8 ms·

Pocket Casts, you altered the deal, so I will alter your app

127 points by ruph123 1y ago

zmmmmm 1y ago
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.
wmichelin 1y ago
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.
- galaxy_gas 1y ago
  Automattic are struggling business ?
- N_Lens 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - sockgrant 1y ago
    [flagged]
- jszymborski 1y ago
  > why does the author here feel so entitled People were promised they just needed to pay one fee to get the app. Then, they went to a subscription fee, but grandfathered in previous purchasers. Now, they've introduced ads. Their overhead is their problem, they sold me something and now they are renegging. It's like the first thing in the article, not exactly burried.
  - carlosjobim 1y ago
    I hope you never hear about free refills that they have in some restaurants. You're demanding more than a decade of free app updates for a small sum you paid ages ago. Why can't you instead be happy with all the value you got from the app? We aren't born to be small minded and stingy, look up to greater goals and a greater attitude in life. We only have so many years before it is cut from us.
    - jjulius 1y ago
      >You're demanding more than a decade of free app updates for a small sum you paid ages ago. I mean... that was the agreement between both parties. Really not that hard to grasp.
      - carlosjobim 1y ago
        So how about those free refills at McDonalds? Clearly you have the right to return there every day for the rest of your life and fill up hundreds of cups each time. After all, it is in the agreement between both parties, so go for it!
        jjulius 1y ago
        That's an apples and oranges comparison. While the timeline isn't explicitly stated, free refills are implied that it's for the duration of your visit. In fact you can see the implication given that's how it's used most of the time. Telling someone they'll get "lifetime" access for a one-time payment is not the same.
        tacitusarc 1y ago
        In fact, if I was told I had purchased lifetime free refills, I would expect I could obtain a refill during any visit without purchase.
        1y ago
- CharlesW 1y ago
  Is Automattic a struggling business? Also, podcasters are paying for media hosting. Automattic presumably hosts a catalog service, but it can’t be that expensive to run.
  - cwyers 1y ago
    `Is Automattic a struggling business?` I mean, everytime I see someone talking about them on Twitter, they are clearly struggling with _something_.
- derektank 1y ago
  I think it is sort of incumbent upon you, as a business offering a lifetime membership, to properly invest some of that initial fee, such that the returns cover future operating costs. Many other companies work on this model. If the bank refused to return the money I loaned them, I would rightfully be very upset. I think it's similarly fair to be upset about a company revoking lifetime memberships. This particular situation is more of a grey area, but I don't think maintenance and operating costs are a sufficient excuse.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > it is sort of incumbent upon you, as a business offering a lifetime membership, to properly invest some of that initial fee, such that the returns cover future operating costs We may need a law that regulates "lifetime" purchases. One part is standardised disclosure. The other is putting fees into a trust.
    - Zagorath 1y ago
      I don't think a trust should be necessary. A plan for longterm sustainability should be. The streaming video service Nebula, for example, has a lifetime membership. The company was very straightforward with potential customers: this is not their best deal, it's explicitly meant for people who want to help support the company (or who prefer not to have ongoing subscription costs), and they are doing it as an alternative to seeking outside investment money. The money they raise won't go into a trust, but into expanding the business in the same way a company might if it went to seek venture capital. At the time I signed up for it, it cost roughly 10 years' worth of subscriptions.
  - johanyc 1y ago
    > as a business offering a lifetime membership > If the bank refused to return the money I loaned them, I would rightfully be very upset. Everyone who bought the app STILL have access to the app. All features they paid for are still available (except if you consider no ad a feature). The "correct" way to do it is change current app to classic and release a new app but that's quite cumbersome. I would like Apple or Google to offer an option to provide paid upgrade options.
- renewiltord 1y ago
  There's no reasonable devil's advocate. The answer is that one-time fee apps are not sustainable. There are ongoing costs with most businesses and one-time fees do not capture that. Therefore don't sell them. Sell everything on subscription or you will eventually fail to serve your customers and everyone will be unhappy. If you're a big business, it's risky to buy open-source applications, so don't do that unless the benefit is obvious. They promised a thing they could not deliver on and that was sufficient to get enough users that they could then sell the app onwards to a bunch of suckers. This is a classic play in the "sell dollars for pennies and then sell the dollars-for-pennies app to a guy with a lot of dollars who eventually gets sick of buying pennies with dollars" genre.
  - mcv 1y ago
    The one time fee doesn't pay for your ongoing costs, but it does pay for your upfront costs. The trick is to either get other users to pay for your ongoing costs, or to reduce ongoing costs and stop further development.
    - renewiltord 1y ago
      I suppose you're right, but you have to be very quick in the latter case to fully extract your portion of the surplus or you're just yielding it to a copycat that does the subscription model.
