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I agree - actually I've gotten into the habit of trying to track down the original RSS feed for each podcast I listen to. Often the link shared by the podcaster

I agree - actually I've gotten into the habit of trying to track down the original RSS feed for each podcast I listen to. Often the link shared by the podcaster will be to rehosters like Google Play or iTunes, or lesser-known services, that have tracking and probably the ability to insert custom ads. The worst is when they make the elitist move of only linking iTunes, making their podcast unlistenable (on mobile at least) to most people worldwide. But most of the time the original file is getting pulled by the rehoster from an unprotected RSS feed, and these can be easy to find. You can get the RSS feeds for Soundcloud, as an example. Others are hosted on Libsyn.com, and you can often find them by searching for the podcast name and "site:libsyn.com" in the search engine of your choice. That said, I don't listen to podcasts enough any more to say whether this is a universal solution at all. Actually, the fact that podcasts have unblockable ads is one of the main reasons I no longer bother.

chrisrhoden 7y ago
> podcasts have unblockable ads As far as I know, they are also the last digital ads with a non-disableable skip button, so you win some and lose some.
ufo 7y ago
Some soundcloud podcasts don't have,an RSS feed and,are only listenable withthe soundcloud app. These are the worst.
- bscphil 7y ago
  Do you have an example? I'd like to look into it.
  - ufo 7y ago
    Oops, I got the "S"s mixed up. The podcast that I couldn't find the RSS feed for was on Spotify, not Soundcound.
filmgirlcw 7y ago
There’s not a universal solution, in part because many times the dynamic ad-insertion is something the podcasters themselves want (or it’s one of the terms of using a certain podcast host). I have a podcast with a podcasting network that sells our ads for us. To my knowledge, they don’t do any dynamic ad insertions for older episodes (though if they did, I wouldn’t necessarily be upset, provided they were inserted the right way), but plenty of podcasting networks DO do that and it’s something the creator’s endorse because it means they are getting paid more money. There are third-party podcast apps that rehost feeds and may add their own stuff to the content — that’s another issue entirely — but most dynamic ad-insertion stuff is happening with the permission/consent of the people that make the podcast, either explicitly or as terms they agreed to in order to get hosted/have ads sold on their behalf.
- bscphil 7y ago
  That's a fair point. Whatever service is originally hosting the content might well be doing the dynamic ad insertions too. My assumption is that in at least some cases while the ads are desired by the podcaster, they aren't inserted until a later stage by an aggregator. So there's some hope of getting at the original source. At least, when I've been able to track down sources, they seem to be mostly hosted on generic CDNs, which gives me some hope that the same file is being served to all listeners.
  - filmgirlcw 7y ago
    That’s generally the case — and depending on the hosting system, that could change too. The really huge companies in the space (Art19, Stitcher/Midroll, Wondery, Megaphone, Podbean) are all doing dynamic ad insertion on different scales — but given the way the RSS feeds are constructed, I don’t know specifically how the dynamic aspect works for each provider. I do know that early on, companies who did this stuff (like NPR, who was really early to this game and has been doing some type of dynamic ad-insertion for more than a decade) often had separate versions of the audio file. So you could have an ad-free version of the file (maybe for users in certain geographic regions, if an ad-buy was specifically targeted) and then other versions of the file with ads built-in — and an algorithm would determine what version a user accessed based on a variety of parameters. If that’s the case, yeah, you would probably be able to figure out if multiple versions existed and then request the ad-free version from CDN or whatever. At this point, it’s my understanding that most of the dynamic insertion is happening server-side — where ads are inserted based on campaign timing and maybe geo-targeting) at the point of the download or stream request (though I imagine even here, most of what is served is coming from a CDN, I just mean the initial request). That way, the download/stream always has “current” ads, even if the show itself is years old. (I don’t know how often they update those different versions — I would imagine you have 6-week campaign as an example where all episodes get an insert and are then cached on the CDN and then after the campaign ends a new file is generated and cached). That isn’t to say you couldn’t potentially still get access to a copy of a file without inserts — but I bet it would be a lot more difficult.
wenbin 7y ago
You can come find RSS feed for most podcasts on my site https://www.listennotes.com/ https://www.listennotes.com/

chrisrhoden 7y ago

> podcasts have unblockable ads As far as I know, they are also the last digital ads with a non-disableable skip button, so you win some and lose some.

ufo 7y ago

Some soundcloud podcasts don't have,an RSS feed and,are only listenable withthe soundcloud app. These are the worst.

bscphil 7y ago
Do you have an example? I'd like to look into it.
- ufo 7y ago
  Oops, I got the "S"s mixed up. The podcast that I couldn't find the RSS feed for was on Spotify, not Soundcound.

filmgirlcw 7y ago

There’s not a universal solution, in part because many times the dynamic ad-insertion is something the podcasters themselves want (or it’s one of the terms of using a certain podcast host). I have a podcast with a podcasting network that sells our ads for us. To my knowledge, they don’t do any dynamic ad insertions for older episodes (though if they did, I wouldn’t necessarily be upset, provided they were inserted the right way), but plenty of podcasting networks DO do that and it’s something the creator’s endorse because it means they are getting paid more money. There are third-party podcast apps that rehost feeds and may add their own stuff to the content — that’s another issue entirely — but most dynamic ad-insertion stuff is happening with the permission/consent of the people that make the podcast, either explicitly or as terms they agreed to in order to get hosted/have ads sold on their behalf.

bscphil 7y ago
That's a fair point. Whatever service is originally hosting the content might well be doing the dynamic ad insertions too. My assumption is that in at least some cases while the ads are desired by the podcaster, they aren't inserted until a later stage by an aggregator. So there's some hope of getting at the original source. At least, when I've been able to track down sources, they seem to be mostly hosted on generic CDNs, which gives me some hope that the same file is being served to all listeners.
- filmgirlcw 7y ago
  That’s generally the case — and depending on the hosting system, that could change too. The really huge companies in the space (Art19, Stitcher/Midroll, Wondery, Megaphone, Podbean) are all doing dynamic ad insertion on different scales — but given the way the RSS feeds are constructed, I don’t know specifically how the dynamic aspect works for each provider. I do know that early on, companies who did this stuff (like NPR, who was really early to this game and has been doing some type of dynamic ad-insertion for more than a decade) often had separate versions of the audio file. So you could have an ad-free version of the file (maybe for users in certain geographic regions, if an ad-buy was specifically targeted) and then other versions of the file with ads built-in — and an algorithm would determine what version a user accessed based on a variety of parameters. If that’s the case, yeah, you would probably be able to figure out if multiple versions existed and then request the ad-free version from CDN or whatever. At this point, it’s my understanding that most of the dynamic insertion is happening server-side — where ads are inserted based on campaign timing and maybe geo-targeting) at the point of the download or stream request (though I imagine even here, most of what is served is coming from a CDN, I just mean the initial request). That way, the download/stream always has “current” ads, even if the show itself is years old. (I don’t know how often they update those different versions — I would imagine you have 6-week campaign as an example where all episodes get an insert and are then cached on the CDN and then after the campaign ends a new file is generated and cached). That isn’t to say you couldn’t potentially still get access to a copy of a file without inserts — but I bet it would be a lot more difficult.

wenbin 7y ago

You can come find RSS feed for most podcasts on my site https://www.listennotes.com/ https://www.listennotes.com/