PocketCasts has been my podcasting app of choice for years now, so the announcement its now free is great right?
Paired with the relase of version 7.5 of the Android app (available now) and iOS app (available soon), PocketCasts announced they were moving to new pricing model.
For the most part, free is good, but those who previously paid to unlock functionality, like syncing between the web and mobile, have not welcomed the change.
If you were a premium user, you would have paid around $10 as a once off payment that was supposed to be for life. Basically running the background infrastrucutre does have costs and unless you can perfectly map your growth in premium customers to your cost curve over time, then you’re in for some financial pain.
Pocket Casts Plus is a new branding for their paid features, but where PockCasts ran into trouble was giving already paid up members, just 3 years of free, then expecting further payment.
It’s been a wild 24 hours over at the company and they’ve heard the feedback from passionate users loud and clear. If you paid for premium for life, you’ll now (rightly so) get it, so Pocketcasts will have to find additional revenue streams, or hope to attract enough new customers to fund the ongoing service.
Personally I love Pocketcasts for a few reasons. The catalogue of podcasts is number 1, the ease of use and constant updates and improvements is another. There’s also lots of great features like the ability to gets stats on how long you’ve spent listening (122 days of my life).
There’s times where podcasts hosts talk fairly slowly and leveraging the playback speed control helps you listen to more content in less time.
I also love that I can move between phones, sign in and have all my subscriptions come with me. Being on a computer most of the day, I have the web browser right in front of me, so I have flirted with the idea of going premium, but never bit the bullet, now at A$1.50pm or A$12.48py, it gives you the chance to trial it for cheap and see if it works for you.
More information at PocketCasts.
Are you just publishing their media releases? This app has gone from a 5 star rating on Play to a 3.1 star rating in a few weeks since the release on v7. Its been an unmitigated disaster. Yet you you blithely state how much you love it?
Have been a long time user of Pocketcasts, have tried many others and I believe its the best app on the market. If you’ve found value in an alternative, that’s great.