  - theshrike79 1y ago
    One time cost per major version is sustainable, you won't get Silicon Valley rich on it, but you can make a living. Lifetime licenses only work in the beginning when you have people buying them at regular intervals, at some point the market is saturated and you need to have a subscription model. Case in point: Unraid. I have two grandfathered "forever" licenses and I'll never need a third.
    - seec 1y ago
      Yes, the thing with one time purchase is that it should be as it is, right now. Not including updates and support forever. By this standard, people should feel entitled to get an update on their fridge whenever a new compressor technology is available (or whatever, you get the point).
- rmunn 1y ago
  If you don't honor contracts, then you should go out of business, because nobody will trust you (if they're wise, though there are always some people/companies who will be foolish). If you make a contract that involves you receiving a one-time fee for something that will cost you far more than that fee, then you will eventually go out of business for being stupid. Yes, there are hosting costs and maintenance costs. So the original deal (pay once for something that costs us ongoing money) was a stupid business decision. Doesn't change the fact that they undertook to make that contract. So now they should be held to it. And the fact that someone else bought them does not invalidate the contract. When you acquire a business, you acquire their contractual obligations. As it should be, otherwise contracts cannot be trusted in the long run.
  - simultsop 1y ago
    If people/companies want to support a thing they think should exist, it is their sacrifice to keep it alive. I don't think as them being stupid. For the concerns of contracts, you are not alone on the suffering side. Alltogether humanity elevated tolerance to this level, this is not a surprise.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > If you don't honor contracts, then you should go out of business We're talking about Automattic. It's virtually their business model.
    - baby_souffle 1y ago
      I don't think they owned Pocket casts all the way back then...
  - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
    Well, does anyone actually have a copy of the contract from 14 years ago? Usually there are clauses hedging against this kind of thing. Example: I recently wrote the T&S for my Finnish dictionary app (still working on it), and I make it clear in advance that the license was a one time fee for perpetual use for that major version. [1] I can do this because the app is almost entirely offline, and because for the parts that are, smart cloud infra decisions means my recurring infra costs are low. If I add in features which imply a bespoke server down the line, of course that would probably be a major version upgrade - and a change in the pricing model to boot. But I'd still keep the old v1 stuff up for the lifers. [1]: https://taskusanakirja.com/terms-of-service/#91-pricing-and-license-model https://taskusanakirja.com/terms-of-service/#91-pricing-and-...
- muppetman 1y ago
  Because we paid to not have to put up with this garbage. There's so many better ways to do this - look at nzb360 - https://nzb360.com/ https://nzb360.com/ They added a new/better interface you have to pay money to unlock. When they add new features/services you now have to pay to unlock. What you paid for originally, still yours. Want to get access to the new stuff? You can either pay a subscription for "everything" or pay one-time-unlocks for features. Then I look at serviecs like lichess where they just operate 100% on donations and users helping by adding their devices into the pool of compute for analysis. "Shove ads in" is the low, easiest, tackiest way to "annoy" your users into paying. Those that already paid once are annoyed the goalposts have changed. Make the app worth paying an upgrade for, don't just go "well it's still shit but now there's ads unless you pay!"
- wahnfrieden 1y ago
  You will renege on a contract if it’s inconvenient to honor it? Good to know.
- toofy 1y ago
  it seems to me that we desperately need to get back to a place where a business is held to their word. we have come to a place where corporations are calling limited “unlimited” and outright just lying to people. i have seen people unironically defend this as “well if they don’t lie, then how do you expect them to sell their product?” again, people have said this entirely unironically. i think it’s far more reasonable to expect a company to be held to their contracts and agreements. normal people certainly are. i’ll never understand how we got to a place where so many corporations can say with a straight face “we deserve to make money in any way possible and it’s unfair for you to hold us to any kind of responsibility for our own actions”
  - mrheosuper 1y ago
    Back in the day, Pepsi had an ads that claim you can win a Jet fighter if you do xxx. A guy did xxx and tried to get the Jet, but of course he couldn't and sue them. The court let Pepsi win. So, "a place where a business is held to their word" has never been existed.
    - mcv 1y ago
      But it should exist. This is blatantly false advertising. Of course a jet fighter is a ridiculous thing to promise, but it's still a promise they chose to make. Why make a promise they never intend to keep? That sort of thing should be struck down hard by the courts. But a life time membership is not an unreasonable promise.
      - db48x 1y ago
        People employ hyperbole all the time, so why can’t a company? But you’re right, a lifetime membership should really be for a lifetime. But since nobody is suing over it, then it’ll continue to be abused.
- vorpalhex 1y ago
