I remember Pocket Casts tried to take away lifetime purchases until people complained about it and they went 'fuck it' and gave people memberships that lasted 100 years or something. They did it before they had time to rebrand it as a 'Lifetime Member' in the GUI so good on them for fixing it so fast I guess.

I love it as an app but I'm not sure what it's like for new users that can't get lifetime memberships.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I bought pocket casts for like $4 a very long time ago. I'm not sure what you're talking about, and the app says I have a free account. What is the difference in buying the app and subscribing to it?

[–] Tilgare@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I only came along after Google podcasts announced that it was sunsetting, so I don't know what the lifetime membership entailed. But I have no need for any of the paid features they offer, so I'm happy to remain a free member. I don't really understand why I would need cloud storage... from my podcast app... and on pc, I just run the Pocket Cast app in an Android emulator since for some reason you can't use a web browser without a subscription. Completely mystifying decision, but I'm not paying $4 a month for it.

[–] kratoz29@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What Android emulator are you using?

I remember I tried one for macOS before but I wasn't happy with the performance, I did try it for the Tivimate I think, but it was choppy and not worth to use, I was gonna go back to experiment about this it would be because of Pocket Casts for sure.

[–] Tilgare@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I just loaded up Android Studio, which has it's own emulation layer. I've tried Bluestacks in the past and had trouble with it - figured that Google's own environment would be the best option.

[–] kratoz29@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago

Hmm, I see, I'm gonna look into this surely!

[–] srecko@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I use cloud storage for audiobooks. It syncs my progress across devices. That's the reason I bought the app (and got lifetime subscription later).

[–] Tilgare@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

Oh very cool - that's a very good use case that I hadn't considered!

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Hmm, I guess the app is free now but the "plus" features cost money

[–] JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 1 points 7 months ago

Use antennapod. They literally highly discourage donations now because they have enough donations to cover their operating coats and then like 50% extra on top.

Because updating a podcast app is literally not a full time job if it is so stable as these two apps. They both release small feature updates and bug fixes for a while. Antennapod even did a full UI update to the new material standard.

Pocketcasts devs seem to want maximum profit from it. They probably have an order of magnitude more income already than antennapod due to how many more people use it and how they push subscriptions. I just don't understand why they need that much money.