Years ago, when the world was young, podcasts of the type celebrated here on Extra Muros featured few, if any, advertisements. The rare piece of publicité that did appear on such programs, moreover, usually took the form of an old-timey product plug read by the podcaster himself. Thus, while they might have stopped, for a minute or two, the flow of the tales being told, such endorsements lacked the features, such as augmented volume, terrible timing, mindless repetition, inane dialogue, and gross irrelevance, that make radio adverts so irritating.
Today, alas, this happy situation has given way to a world in which the distributors of podcasts exploit every opportunity to insert intrusive messages into the audio programs that they handle. Indeed, the ‘malefactors of great wealth’ over at Apple have gone so far as to hamper the ability of customers to preserve copies of podcasts, thereby increasing their exposure to fresh indignities of the commercial persuasion. (These pernicious measures include the replacement of the names of files with meaningless series of symbols and the exile of the associated files to a dark corner of the operating system.)
The most reliable way to avoid these indignities combines direct payments to podcast producers with creative ways to play their products.
The websites of some podcasts, such as the reliably splendid History of England, offer subscriptions that permit both the downloading of ad-free episodes and the enjoyment of bonus content. Other podcasts of interest to self-directed learners make use of Patreon or Substack to provide the same sort of service, paying ‘ten percent to the Big Guy’ for the sake of convenience.
Direct payments put far more money into the pocket of podcasters than advertising does. Indeed, in order to make the $45 that he earns from a $50 subscription, the creator of a learned podcast would have to convince people to download 2,500 advert-laden episodes. (This calculation assumes that the podcaster receives $18 for every thousand downloads that take place.)
If, like so many people these days, a listener who suffers from the dreaded dearth of dosh, he can subscribe to a podcast for a month (at a cost of $5 or so), download all of the already published episodes, and, having done that, cancel his subscription. While the creator of a podcast would much prefer sustained support, the proceeds from such an exchange would equal the profit he would glean from several hundred commercial-bearing downloads.
To play these pristine programs, podcast enthusiasts will want to avoid players, such as Apple’s Podcasts app, that subject files to the Johnny Rivers treatment. (‘They’ve given you a number, and taken away your name.’) Instead, they should use indie players of various sorts (most of which are advertised as music machines) or the method that uses iTunes to turn podcast episodes into chapters of an audiobook.
As far as indie music players go, I have no suggestions to offer. I have had good luck with VLC Media Player. However, as I have yet to take the time to look into other applications of its type, I have no means of comparing it to competitors. (Please tell me, Gentle Readers, if you might be interested in an article that evaluates such programs.)
The iTunes-Audiobook Method
Old-timey iTunes treats files downloaded from third party sites (such as Patreon and the podcaster websites with which I am familiar) as if they were songs. Thus, when listeners set iTunes as the default program for playing MP3 files, clicking such files in the finder will cause them to appear in the ‘Music’ section of iTunes. (In some cases, the image that appears in ‘Music’ will identify the podcast of origin, the name of the episode, and the name of the ‘artist’ who produced it. In others, the album art will have taken French leave and ‘unknown’ will have supplanted the names of the program and its creator.)
Once a file has appeared in ‘Music’, it is ready for conversion into a chapter of an audiobook. This is done by selecting, seriatim, the boxes marked ‘album info’ and ‘options’, and, once the ‘options’ page has appeared, changing ‘media kind’ from ‘music’ to ‘audiobook’.
At this point, I recommend that listeners resist the temptation to exercise the option of converting the file in question into a ‘podcast’ episode. While the process described may have removed some of the codes that facilitate ‘de-downloading’, I would not be surprised if Apple found (or, already possesses) some means of removing such files from hard drives.
Of course, formatting such files as audiobooks offers no iron-clad guarantee against jiggery-pokery of that sort. (This is why one should keep copies of downloaded files in a folder other than the ones associated with iTunes and, better yet, on some sort of removable storage device.) Nonetheless, avoiding the ‘podcast’ section of iTunes, however, places one more barrier in the way of the perpetrator of this sort of thievery.
Once the episode appears on the ‘audiobooks’ page of iTunes, listeners are free to combine it with others in ways conducive to their tastes. For example, I find that organizing episodes of The History of England into audiobooks about the reigns of particular monarchs fits in nicely with the ways that I like to engage such programs.
Older Podcasts
As a rule, people paying for the placement of their commercials limit their sponsorship to podcasts that publish new episodes on a regular basis. Thus, a podcast that has been quiet for several years stands a good chance of being ‘advert free’. Thus, for example, the excellent History of Denmark podcast, which produced twenty-three episodes in the years between 2015 and 2018, enjoys complete freedom from advertisements of any sort. (Needless to say, no one is trying to sell life insurance to podcasts of this sort. So, if you discover one, download its episodes right away.)
Unfortunately, product endorsements woven into the fabric of older episodes, such as those found on Mike Duncan’s nine-year exploration of Revolutions, display a distressing degree of persistence. Thus, while Audible and Harry’s Razors stopped paying Mr. Duncan for his kind words about their products a long time ago, I have yet to find a source for episodes that have shed those advertisements.
Happily, older episodes of Revolutions, which ran from 2013 through 2022, rarely bear such burdens. Thus, listeners can enjoy the first season of series, which provides more than eight hours of content on the subject of the English Civil War, for the price of sitting through (or forwarding past) a single 65-second invitation to rent overpriced audiobooks. (For the record, the offending episode, numbered 1.3, tells tales of The Bishops’ Wars.)
Ad-Free Podcasts
To their considerable credit, some podcasters have decided to avoid advertisements altogether. Of these, one of my all-time personal favorites, The History of English Podcast, does this without fanfare. (Bravo, Kevin Stroud.) Another, alas, replaces endorsements of third-party products with ‘for the price of a latté per month’ shill-sessions for his Patreon page. (This is a pity, for the otherwise magnificent History of the Germans ranks high upon my - very short - list of indispensable podcasts.)
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Doesn't apple get enough money? Each Iphone is almost $1k. They charge for Itunes, They charge the producer, the artist, the downloader, and everyone else.
Why would anyone ever use Apple crap?
I use the fountain app to listen to podcasts. I wish more people that I listened to would use that app.
Pot Player is pretty good for video... am still inextricably intertwined with iTunes music-wise.
"As far as indie music players go, I have no suggestions to offer. I have had good luck with VLC Media Player. However, as I have yet to take the time to look into other applications of its type, I have no means of comparing it to competitors. (Please tell me, Gentle Readers, if you might be interested in an article that evaluates such programs.)"