  What is PocketCasts maintaining? 1. A few kb of playlists and accounts 2. Probably a search service 3. Likely artwork caching It's not free to run this.. but it's not exactly expensive either. Many users pay and don't use the app very much. I am sure there are some super users who use a lot. And most apps continue to sell, make enough income to fund a few devs and keep the services on. Even with a one time payment. It's not like pocketcasts is paying the podcasters or producing content. The problem is seeing every single dumb thing as some kind of mega-growth M&A deal when it's not. No, your podcast app won't make you hundreds of millions, sorry.
  - photomatt 1y ago
    We don't disclose Pocket Casts revenue directly, but we invest $millions a year in its development and hosting. It gets very broad usage and has over ten million of listening hours a week. There are clients maintained and new features developed for iPhone, iPad, MacOS, Apple Watch, Android Phones and Tablets, and an open web version.
    - seec 1y ago
      I don't understand why you went with a single licence valid for all platforms. Clearly each client is a different product on each platform, even if it might have the same core functionality. I don't know what the original price was and I understand why he is mad, but that was a poor business decision. If you overpromise that's kind of on you, plenty of companies have been burned by such behavior.
- gigel82 1y ago
  It's so sad this view is supported by so many people. So incredibly sad, especially in this community... I feel like we're doomed to become the dreaded "you will own nothing and be happy" society that the technofeudal lords so drool over.
- zmmmmm 1y ago
  > why does the author here feel so entitled Because they paid for it.
- UmGuys 1y ago
  The company sold an app and refuses to honor what users paid for. If this is allowed, it will become a strategy because it's profitable. Trick people to purchase, then add ads to the 'ad-free' app. There's no logic other than, "we can steal and no one will stop us." They should be forced to honor purchases or publish a new app.
mtoner23 1y ago
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?
- rbits 1y ago
  I think they have their own podcast index that you can search through. They also sync your listening progress to the cloud. But with PocketCasts Plus being $66 AUD/year, surely those subscriptions are enough to cover the costs. I used to subscribe to PocketCasts Plus, but I stopped when they raised the price. It's so expensive.
  - galaxy_gas 1y ago
    Having peek at the feature set I cannot imagine how this to cost more then handful of subscriber of revenue to run~ They do not host any media -- The volume of post searching fulltext is so small single PSQL instance can take over -- your listening progress is a single integer ...
    - tantalor 1y ago
      Reminds me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
      - galaxy_gas 1y ago
        at least have cost of storing the media that Dropbox need pay. In this case there is none of that. [[ I do understand there is a small distinction here, in that the Dropbox reference is for a user that will self host the storage server, but in the context of this message I refer to the SAAS host or owner of Pocket Casts I cannot imagine to be losing 800k a year even at AWS pricing given what the app does or something is written very wrong ... ]]
      - vachina 1y ago
        It is still true until today. Except it’s even more doable today with cheap storage and high bandwidth consumer internet.
forrestthewoods 1y ago
> 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. I dunno. It just kinda rubs me the wrong way.
- rbits 1y ago
  I don't think they're complaining about a lack of updates
  - forrestthewoods 1y ago
    There’s no universe in which people like this don’t complain. Release Pocket Caste 2 and they’ll complain. Sub and they’ll complain. Don’t update and they’ll complain. HN is highly sympathetic to the plight of the open source dev who rage quits because people demand too much for free. This is basically the same thing. I know this will get downvotes. But I’m not wrong.
    - dns_snek 1y ago
      There are very obvious, important differences between the options they had available. Both in terms of general user expectations for end of life apps, as well as concrete promises made to their customers to make a sale. Do you apply the same sort of lazy false equivalence to all moral and ethical questions? People will always complain, therefore you can do anything! I don't think I've ever complained about an app going out of business and discontinuing updates, but I don't have any patience when they take active steps to renege on their promises by adding ads or taking features away - that's just fraud.
      - forrestthewoods 1y ago
        I call bullshit on the claims of “promise”. When you buy a $3 app on iOS this is not a contractual or moral obligation or promise to provide decades of updates for free. Just because someone says a promise was broken doesn’t make it true.
mantra2 1y ago
Damn, he pulled a “Secure Custom Fields” on Automattic.
- exikyut 1y ago
  What's this in reference to? Sounds mildly interesting
  - grumblegrim 1y ago
    They forked the open source project. ACF was forked as SCF.
rmunn 1y ago
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.
- climb_stealth 1y ago
  Agreed. I would not have realised they were links if I had not read your comment.
WD-42 1y ago
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.
- ghqst 1y ago
  A lot of podcast apps have a server for crawling the RSS feeds for you.
- NaOH 1y ago
