24
votes
Seeking an Android podcast app without subscription. Impossible?
In search of an app where I can pay for pro features once and get a fully featured application. Is it even possible these days?
Ok, now begin rant.
I don't understand - these services are aggregators of other people's content and let's be honest, only have to build a competent media player one time.
Why the subscription? While I fully understand that Adobe kicked off this new evil timeline of permanent rentals, I don't fully understand how this applies for something as simple as a media player.
https://antennapod.org/
This is the app I use and I love it. Reminds me of the old iPhone podcast app before that got extremely bloated.
This is the best app I've used, and have tested lots
Nice, I'll have a look!
Second, been using it for years, it's excellent (Also FOSS if you care about that)
It's even available on F-Droid!
I've used podcast addict for about 4 years now, it does a lot.
https://podcastaddict.com/
Podcast Addict is excellent. It's free, I've been using it for years myself too. You can also add/play audiobooks/media you've downloaded from elsewhere. You can stream or download podcasts. There is a tiny advert banner but you never notice it and it's not distracting in any way.
I have the paid version because (at least when I bought it, times may have changed) it was a few quid for a permanent unlock and it's such a good app I was quite happy to support the developer. I use it almost daily, it plays podcasts pleasingly perfectly.
edit: looking now, it seems like the paid version has stopped existing, which is a shame.
Yeah they have a sub model but frankly I use the free and don't miss any features. I don't even have a small banner ad. (I genuinely wondered if I'd maybe paid for it before and I don't think so)
I've used it for over 4 years though!
There was a "Donate" app you could buy for I think £3 which when installed upgraded the main app to ad-free, although that was well over four years ago! It's definitely no longer on the Play store, although it is still in my library. Which is a decent thing from the developer, they could have pulled it completely and pushed all 100k+ donators towards subscription (at which point I'd have found another app)
Yeah either way I do love the app
I've used Podcast Addict for a very long time as well and I love it.
In the case of Podcast Addict the developer is always making sure the app works in new Android releases as well as build new features and add quality of life improvements. While you may be happy with just a very basic player, I personally feel the work the dev puts into the app is worth the price of the subscription (Though that's from someone that mainly uses their phone as a podcast player).
two factors:
mobile has long since "won" the race to the bottom. Even if you made a $.99 premium app (which is pretty much how low a credit card really lets you purchase for transaction reason) with no strings attached, no one will try to buy it because they will just download the 50 other "free apps" around them. You can't stand out as a paid app on Play/App store anymore. That's pretty much why ports of PC games are the only remaining kinds of apps like that (and even then...)
App devs spend time maintaining and updating these apps. And for stuff like this they often are not the platforms they are aggregating (e.g. think of all the 3rd party reddit apps that are now gone. Reddit didn't pay them). So reocurring costs makes sense for continuous updates. That or ads, but I imagine ads for a podcast service isn't as readily available as something where the user is looking at a screen.
The "best" strategy in this case is either ads with one ad-free payment, or an app with a choice between a subscription or a lifetime purchase. As an example, I bought a screen translator app that has various durations of subscriptions (weekly, monthly, yearly) for $60. or the equivalent of 2 $30 yearly subs. There's no way on earth a mobile user would see that on the Play store and buy that outright, but people who have invested into learning a language know how expensive such tools can be and the value to be brought from quickly translating screenshots of text.
Reddit didn't just not pay them, Reddit was demanding to be paid by them. That's what actually made them disappear. Not being paid by Reddit wasn't ideal but it wasn't an insurmountable obstacle.
Lifetime purchase is my goal here. I absolutely want to compensate authors appropriately, though the amount of altruistic giving to news, podcasters, nonprofits and other charities on a monthly basis has limits.
Appreciate the breakdown.
I personally refuse to use any apps that monetize via ads or subscriptions, but having at one point maintained an Android app myself I'll throw out an additional defense:
Even if an author considers their app to be feature complete, Google's constant minimum SDK version requirement changes and deprecation of old APIs in favor of new ones demands regular work and upkeep just to prevent an app from being completely de-listed from the Play Store through inaction.
Your rant is absolutely on spot. I would pay 10€ for good app on my phone in a blink of an eye, but somehow such apps are very hard to find in the store on my phone. Even hough they exist, the subscription based or "pay in the app" ones pop up almost exclusively.
This is why you have to come to other people and ask for their recommendation, whoch is what you did. And I hope you get a good one!
and also that the app stores could easily have a filter for premium being 'one time payment' vs 'subscription model' to help you find those good apps (which would in turn incentivise people to make them), but they don't. it's an area where they're very clearly working against our interests...
They don't have this feature. Guess why? Because it doesn't make that much money.
Pocketcasts by Shifty Jelly.
Pocketcasts hasn’t been developed by Shifty Jelly in quite a while. It got bought by NPR in 2019. It is currently owned/developed by Automattic, the (unpopular) company that runs Wordpress.
Thanks for the correction!
Pocketcasts is the app I'd recommend and premium was previously a one time purchase but they did shift to a subscription model sometime ago.
That being said I've used the app for ages and would highly recommend it. The only premium feature that would be handy for me is being able to organize podcasts into folders.
I feel quite lucky that I had purchased premium before they switch to a subscription model as I was able to keep it as a one time purchase.
Was there anything you needed to provide for that? I had purchased the app years and don't remember getting to keep the premium features after the switch.
As I recall based on my 1 star review from back in 2019, all of the premium features we paid for became standard for the free tier and the subscription was for new, additional features that I have never once been tempted by.
No, I don't think I did need to do anything specific other than use the account I had made the initial purchase with back in the day. I'm sure if you can trwck down the receipt they would honor it.
I think it's automatic, but you only get the web/desktop client if you bought specifically the web app back when they were selling it. You don't get that if you just bought one of the phone apps.
https://support.pocketcasts.com/knowledge-base/lifetime-access-to-pocket-casts-plus/
I know you specifically mentioned a desire for an app but I'll just quickly mention what I do.
yt-dlpworks with RSS feeds or things that appear like them. The Generic extractor is rather good. You can install it in Termux and run a list of URLs on a cron script in your phone viacronie. I guess if you don't use Termux often you'll also need Termux:Boot for cronie to work and download new episodes on a scheduleJust a heads up that none of that made any sense to the people who don't already know what all those terms were. 😅
Cool - I'll check it out! Thanks!
Is this a system that worked well on desktop and you decided to import it to mobile? Or did you just not find a podcast app that worked for your needs and this is what it took?
I got used to using
yt-dlpfor everything when building on a wrapper for it. And then one day I discovered it could be used for podcasts and other sources too.Because I was already familiar with yt-dlp and it was already working for me so I've never really investigated podcast apps specifically. The audio files are available locally on the phone and they auto-resume fine. The only issue I've had is when Google Podcasts closed and I had to swap out a few links with other sources.
I haven't used many others, but I like Podcast Republic. I think it's a $4 or $5 one-time fee to remove some banner ads. The UI of some views could be streamlined and more intuitive, but the views I use the most (playback and browsing a podcast's episodes) are good. And that's really the only issue I can think of. It has a ton of features and no bugs I've come across.
My vote is for podcast Republic! I absolutely love that i can "delete" episodes from my podcast subscriptions and they won't be backfilled. I need that cause I love Jim Morrison and all his dateline podcasts, but every time a new podcast is made ALL their dateline podcasts receive a new 'promotional' minute-long episode. That's infuriating so I'm glad I can remove them.
Beauty - thanks!