Pocket Casts
Address: 
60 29th St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA
Website: pocketcasts.com
Owned by: Automattic
Latest news
- Sep 26: The best feedback we’ve seen about ads in the free version of Pocket Casts: “Because of a small ad showing up, I've decided to leave Pocket Casts and instead devote myself to a monastery in Northern Tibet to withdraw from society and focus on my spiritual path, truly the only means of avoiding advertisements.”
- Sep 23: A developer called Matthew Brunelle has worked out how to change the code for Pocket Casts to remove the advertising. The apps were made open-source by current owners Automattic, which makes it relatively easy (and legal) to do so. However, the app will still use proprietary Pocket Casts servers; and for now, you’ll need to be an Android developer to rebuild the app in this way. In any case, this seems to punish the company for making the apps open-source, which has accelerated a number of new features. Better to use AntennaPod or Apple Podcasts... or, better still, support the developers by paying for it, we think.
- Sep 22: After the popular app Pocket Casts added ads for free users in its latest update, the r/pocketcasts subreddit has been full of less than complimentary feedback. The ads (both for Pocket Casts Plys and for other apps) appear in the playback screen and podcast lists. While you can remove the ads by paying for the app, for a similar experience you can also switch to the free Apple Podcasts (on iOS) or AntennaPod (on Android), neither of which contain advertising.
- Sep 8: Pocket Casts free users are likely to see ads in the app from here-on in, according to notes for a new version.
- Aug 29: Pocket Casts has added recommendations to its web player, including creator-led recommendations (which are marked as “Creator Picks”). Here’s the Podnews Weekly Review so you can see them working.
Data credits: Google Maps, Podnews newsletter