  I've been satisfied using Downcast for a long time now. US $3 (though I have used the tipping feature because it's provided me ample value). In particular, its sorting organization matches my preference, which is a list of podcasts that I can sort based on unplayed episodes (among other sorting options). Unless you're viewing the distinct section of the app for adding episodes, there's no portion of the interface trying to promote shows. That's not a presentation I ever want, so it's good that it's easily avoided. Most beneficial for me is its customizations that can be applied to all shows or configured for individual shows. For example, all episodes for all shows can be set to play at 1¼x speed, but one show could be set to play at 1x speed. For me, the interview format can be at the faster speed, but the music podcast is better at regular speed. Similarly, users could set all shows' episodes to start at the 30-second mark because of, say, opening ads, but a specific show could be set to start at a different time because its opening is unlike the others. I listen to enough shows that these configuration options make the app great for me. It's been a long time since I tried alternatives, but none of them ever stuck for more than (at most) a few days because the presentation or lack of customizations were less satisfying or convenient. Truthfully, just writing this has compelled me to give the developer another in-app tip. It's been years since I did that and I must average at least 20 hours of use a week.
- hutattedonmyarm 1y ago
  I'm very happy with Overcast. It does show ads for other podcasts in the now playing screen if you're using the free version. Premium is a subscription, but it's like 10 bucks a year. That's perfectly okay. And to be honest, I rarely look at the "now playing" screen anyways
nba456_ 1y ago
this site scans your ports
donatj 1y ago
$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.
- mgrandl 1y ago
  They are definitely not rehosting. I can tell that certain podcasts are streaming with much more latency compared to others hosted closer to where I live.
  - tylergetsay 1y ago
    There is also podcasts with dynamic ad slots that give me local ads in Pocket Casts
- zmmmmm 1y ago
  I generally detest vibe coding but this is really screaming out for someone to just let Claude loose for a day or two.
scarface_74 1y ago
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.
- photomatt 1y ago
  I'm a big fan of Marco! We link to Overcast in our web feeds and such.
__rito__ 1y ago
Since we are talking about podcasts, if you are looking for a podcast app for Android, use Antenna Pod [0]. 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 https://antennapod.org
- davidshepherd7 1y ago
  This is a perfect replacement for me, thanks for recommending it.
- DanOpcode 1y ago
  I recently switched from Pocket Casts to AntennaPod. AntennaPod is also available in F-Droid, which Pocket Casts isn't. It feels less likely that AntennaPod will be enshittified, which is why I made the switch.
- xnx 1y ago
  Antenna pod is great, but syncing play state between players (via gpodder) isn't as smooth as Pocket Casts.
- dcchambers 1y ago
  I've been super duper happy with AntennaPod since I discovered it a few years ago! It's perfectly useable right out of the gate but has nice customizations if you want/need it. And the Android Auto support is great (essential since I do most podcast listening in the car). Caveat: I *only* listen to Podcasts on my phone so I don't have to think about syncing library/status between devices.
- _DeadFred_ 1y ago
  For listening on my PC I use 'Bluetooth Audio Receiver' and still just play from my phone and use my computer as an audio device. I've found any advanced setups just no longer worth the setup investment/hassle. Literally nothing in this future timeline works well in any complex setup. So I keep it simple. It all exists in it's own magic box. And if I get a call, etc, all that auto behavior (stop playback) just works. To be fair, in Star Trek you will see them carrying around like 3-4 data tablets, so even our broken enshittified tech works in a way Star Trek future predictors thought would be high tech.
dcreater 1y ago
For those of us who dont want to build from source, is there an APK available of this version?
alanfranz 1y ago
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. Give me a good 3y or 5y deal, then we're friends.
UmGuys 1y ago
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.
lycopodiopsida 1y ago
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.
grimblee 1y ago
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
- hbn 1y ago
  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.
doubley2 1y ago
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-access-to-pocket-casts-plus/ 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.
- johanyc 1y ago
  Apparently they consider "ad-free" a feature
tmaly 1y ago
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.
- johanyc 1y ago
  do you have seperate queues for music and podcasts on spotify?
photomatt 1y ago
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.
- photomatt 1y ago
  BTW, for builders, I think having some of these "golden ticket" accounts of your earliest adopters and promoters is a good strategy. The best marketing is word of mouth and seeing people love and use a product. We have some across Automattic where you can get a lifetime Jetpack or WP.com subscription for free for doing something awesome.
- pavo-etc 1y ago
  Hi Matt, I purchased the Android app in 2016. I never signed up for the paid syncing service, but never had ads within the app until this week. Is it the new policy that users who purchased the app but never paid for syncing will now have ads, or is this a bug? Appreciate you being public in places like this. I sent a similar message to Pocketcasts support but received an AI that seems to disagree with your comment here.
subarctic 1y ago
How would I do this on iOS?
g-technology 1y ago
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?
winkelwagen 1y ago
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.
doubley2 1y ago
[dead]

