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Comment by kfriede | Hacker News Reader

I often feel this way about podcasts. Many great podcasts have a 0:30 intro, 1:30 of ads then 08:00 of random babble before getting into 5:00 of the meat of the podcast. The most recent one I can think of is 99% Invisible, though they're not even close to the only ones that do it.

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Podcasts are following the same pattern as other media. I think it's a vicious cycle. The medium starts out with a few ads, at a higher price. Once the novelty wears off and people are used to seeing these ads, they can't fetch as much money. So the publishers start shoving more and more in, driving up the ad saturation and driving down the value (and income) from each ad.

I've been listening to podcasts since about 2010, and in that time I've witnessed podcasts that used to be ad-free jump on the Blue Apron / Stamps.com / Dollar Shave Club bandwagon. First they started with a little sponsored ad at the end of the show. Then one at the beginning. Then one commercial break. Then multiple commercial breaks. It's the same downward spiral that television went through and it's absolutely painful to watch it happen and be powerless to do anything. Maybe I should have done a better job of supporting those podcasts; I did donate to many of them. But I envision a time in the future where I'll no longer be able to feel good about listening.

There are podcasts like that, but I admit I am strange because all my favourite podcasts are multiple hours long, getting really deep into the content. Jocos podcasts, which doesn't really have ads other than for his own products, fx are often more than 3 hours, Dan Carlins Hardcore History is typically that long per episode, but often they are also part of a series, like his 5 episodes on the first world war (probably about 20 hours).

This. Exactly this. I don't get why anyone would listen to a podcast with ads and/or bad information density.

I mean, the whole point (and value) of podcasts is to remove the private radio station crap, not to replicate it.

BTW, the German podcast scene is a quite positive example of the directions podcasts can go.

To be fair, a lot of podcasts have ads, but ads aren't what I'm objecting to. The modern web doesn't suck because of ads. It sucks because of the technologies around ensuring you look at the ads, around sharing your behaviors as you look at the ads, etc.

Any podcast player I can imagine anyone would ever use has a convenient way to skip ads, and the neither the presence of the ads themselves nor my decision to skip them degrades the experience of listening to the podcast. My podcast player doesn't demand I look at Forbes' "thought of the day" or disable my fast-forward button in order to play. It doesn't connect to 280 random third-party tracking domains as I listen to an episode. It downloads a file and plays that file for me.

Who really cares that much about ads that don't track you or destroy your experience?

> and the neither the presence of the ads themselves nor my decision to skip them degrades the experience of listening to the podcast

I beg to differ.

I see the ability to skip ads immediately, at any time, as a fundamental user right (and websites that try to deny this right should be prosecute by consumer protection). In other words, this is not the distinction between good versus bad quality. It is the distinction between merely acceptable versus totally inacceptable.

With regard to quality, it is a huge jump upwards if a podcast has no ads at all, nowhere, not even hidden or implicit. It is a really noticeable difference if the whole audio simply doesn't care about pleasing any stakeholder besides its audience.

I cannot agree with this sentiment. You're basically demanding that these creators work for you, for free.

If you choose to skip the ads, then how should the creators be compensated for the content that you consumed?

"With regard to quality, it is a huge jump upwards if a podcast has no ads at all, nowhere, not even hidden or implicit. It is a really noticeable difference if the whole audio simply doesn't care about pleasing any stakeholder besides its audience."

You know what else is a huge jump in quality? Actually being able to continue to do the show.

Nobody is entitled to a business model. If ads don't work for your users, find one that does (I hear people have some success with Patronite these days, for example). If there is none, then maybe it isn't good to try to make a business out of it in the first place.

There's way too much "content" these days anyway, and the worst of it is the one that is done to make money (as opposed to labour of love, or having external funding independent of content's performance - like patronage, being considered a "marketing expense", etc.).

> I hear people have some success with Patronite these days

Moreover, direct donations [1] are working quite well, at least for the popular podcasts. (But then, only the very popular podcasts make a fortune anyway.)

Here in Germany, SEPA standing orders are quite popular for fans to support their favourites.

Also, buying stuff and sending that to the Podcasters is quite popular for some formats (either specialized stuff like high-quality chocolate from people working in that business, or just buying random stuff from a podcaster's Amazon wishlist.)

[1] Well, legally this is still plain income rather than donations, so you still have to pay taxes. Unless, of course, that income is very small and/or you create a non-profit organization around your podcast.

You're saying this like you're entitled to the content, though. You're not. And quite frankly, I find taking the content without supporting the creator to be much, much worse than you consider ads to be.

Either talk about something you care about a lot and do it for the love, or remember you're competing against students doing this for the fun or as an exercise.

> My podcast player doesn't demand I look at Forbes' "thought of the day" or disable my fast-forward button in order to play. It doesn't connect to 280 random third-party tracking domains as I listen to an episode.

Yet.

There's an easy-to-imagine scenario where advertisers bribe podcast playing software creators to embed these "features" for a cut of the money.

What are some podcasts from Germany (in German or English) that you would recommend?

but main question is how to monetize this content ... it seems patreon is the only option?

Do you mean podcasts in German or by Germans? If the latter, any good suggestions?

Omega Tau - a Science and Engineering Podcast is fantastic:

http://omegataupodcast.net/

Long episodes, such as 2 hours interviewing a physicist at ITER are really well done.

And of course: (all German language)

- CRE Technik, Kultur, Gesellschaft https://cre.fm/

- Deutschlandfunk Nova - Eine Stunde History https://www.deutschlandfunknova.de/eine-stunde-history

- Methodisch Inkorrekt http://minkorrekt.de/

- Raumzeit https://raumzeit-podcast.de/

- Logbuch Netzpolitik https://logbuch-netzpolitik.de/ (prefer the episodes where they have guests)

If you're on iOS you should try my Podcast client, SkipCast. http://skipcast.net/ The marquee feature and indeed, the app's name, is for this exact reason. Large buttons make skipping much faster and accurate that other players, letting you get to the content you want faster. It's also got Skip Silence to eliminate extended moments of dead-air.

This is why I stopped listening to back to work. There were useful tidbits, but I didn’t want to wade through an hour of random drivel to get to it.

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