this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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I really want podcast apps to hook into SponsorBlock.
Right now I'm listening to very few English podcasts because of all the advertisement. I switched to German and Swedish because most of them don't have any advertisement in them.
Podcasts often dynamically generate ads at the point of download, making the SponsorBlock-approach unviable: since the media is expected to be variable-length you can't store media positions that map to advertisement segments.
You could potentially match on audio, though -- look for the 15 seconds of podcast audio preceding the ad, and the 15 seconds following it, if folks reported it in a sponsorblock way.
Alternatively, we could build a shazam-style database of 30 second podcast ads, then skip them when they're identified. There isn't much variety out there.
Ah interesting, that just shows that I have successfully avoided subscribing to those. The few ones with ads I listen to get the ads read by the hosts like in YouTube videos.
Can confirm, at least for Acast distribution, I generally get no ads when I'm not in an English speaking country at the time of download.
However, iHeart podcasts are always absolutely crammed full of ads everywhere.
like others have pointed out, this makes automatic detection easier not harder if true. Just cut the segments that move around, audio analysis and even transcripts (they don't have to be good! just good enough to identify missing segment!) are pretty mature.
I really just want a podcast app that replaces Pocket Casts (I use the free version).
What I look is a client that works with pretty much all the possible gadgets (even a damn Amazon Alexa) and have Sync between all of them).
Pocket Casts does this to me but the Alexa client is kinda broken (it never saves/sync the progress) and the PC client is behind the paywall.
Spotify is a close one for what I want... But I just don't like it.
There is a paid version of pocket casts?
Yes, the free version doesn't let you organize podcasts into folders for example. The paid version has a browser accessible version(so one can access from PC) , some gigs(10 GB?) of cloud storage and some extra theme able icons.
It used to be a one time purchase back in the day. Then they moved to a yearly subscription model. I think I used their paid variant for one year or so.
I recently moved to AntennaPod, which is available on F Droid. It is more or less at feature parity with the free version of Pocketcasts. It technically has gPodder integration to sync your podcasts online but honestly that service breaks down a lot and is unreliable multiple times.
Oh, yeah, wait, I am using AntennaPod too. The subscription stuff was actually the reason I switched from Pocket Casts. Mixed up the names. I'd claim old age, but I'm not that old yet, really.
I'm using antennapod because I had suspicions based on the ads I was getting that PocketCasts was selling the info of podcasts in my queue/listening history. After that I read their privacy policy to confirm that's something they do and deleted my account/the app
edit: important to add, I had a paid subscription account and they still appeared to be selling data on me
If I remember correctly, the app was originally built by an Australian public broadcaster and then sold to WordPress Matt, so yeah.
Subscription only mode I think.... A huge nope for me.
I used it for one year(yes, I paid sigh) but ultimately didn't see value in it. Subscription model doesn't make sense for a podcast app and I mostly listened to on mobile eitherways, so I switched to Antennapod recently. I tried a couple of other alternatives including Podcast Republic but those seem a little too bloated in terms of features.
Can you share the German podcasts you enjoy?
Echo der Zeit, Datenschutz plaudereien, NZZ akzent (one little ad in the middle), Netzpodcast, SRF Input, News plus, Focus,
Some may be swiss german, tho.
I listen to several ad supported English language podcasts, and most of them seem to have difficulties with ~~Pocket Casts~~ AntennaPod, or some other part of my setup. The only ones that do get ads placed are the ones that use Spotify Megaphone for their backend.
Ah, I should have known that it is spotify..