127 points by ruph123 1y ago

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.

wmichelin 1y ago

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.

galaxy_gas 1y ago
Automattic are struggling business ?
N_Lens 1y ago
[flagged]
- sockgrant 1y ago
  [flagged]
jszymborski 1y ago
> why does the author here feel so entitled People were promised they just needed to pay one fee to get the app. Then, they went to a subscription fee, but grandfathered in previous purchasers. Now, they've introduced ads. Their overhead is their problem, they sold me something and now they are renegging. It's like the first thing in the article, not exactly burried.
- carlosjobim 1y ago
  I hope you never hear about free refills that they have in some restaurants. You're demanding more than a decade of free app updates for a small sum you paid ages ago. Why can't you instead be happy with all the value you got from the app? We aren't born to be small minded and stingy, look up to greater goals and a greater attitude in life. We only have so many years before it is cut from us.
  - jjulius 1y ago
    >You're demanding more than a decade of free app updates for a small sum you paid ages ago. I mean... that was the agreement between both parties. Really not that hard to grasp.
    - carlosjobim 1y ago
      So how about those free refills at McDonalds? Clearly you have the right to return there every day for the rest of your life and fill up hundreds of cups each time. After all, it is in the agreement between both parties, so go for it!
      - jjulius 1y ago
        That's an apples and oranges comparison. While the timeline isn't explicitly stated, free refills are implied that it's for the duration of your visit. In fact you can see the implication given that's how it's used most of the time. Telling someone they'll get "lifetime" access for a one-time payment is not the same.
        tacitusarc 1y ago
        In fact, if I was told I had purchased lifetime free refills, I would expect I could obtain a refill during any visit without purchase.
        1y ago
CharlesW 1y ago
Is Automattic a struggling business? Also, podcasters are paying for media hosting. Automattic presumably hosts a catalog service, but it can’t be that expensive to run.
- cwyers 1y ago
  `Is Automattic a struggling business?` I mean, everytime I see someone talking about them on Twitter, they are clearly struggling with _something_.
derektank 1y ago
I think it is sort of incumbent upon you, as a business offering a lifetime membership, to properly invest some of that initial fee, such that the returns cover future operating costs. Many other companies work on this model. If the bank refused to return the money I loaned them, I would rightfully be very upset. I think it's similarly fair to be upset about a company revoking lifetime memberships. This particular situation is more of a grey area, but I don't think maintenance and operating costs are a sufficient excuse.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > it is sort of incumbent upon you, as a business offering a lifetime membership, to properly invest some of that initial fee, such that the returns cover future operating costs We may need a law that regulates "lifetime" purchases. One part is standardised disclosure. The other is putting fees into a trust.
  - Zagorath 1y ago
    I don't think a trust should be necessary. A plan for longterm sustainability should be. The streaming video service Nebula, for example, has a lifetime membership. The company was very straightforward with potential customers: this is not their best deal, it's explicitly meant for people who want to help support the company (or who prefer not to have ongoing subscription costs), and they are doing it as an alternative to seeking outside investment money. The money they raise won't go into a trust, but into expanding the business in the same way a company might if it went to seek venture capital. At the time I signed up for it, it cost roughly 10 years' worth of subscriptions.
- johanyc 1y ago
  > as a business offering a lifetime membership > If the bank refused to return the money I loaned them, I would rightfully be very upset. Everyone who bought the app STILL have access to the app. All features they paid for are still available (except if you consider no ad a feature). The "correct" way to do it is change current app to classic and release a new app but that's quite cumbersome. I would like Apple or Google to offer an option to provide paid upgrade options.
renewiltord 1y ago
There's no reasonable devil's advocate. The answer is that one-time fee apps are not sustainable. There are ongoing costs with most businesses and one-time fees do not capture that. Therefore don't sell them. Sell everything on subscription or you will eventually fail to serve your customers and everyone will be unhappy. If you're a big business, it's risky to buy open-source applications, so don't do that unless the benefit is obvious. They promised a thing they could not deliver on and that was sufficient to get enough users that they could then sell the app onwards to a bunch of suckers. This is a classic play in the "sell dollars for pennies and then sell the dollars-for-pennies app to a guy with a lot of dollars who eventually gets sick of buying pennies with dollars" genre.
- mcv 1y ago
  The one time fee doesn't pay for your ongoing costs, but it does pay for your upfront costs. The trick is to either get other users to pay for your ongoing costs, or to reduce ongoing costs and stop further development.
  - renewiltord 1y ago
    I suppose you're right, but you have to be very quick in the latter case to fully extract your portion of the surplus or you're just yielding it to a copycat that does the subscription model.
- theshrike79 1y ago
  One time cost per major version is sustainable, you won't get Silicon Valley rich on it, but you can make a living. Lifetime licenses only work in the beginning when you have people buying them at regular intervals, at some point the market is saturated and you need to have a subscription model. Case in point: Unraid. I have two grandfathered "forever" licenses and I'll never need a third.
  - seec 1y ago
    Yes, the thing with one time purchase is that it should be as it is, right now. Not including updates and support forever. By this standard, people should feel entitled to get an update on their fridge whenever a new compressor technology is available (or whatever, you get the point).
rmunn 1y ago
