-the-vote messaging about my local & state races in November. I'm assuming Spotify provides them that data via customer's billing addresses. Or maybe they get it from location sharing via Waze (which has Spotify integration).
- l9k 8y ago
  I also did hear American ads when listening to a foreign podcast in a non-English language. It seems like the ads are added to the audio file at the start and the end of the podcast. (I use Player FM)
- sethhochberg 8y ago
  A lot of audio ad broadcast software uses a combination of audible or inaudible tones to act as "triggers" to mark a location where an ad can be injected using some kind of location/time/etc aware data, the ad itself is very rarely baked into the stream unless it is something you're listening to a host read themselves. In podcasts, the ad injection software will often pause the audio at the point where the ad tone occurred while it plays the ad, and resume it afterwards for continuity. AdSwizz's AIS suite is one example of the tools commonly used for this: https://www.adswizz.com/ad-insertion-suite/ https://www.adswizz.com/ad-insertion-suite/ (I work in the internet radio space, lots of old-school internet radio streams are similar).

polskibus 8y ago

I wonder if this could work with Spotify free tier.

dest 8y ago
OP here. Feel free to tinker with this!
helb 8y ago
I've tried this a few years back when Spotify started repeating some annoying ad over and over. It's quite "low-tech" compared to adblockradio, but it worked pretty well. https://github.com/serialoverflow/blockify https://github.com/serialoverflow/blockify

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baldfat 8y ago

Personally I want the same option I get from Google. I can see ads on YouTube or I can pay for an ad free YouTube. Now a creator will put their own ads inside the video is up to them. Personally I like when they put them at the end, like Smart Everyday does. If there was an outlet where I can just pay for ad free podcast I would be happy to do it. It also would pay far more than what ads pay. I still remember the release of YouTube Red was how this was hurting creators but it was a cynical argument that paying actual money would pay less than a paying customer.

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago

I aggressively block ads and all other forms of tracking in my browser, but I have to admit that I don't generally have a problem with podcast ads. Listening to some podcaster blather on for a minute about some product or service at least gives me the warm fuzzy feeling that they're earning something for their efforts. More podcasters really do need to get on the premium ad-free model though. I pay money to make ads go away on a few platforms (YouTube, Spotify etc) and would gladly put my money where my mouth is and do the same for podcasts. Websites, too, if anyone can come up with a decent way to make it work - AND STOP TRACKING ME!

givinguflac 8y ago
I agree but generally avoid podcasts that are heavier in ads. As for website ads, Ars Technica has an interesting subscription that stops ads and tracking.
jeena 8y ago
I agree and also pay for YouTube, Thunderbird (donations) and a couple of podcasts (via patreon) which do not have ads. Interestingly mostly american podcasts have ads, the German and Swedish ones don't.
cortesoft 8y ago
> Listening to some podcaster blather on for a minute about some product or service at least gives me the warm fuzzy feeling that they're earning something for their efforts. You don't feel the same way about a website? What is different about podcasts? Genuinely curious, because I have a similar initial reaction but am not exactly sure why.
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  I'm not the person you're asking, but most websites offload the ads to a different service on a different server. It's the difference between your favorite podcast performer reading some copy, and a movie on TV fading out to showcase the great deals at Luke's Honda Dealership & Taco Shop Come On Down For The Tastiest Deals In Town. It also strongly indicates that the podcast author has vetted the ads, and is at least implicitly approving of the product; on the web, it's very likely that the author has absolutely no idea what ads are being shown to their visitors.

drewmol 8y ago

Hey op, my 2¢: just mute them, everywhere. Duplicate the audio stream, detect ads, use that to mute the volume of whatever is playing the ads.

dest 8y ago
It's what I do on adblockradio.com/player I am currently working on Sonos / Google Home / Amazon Alexa
- drewmol 8y ago
  > Sonos / Google Home / Amazon Alexa Interesting, are you planning to mute Sonos/Home/Alexa by analyzing it's audio output stream? If so: do you plan to use the devices audio controls? Are you planning on using the Sonos/Home/Alexa microphone for detection of other sources?
  - dest 8y ago
    I plan to "man in the middle" the HTTP stream.
amelius 8y ago
It would be cool to have a bluetooth speaker that has an embedded ad blocker (muting or e.g. replacing the audio by favorite songs).
- dest 8y ago
  What would be your psychological price point for such a product?
  - amelius 8y ago
    At most 1.5 times the price of a conventional speaker.

