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by goldcd 2389 days ago
I came here to judge - but if there's no way of paying for the adverts to go away (stitcher? maybe spotify (I pay, but don't use it for podcasts)) I have sympathy.

Skeptoid did offer a nice/hacky/old-school solution likely to work with your favourite player - subscribe manually with ~ http://<username>:<password>@<site.com/ad_free_url/>podcasts...

Providing your player lets you put in a URL - it "works" and doesn't require you switching your client.

I do wish there was a slightly more formalized process letting you provide credentials to your app and it sorting this all out for you - but then I'm reluctant to engage in a movement that might f'up the XML+MP3 standards approach that's allowed podcasts to flourish.
2 comments
rahuldottech 2389 days ago
> I do wish there was a slightly more formalized process letting you provide credentials to your app and it sorting this all out for you

There is. The app I use, AntennaPod, allows you to specify a username and password for each podcast feed, and iirc, it uses those for good ol' HTTP authentication.

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mmahemoff 2389 days ago
This is quite common - many podcast apps, if not the very biggest ones, support feed importing and those feeds can include a username and password. It's really not that complicated, it just looks like a long URL and in most cases you can click on it in an email or website on your phone, and add it directly to the podcast app from there.

The hard part at the moment is the friction from your podcast app to paying to "unlock" that feed to importing it back to your podcast app. Some of us are working on a standard called PodPass (https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/08/podpass-wants-to-build-the...) to make it seamless, but without the walled gardens.

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goldcd 2389 days ago
Yep - that's the vague amorphous idea I had rattling around my head, just described by somebody who knows what they're doing.

As stated - it's getting the initial adoption going that's problematic. Probably pointing out the obvious, but NPR bought my favourite client Pocket Casts. At naive glance, looks like a good fit. NPR already has an excellent group of people who've donated (so whole bunch of people paying already) and with this would give them a way of rewarding them with the adverts removed. Plus think both sides of this would be advocates for still allowing the output to be available widely, and not walled up somewhere.

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