If you don't honor contracts, then you should go out of business, because nobody will trust you (if they're wise, though there are always some people/companies who will be foolish). If you make a contract that involves you receiving a one-time fee for something that will cost you far more than that fee, then you will eventually go out of business for being stupid. Yes, there are hosting costs and maintenance costs. So the original deal (pay once for something that costs us ongoing money) was a stupid business decision. Doesn't change the fact that they undertook to make that contract. So now they should be held to it. And the fact that someone else bought them does not invalidate the contract. When you acquire a business, you acquire their contractual obligations. As it should be, otherwise contracts cannot be trusted in the long run.
- simultsop 1y ago
  If people/companies want to support a thing they think should exist, it is their sacrifice to keep it alive. I don't think as them being stupid. For the concerns of contracts, you are not alone on the suffering side. Alltogether humanity elevated tolerance to this level, this is not a surprise.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > If you don't honor contracts, then you should go out of business We're talking about Automattic. It's virtually their business model.
  - baby_souffle 1y ago
    I don't think they owned Pocket casts all the way back then...
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  Well, does anyone actually have a copy of the contract from 14 years ago? Usually there are clauses hedging against this kind of thing. Example: I recently wrote the T&S for my Finnish dictionary app (still working on it), and I make it clear in advance that the license was a one time fee for perpetual use for that major version. [1] I can do this because the app is almost entirely offline, and because for the parts that are, smart cloud infra decisions means my recurring infra costs are low. If I add in features which imply a bespoke server down the line, of course that would probably be a major version upgrade - and a change in the pricing model to boot. But I'd still keep the old v1 stuff up for the lifers. [1]: https://taskusanakirja.com/terms-of-service/#91-pricing-and-license-model https://taskusanakirja.com/terms-of-service/#91-pricing-and-...
muppetman 1y ago
Because we paid to not have to put up with this garbage. There's so many better ways to do this - look at nzb360 - https://nzb360.com/ https://nzb360.com/ They added a new/better interface you have to pay money to unlock. When they add new features/services you now have to pay to unlock. What you paid for originally, still yours. Want to get access to the new stuff? You can either pay a subscription for "everything" or pay one-time-unlocks for features. Then I look at serviecs like lichess where they just operate 100% on donations and users helping by adding their devices into the pool of compute for analysis. "Shove ads in" is the low, easiest, tackiest way to "annoy" your users into paying. Those that already paid once are annoyed the goalposts have changed. Make the app worth paying an upgrade for, don't just go "well it's still shit but now there's ads unless you pay!"
wahnfrieden 1y ago
You will renege on a contract if it’s inconvenient to honor it? Good to know.
toofy 1y ago
it seems to me that we desperately need to get back to a place where a business is held to their word. we have come to a place where corporations are calling limited “unlimited” and outright just lying to people. i have seen people unironically defend this as “well if they don’t lie, then how do you expect them to sell their product?” again, people have said this entirely unironically. i think it’s far more reasonable to expect a company to be held to their contracts and agreements. normal people certainly are. i’ll never understand how we got to a place where so many corporations can say with a straight face “we deserve to make money in any way possible and it’s unfair for you to hold us to any kind of responsibility for our own actions”
- mrheosuper 1y ago
  Back in the day, Pepsi had an ads that claim you can win a Jet fighter if you do xxx. A guy did xxx and tried to get the Jet, but of course he couldn't and sue them. The court let Pepsi win. So, "a place where a business is held to their word" has never been existed.
  - mcv 1y ago
    But it should exist. This is blatantly false advertising. Of course a jet fighter is a ridiculous thing to promise, but it's still a promise they chose to make. Why make a promise they never intend to keep? That sort of thing should be struck down hard by the courts. But a life time membership is not an unreasonable promise.
    - db48x 1y ago
      People employ hyperbole all the time, so why can’t a company? But you’re right, a lifetime membership should really be for a lifetime. But since nobody is suing over it, then it’ll continue to be abused.
vorpalhex 1y ago
What is PocketCasts maintaining? 1. A few kb of playlists and accounts 2. Probably a search service 3. Likely artwork caching It's not free to run this.. but it's not exactly expensive either. Many users pay and don't use the app very much. I am sure there are some super users who use a lot. And most apps continue to sell, make enough income to fund a few devs and keep the services on. Even with a one time payment. It's not like pocketcasts is paying the podcasters or producing content. The problem is seeing every single dumb thing as some kind of mega-growth M&A deal when it's not. No, your podcast app won't make you hundreds of millions, sorry.
- photomatt 1y ago
  We don't disclose Pocket Casts revenue directly, but we invest $millions a year in its development and hosting. It gets very broad usage and has over ten million of listening hours a week. There are clients maintained and new features developed for iPhone, iPad, MacOS, Apple Watch, Android Phones and Tablets, and an open web version.
  - seec 1y ago
    I don't understand why you went with a single licence valid for all platforms. Clearly each client is a different product on each platform, even if it might have the same core functionality. I don't know what the original price was and I understand why he is mad, but that was a poor business decision. If you overpromise that's kind of on you, plenty of companies have been burned by such behavior.
gigel82 1y ago
It's so sad this view is supported by so many people. So incredibly sad, especially in this community... I feel like we're doomed to become the dreaded "you will own nothing and be happy" society that the technofeudal lords so drool over.
zmmmmm 1y ago
> why does the author here feel so entitled Because they paid for it.
UmGuys 1y ago
The company sold an app and refuses to honor what users paid for. If this is allowed, it will become a strategy because it's profitable. Trick people to purchase, then add ads to the 'ad-free' app. There's no logic other than, "we can steal and no one will stop us." They should be forced to honor purchases or publish a new app.