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Espadrille 8y ago

Seems interesting, I will try it. If it is working I may finally listen again to radio in my car after having stopped it for many years.

notafraudster 8y ago

A response to some of the many arguments expressed in this thread: "Then don't listen to it". Alternatively, I'll do what I do now, which is listen to it but skip the ads and wait for software that can automatically skip them to come around, which is the same thing I did for websites. "That's selfish" Yes, just like the millions of people who use adblock software on their browser. Of course adblock software came after web browsers built in popup blockers in response to the X-10 Spycam being 50% of web advertising circa 2001-2003, so really you could argue the web browsers are selfish and we're all selfish if we don't turn off the popup blockers. Really, even if a website says "By using this website, we're going to install malware on your computer", you're selfish if you reject the malware. If selfish means that I make decisions that make things better for me at the expense of others, then yes, I am selfish when it comes to ads. I view ads as toxic and bad for my health, and I take measures to avoid them. "But it'll lead to the collapse of podcast publishing". Maybe. Of course publishers repeatedly said adblocking would lead to the collapse of the web, and as best as I can tell mostly idiots doing a pivot to Facebook Video caused what collapse did occur (because, as selfish actors, they pursued a greater revenue stream at the expense of quality and integrity -- oops, turns out there's no money there because the numbers are all fake.), Adblocking also ushered in sustainable models for journalism, blogging, etc. Certainly all the websites I read have found alternate revenue models just fine. Maybe that's because the ones that didn't went under, but I apparently didn't notice. If podcasting collapses and goes back to the dark ages of being a non-commercial hobby medium like it was three years ago, like, okay? "Stop comparing podcasts to websites, podcast ads aren't as bad" Maybe, but you don't get to decide for me my threshold for ignoring or blocking ads. Ads weren't as bad when I started using AdBlock Plus in 2004, but they were bad enough for me to decide to use it. Others may have had their breaking point later because they are less sensitive to ads. Some people might still browse the web with ads on and claim they don't care. You do you. The strange thing to me is people expressing that they'd rather block ads, but they're too noble to do so, so they get mad at others for blocking ads? Uh, okay?

smacktoward 8y ago
> "That's selfish" Yes, just like the millions of people who use adblock software on their browser. Yes, that's exactly correct! Just like them, you are selfish. Just because "millions of people" do something doesn't make it morally right. > Adblocking also ushered in sustainable models for journalism, blogging, etc. This would be news to most working journalists, of which there are a lot fewer now than there used to be (see http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/30/newsroom-employment-dropped-nearly-a-quarter-in-less-than-10-years-with-greatest-decline-at-newspapers/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/30/newsroom-emp...). Even high quality publications like the New York Times have been struggling for a decade-plus now to figure out a way just to break even online. The ones that have done best are the ones that have put up paywalls, which is kind of ironic when you realize that the only thing HN readers hate more than seeing an ad is hitting a paywall. The only other model that has proved sustainable is selling the publication to become the personal toy of some billionaire, which is fine as long as you're OK with all the news you get being subject to the whims of a few billionaires. > If podcasting collapses and goes back to the dark ages of being a non-commercial hobby medium like it was three years ago, like, okay? At least you're honest about your entitlement to stuff you love being more important to you than whether or not the people who make that stuff can make a living at it. So there's that.

microdrum 8y ago

This is fantastic. Can we use this as a proxy when we input RSS feeds into our podcast apps? I use Overcast on iOS, for instance. I'd love to remove all audio ads from Overcast, both dynamically inserted and normal "live reads," which are also fairly toxic.

microdrum 8y ago
I should note the dev of Overcast has his own podcast, which is replete with TONS of ads! I don't want to listen to these ads at all. I guess may as well add this feed to the training set.
dest 8y ago
Dynamically inserted ads could be automatically removed. Live reads are more difficult. It would require natural language processing, which is out of reach for now (but help is welcome!) Adblock Radio as a proxy is totally feasible (Pi-Hole like https://pi-hole.net/ https://pi-hole.net/). I am currently working on this.

goodmachine 8y ago

"I started Adblock Radio in the end of 2015, a few months after completing my PhD studies in fusion plasma physics." Now I feel sad.

dest 8y ago
What makes you sad? The fact that there is not enough funding for fusion plasma research? Or my unconventional career choices? :)

