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0 pointsdeong8y ago0 comments

To be fair, a lot of podcasts have ads, but ads aren't what I'm objecting to. The modern web doesn't suck because of ads. It sucks because of the technologies around ensuring you look at the ads, around sharing your behaviors as you look at the ads, etc.

Any podcast player I can imagine anyone would ever use has a convenient way to skip ads, and the neither the presence of the ads themselves nor my decision to skip them degrades the experience of listening to the podcast. My podcast player doesn't demand I look at Forbes' "thought of the day" or disable my fast-forward button in order to play. It doesn't connect to 280 random third-party tracking domains as I listen to an episode. It downloads a file and plays that file for me.

Who really cares that much about ads that don't track you or destroy your experience?

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vog8y ago· 3 in thread

> and the neither the presence of the ads themselves nor my decision to skip them degrades the experience of listening to the podcast

I beg to differ.

I see the ability to skip ads immediately, at any time, as a fundamental user right (and websites that try to deny this right should be prosecute by consumer protection). In other words, this is not the distinction between good versus bad quality. It is the distinction between merely acceptable versus totally inacceptable.

With regard to quality, it is a huge jump upwards if a podcast has no ads at all, nowhere, not even hidden or implicit. It is a really noticeable difference if the whole audio simply doesn't care about pleasing any stakeholder besides its audience.

s73ver_8y ago

I cannot agree with this sentiment. You're basically demanding that these creators work for you, for free.

If you choose to skip the ads, then how should the creators be compensated for the content that you consumed?

"With regard to quality, it is a huge jump upwards if a podcast has no ads at all, nowhere, not even hidden or implicit. It is a really noticeable difference if the whole audio simply doesn't care about pleasing any stakeholder besides its audience."

You know what else is a huge jump in quality? Actually being able to continue to do the show.

TeMPOraL8y ago

Nobody is entitled to a business model. If ads don't work for your users, find one that does (I hear people have some success with Patronite these days, for example). If there is none, then maybe it isn't good to try to make a business out of it in the first place.

There's way too much "content" these days anyway, and the worst of it is the one that is done to make money (as opposed to labour of love, or having external funding independent of content's performance - like patronage, being considered a "marketing expense", etc.).

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zdkl8y ago

Either talk about something you care about a lot and do it for the love, or remember you're competing against students doing this for the fun or as an exercise.

TheRealDunkirk8y ago

> My podcast player doesn't demand I look at Forbes' "thought of the day" or disable my fast-forward button in order to play. It doesn't connect to 280 random third-party tracking domains as I listen to an episode.

Yet.

There's an easy-to-imagine scenario where advertisers bribe podcast playing software creators to embed these "features" for a cut of the money.

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