mtoner23 1y ago

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?

rbits 1y ago
I think they have their own podcast index that you can search through. They also sync your listening progress to the cloud. But with PocketCasts Plus being $66 AUD/year, surely those subscriptions are enough to cover the costs. I used to subscribe to PocketCasts Plus, but I stopped when they raised the price. It's so expensive.
- galaxy_gas 1y ago
  Having peek at the feature set I cannot imagine how this to cost more then handful of subscriber of revenue to run~ They do not host any media -- The volume of post searching fulltext is so small single PSQL instance can take over -- your listening progress is a single integer ...
  - tantalor 1y ago
    Reminds me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
    - galaxy_gas 1y ago
      at least have cost of storing the media that Dropbox need pay. In this case there is none of that. [[ I do understand there is a small distinction here, in that the Dropbox reference is for a user that will self host the storage server, but in the context of this message I refer to the SAAS host or owner of Pocket Casts I cannot imagine to be losing 800k a year even at AWS pricing given what the app does or something is written very wrong ... ]]
    - vachina 1y ago
      It is still true until today. Except it’s even more doable today with cheap storage and high bandwidth consumer internet.

forrestthewoods 1y ago

> 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. I dunno. It just kinda rubs me the wrong way.

rbits 1y ago
I don't think they're complaining about a lack of updates
- forrestthewoods 1y ago
  There’s no universe in which people like this don’t complain. Release Pocket Caste 2 and they’ll complain. Sub and they’ll complain. Don’t update and they’ll complain. HN is highly sympathetic to the plight of the open source dev who rage quits because people demand too much for free. This is basically the same thing. I know this will get downvotes. But I’m not wrong.
  - dns_snek 1y ago
    There are very obvious, important differences between the options they had available. Both in terms of general user expectations for end of life apps, as well as concrete promises made to their customers to make a sale. Do you apply the same sort of lazy false equivalence to all moral and ethical questions? People will always complain, therefore you can do anything! I don't think I've ever complained about an app going out of business and discontinuing updates, but I don't have any patience when they take active steps to renege on their promises by adding ads or taking features away - that's just fraud.
    - forrestthewoods 1y ago
      I call bullshit on the claims of “promise”. When you buy a $3 app on iOS this is not a contractual or moral obligation or promise to provide decades of updates for free. Just because someone says a promise was broken doesn’t make it true.

mantra2 1y ago

Damn, he pulled a “Secure Custom Fields” on Automattic.

exikyut 1y ago
What's this in reference to? Sounds mildly interesting
- grumblegrim 1y ago
  They forked the open source project. ACF was forked as SCF.

rmunn 1y ago

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.

climb_stealth 1y ago
Agreed. I would not have realised they were links if I had not read your comment.