fpgaminer 8y ago

Great article, thank you for sharing. About the machine learning model; forgive me if any of these questions were covered in the article: 1) Why classify as three categories (music, talk, ads) versus just two (ads, content)? Seems like that might help simplify things, since I assume all we care about is whether something is an ad or not. 2) So based on the description you're feeding 4 seconds worth of buffer into the model for classification, every second; the model being a stateless RNN. I'm curious, did you try just using a (1D) CNN instead? That would allow you to use a more robust architecture, versus RNNs which tend to be finicky. (And RNN doesn't seem to provide benefit, since you aren't using its state, other than potentially being a smaller model). 3) AFAIK there are loss functions which penalize false positives (in this case, penalizing incorrectly tagging content as ads). Was this experimented with? 4) This one is more of a curious idea: 4 seconds worth of buffer might lack enough context, which we can see play out in some of the failings alluded to in "Future improvements". So I'm curious... Suppose, if your architecture isn't set up this way already, that you've got a layer before your final layer that's just a little bit bigger than the number of categories. Say, 32 features. (A lot of RNN architectures are built with an output matrix that's HiddenState => Outputs (n=3). So I'm suggesting HiddenState => Embedding [n=32] => Outputs [n=3]). Train that architecture like before. Now, take that trained model and chop off the output layer so that its output is those 32 element vectors. We can now build a secondary, context model on top of it. It takes as input those 32 element vectors (one vector per second) and outputs the same classifications (ad/not-ad). But since its input is much smaller, you can train an RNN with a much, much deeper BPTT. Hopefully this model can not only be more intelligent by using context, but also take the place of your hysteresis. Since the underlying model is fixed, you can pre-compute its outputs on your dataset, so there's absolutely no cost while training the higher order model (and the pre-computed dataset will be really tiny; 32 elements every second would be only 100mb for your 10 day corpus.) Now, this is somewhat dependent on your corpus being of the nature "here's a long section of audio where the ad is tagged precisely". i.e. it can just be a mixed bag of "this whole audio segment is ad/not-ad". If you don't have that kind of data you'd need to create it (assuming my crazy idea is worth the effort). Hopefully you wouldn't need much. This higher order model shouldn't need to be very complex, which means it doesn't need a big corpus. Or you could try to use a CTC loss function, in which case you just need a dataset that's large chunks of audio and vague labels like "this length of audio has 1 ad somewhere in it." By the way, this isn't intended as advice; I'm by no means a domain expert here. I'm really just thinking out loud. And since none of the other comments at the time of this writing are discussing anything other than the morality of this software, I thought I'd take the time to inject some more technical discussion. > hip-hop music, easily mispredicted as advertisements Well given the endemic use of name dropping and product placement in popular hip-hop, I'm not sure that's a misprediction ... :P Joking aside, one thing that might be useful is to find a stream with positively no ads (e.g. Spotify Premium, Apple Music, etc). Play that through a trained classifier. If the classifier ever detects an ad, add that audio sample to your corpus.

nimbius 8y ago

Its worth investigating the increased use of Subaudible tones to demarcate commercials. These subaudibles are originally intended to be captured by your phones and tablets in order to allow the company to track you across multiple devices through their microphones. the tones are also used to detect commercial ad presence for analytics companies or suites used by advertisers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaudible_tone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaudible_tone One could use these tones to 'detect' a commercial and avoid it, or strip out these tones entirely to promote operational security amongst devices.

dest 8y ago
Interesting! Thanks for sharing. This might be a criterion among others, as there will always be ads that do not have subaudible tones.
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cwkoss 8y ago
>One could use these tones to 'detect' a commercial and avoid it, or strip out these tones entirely to promote operational security amongst devices. Or one could layer superfluous erroneous tones into every stream to poison the dataset.
- dest 8y ago
  Good point. Note I have designed Adblock Radio to rely on audio only, so that it gives the smallest possible margin for radio operators to circumvent it. I do not rely on metadata, nor do I use the usual time schedules for ad breaks.
  - shkkmo 8y ago
    That's great, but can't you use the subaudible tones as an additional blocking metric? Or even as an assessment metric to flag potential false negatives?

Animats 8y ago

I built a device to do this many decades ago. An electronics magazine published a schematic for a "voice/music discriminator". This was a simple analog circuit that ran the audio through a low-pass filter and then detected sharp cutoffs. Voice has those, but music without lyrics doesn't. It's not perfect, but it cuts off ad blithering before it gets annoying. (I should find that thing. It's in my garage somewhere.)

dest 8y ago
I would be really curious. I some day you find it please drop me an email!

jccalhoun 8y ago

I would really like this if only because I listen to a radio station through iheartradio and they run the same 3-4 commercials during breaks for weeks at a time. Just give me some different ads and I might not want to skip them!

andjd 8y ago

Panoply has developed software for podcasts that allows them to inject targeted ads into downloads, which makes podcast advertising closer to the nightmare that we see on the web. However, that could offer another avenue for ad-blocking. If you download multiple podcasts from different IPs, you can isolate the ads by finding the parts of the audio that are different.