WD-42 1y ago

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.

ghqst 1y ago
A lot of podcast apps have a server for crawling the RSS feeds for you.
NaOH 1y ago
I've been satisfied using Downcast for a long time now. US $3 (though I have used the tipping feature because it's provided me ample value). In particular, its sorting organization matches my preference, which is a list of podcasts that I can sort based on unplayed episodes (among other sorting options). Unless you're viewing the distinct section of the app for adding episodes, there's no portion of the interface trying to promote shows. That's not a presentation I ever want, so it's good that it's easily avoided. Most beneficial for me is its customizations that can be applied to all shows or configured for individual shows. For example, all episodes for all shows can be set to play at 1¼x speed, but one show could be set to play at 1x speed. For me, the interview format can be at the faster speed, but the music podcast is better at regular speed. Similarly, users could set all shows' episodes to start at the 30-second mark because of, say, opening ads, but a specific show could be set to start at a different time because its opening is unlike the others. I listen to enough shows that these configuration options make the app great for me. It's been a long time since I tried alternatives, but none of them ever stuck for more than (at most) a few days because the presentation or lack of customizations were less satisfying or convenient. Truthfully, just writing this has compelled me to give the developer another in-app tip. It's been years since I did that and I must average at least 20 hours of use a week.
hutattedonmyarm 1y ago
I'm very happy with Overcast. It does show ads for other podcasts in the now playing screen if you're using the free version. Premium is a subscription, but it's like 10 bucks a year. That's perfectly okay. And to be honest, I rarely look at the "now playing" screen anyways

nba456_ 1y ago

this site scans your ports

donatj 1y ago

$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.

mgrandl 1y ago
They are definitely not rehosting. I can tell that certain podcasts are streaming with much more latency compared to others hosted closer to where I live.
- tylergetsay 1y ago
  There is also podcasts with dynamic ad slots that give me local ads in Pocket Casts
zmmmmm 1y ago
I generally detest vibe coding but this is really screaming out for someone to just let Claude loose for a day or two.

scarface_74 1y ago

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.

photomatt 1y ago
I'm a big fan of Marco! We link to Overcast in our web feeds and such.

__rito__ 1y ago

Since we are talking about podcasts, if you are looking for a podcast app for Android, use Antenna Pod [0]. 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 https://antennapod.org

davidshepherd7 1y ago
This is a perfect replacement for me, thanks for recommending it.
DanOpcode 1y ago
I recently switched from Pocket Casts to AntennaPod. AntennaPod is also available in F-Droid, which Pocket Casts isn't. It feels less likely that AntennaPod will be enshittified, which is why I made the switch.
xnx 1y ago
Antenna pod is great, but syncing play state between players (via gpodder) isn't as smooth as Pocket Casts.
dcchambers 1y ago
I've been super duper happy with AntennaPod since I discovered it a few years ago! It's perfectly useable right out of the gate but has nice customizations if you want/need it. And the Android Auto support is great (essential since I do most podcast listening in the car). Caveat: I *only* listen to Podcasts on my phone so I don't have to think about syncing library/status between devices.
_DeadFred_ 1y ago
For listening on my PC I use 'Bluetooth Audio Receiver' and still just play from my phone and use my computer as an audio device. I've found any advanced setups just no longer worth the setup investment/hassle. Literally nothing in this future timeline works well in any complex setup. So I keep it simple. It all exists in it's own magic box. And if I get a call, etc, all that auto behavior (stop playback) just works. To be fair, in Star Trek you will see them carrying around like 3-4 data tablets, so even our broken enshittified tech works in a way Star Trek future predictors thought would be high tech.

dcreater 1y ago

For those of us who dont want to build from source, is there an APK available of this version?

alanfranz 1y ago

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. Give me a good 3y or 5y deal, then we're friends.

UmGuys 1y ago

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.

lycopodiopsida 1y ago

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.

grimblee 1y ago

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

hbn 1y ago
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.

doubley2 1y ago

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-access-to-pocket-casts-plus/ 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.

johanyc 1y ago
Apparently they consider "ad-free" a feature

tmaly 1y ago

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.

johanyc 1y ago
do you have seperate queues for music and podcasts on spotify?

photomatt 1y ago

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.

photomatt 1y ago
BTW, for builders, I think having some of these "golden ticket" accounts of your earliest adopters and promoters is a good strategy. The best marketing is word of mouth and seeing people love and use a product. We have some across Automattic where you can get a lifetime Jetpack or WP.com subscription for free for doing something awesome.
pavo-etc 1y ago
Hi Matt, I purchased the Android app in 2016. I never signed up for the paid syncing service, but never had ads within the app until this week. Is it the new policy that users who purchased the app but never paid for syncing will now have ads, or is this a bug? Appreciate you being public in places like this. I sent a similar message to Pocketcasts support but received an AI that seems to disagree with your comment here.

subarctic 1y ago

How would I do this on iOS?

g-technology 1y ago

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?

winkelwagen 1y ago

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.

doubley2 1y ago

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