joshfriend 8y ago
That's a great idea if the injected ads are exactly the same length and always get put in the same place. If you have a 30 second ad in one download and 40s in another, 10 seconds of legitimate podcast audio gets interpreted as an advertisement.
- jldugger 8y ago
  It works even if they don't, you just need a more intense algorithm to do similarity matching across all offsets.
  - dest 8y ago
    With maximally repeated sequences, you can https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6012115 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6012115
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  You "just" need to find all the common segments between different downloads; those are very likely to be the actual content, and not differing ads. Naturally this doesn't work very well if the pool of ads is low and you get repeats.

nnd 8y ago

I think the way to go is directly supporting Podcast makers (outside of the platforms like Patreon who have dubious censoring practices). The ad-based model is inherently flawed and luckily it seems that most podcasts providing valuable content are moving away from it.

agentdrtran 8y ago
Care to give some examples? Patreon allows pretty much everyone.
- nnd 8y ago
  The has recently been a controversy with Patreon removing some content creators accusing them of "hate speech". Here is a pretty comprehensive summary: https://podnews.net/update/patreon-controversy https://podnews.net/update/patreon-controversy
- tomp 8y ago
  Quite a few conservative “undesirables” were banned recently.

qaute 8y ago

This post is very well written! I like the colloquialism, exhaustive list of experiments (both successes and failures, to better educate others), future work and call to action, and a pervasive lack of fluff. In particular, this reads like many contemporary scientific papers, but is much clearer (I can understand everything with one pass - whoa!), albeit absent tabled data and extreme technical details. I wish more scientists wrote like this.

dest 8y ago
Thank you for the kind words
SeriousM 8y ago
That's exactly my thoughts about this post.

aquabeagle 8y ago

I want this for my TV in the form of an HDMI pass-through device that mutes the audio and/or greatly dims the picture while commercials are being played.

dest 8y ago
There is already software to skip TV ads. Not perfect, but good enough apparently. For a short review see https://www.adblockradio.com/blog/2018/12/10/ad-blocking-tv/ https://www.adblockradio.com/blog/2018/12/10/ad-blocking-tv/ You could set that up on a raspberry Pi, to play IPTV. A pure HDMI pass-through may be expensive because of the HDMI acquisition-side.

dexterdog 8y ago

Why not have a service that maintains metadata for popular podcasts with the timing of the commercial parts so players that know how to read it can auto-skip? The players can charge for the option and the metadata can be supplied by the content creators so they get a portion of the proceeds. If the content providers don't want to supply the information it can be crowd-sourced.

l9k 8y ago

I would suggest to integrate a simple local music player during ads and allow to select a specific playlist.

dest 8y ago
I would not know how to do it on the web player, such as https://www.adblockradio.com/player/ https://www.adblockradio.com/player/ Do you have an idea? On standalone players, it a really great idea and it is already being considered.

celticninja 8y ago

In the UK this is called a TV Licence, it funds the BBC radio stations (local and national) that feature no adverts at all. I cant stand commerical radio and have never listened to one through choice.

cwkoss 8y ago

Would be fun to record 'antivertisements' to replace the ads with. Ex. Instead of an Uber ad, its 15 seconds spiel about a recent scandal they've been involved in. Punishing advertising dollars is the only way to reduce marketshare of the industry in the long term.

dest 8y ago
This concept reminds me a nice Youtube video where the presenter suggests to associate brands with unpleasant situations in professional meetings. It's in French, but there are subtitles. https://youtu.be/AqCB6tGR3hs?t=658 https://youtu.be/AqCB6tGR3hs?t=658

donclark 8y ago

I would love to implement this on my Google Home mini when I listen to radio stations. If the radio stations are not going to provide an option to pay to not hear ads, I will gladly pay for a service to block ads.

dest 8y ago
I am working on a "Man in the middle" device that would filter audio streams before they reach players like Google Home.

drewmol 8y ago

made a comment when Apple acquired Shazam a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18066724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18066724 >...Unfortunately all product paths I can foresee will surely lead to targeted replacement ads, played at higher volume Any thoughts on other ways to monetize? ;-)

Fogest 8y ago

I have an automated system that is recording mixes from various radio stations and I was wondering if it's possible to get this to run on a saved file? Say I had an mp3, is there a way to run it through such program and get a resulting ad-free version?

allenleein 8y ago

The reason why audio adblocker should definitely exist: those ads will be updated one day.( Company/product shut down...)

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

choocroot 8y ago

That's what I've been dreaming for ages! I've been musing about a system/software that could listen on my PC's audio and control/adjust/mute the volume when it detects ads. Such a system could also work for video content played on a PC! This system could also be implemented on a dongle-like Raspberry Pi that would take the PC's audio output (3.5mm jack in/out), process the audio, and play back the "clean" audio to it's jack output: that could be seen as an audio firewall. I think that working with analog audio (instead of official radio's streams) is the way to go to avoid legal issues: they cannot plug the "analog hole"!