Apple Podcasts suddenly became a five-star app
theverge.com
theverge.com
> That’s right: they’re reviews of the podcasts themselves, not the Apple Podcasts app.
Yep, this happens all the time. People often rate the message and not the messenger. If you think about it, kind of make sense since many people would not understand who provides what in the experience.
I wouldn't be surprised if Google Chrome has 5 start reviews about that great website they visited or 1 start reviews about website that was not nice to them.
To put yourself in their shoes, consider how do you review a shopping experience in a supermarket. Are the low quality products the shop owners fault? Are the high quality products shop owners success? You might think that the answer is straightforward but it is not, some shops simply sell stands where the producers put their products and in other shops they are very involved through the whole experience.
Time that with the recommended pattern of "Ask for a review when something good happens in your app" and you have a glee of happy users recommending the experience to everyone.
There's really no mystery in the Podcasts app getting very good reviews, people really love the experience even if the app itself might not be that good.
It's just like happy Tesco customers that enjoy their Pringles and not nerding over the store design. From customers perspective, the store design and the Pringles are not separate experiences.
I'm not saying that that's how app reviews should work, just answering your question regarding where the blame should fall in your store example.
Precisely. The author of the article is certainly not mystified by what is happening, and no-one responding here seems to be so, either. You are not suggesting that the quality of the podcast and that of the app are inseparable issues, are you?
I am, actually. The experience is the listening of the podcast, how that is produced and how that is delivered are technicalities that you cannot know without investigation or prior knowledge and that is useful only if you are looking into improving or duplicating the experience.
So, it makes sense to me to rate the app based on the podcasts you listened as well us the UI experience. After all, that would be the experience of other people who are about to download the app.
I've never seen a grocery store review mention how good the non-store-brand potato chips or chocolate bars are. I _do_ see reviews regularly mentioning the quality of produce and meat, which stores do have some control over. I think most people who take the time to go to Yelp / Google Maps / whatever and leave a review are aware that they're reviewing the store and not their Mars bar.
The experience using an app is completely different. Here's my dumb analogy.
You're browsing the snack food aisle in the grocery store. You really want a Mars bar, so you pick one off the shelf and go to put in your basket. As you're picking it up, a voice asks you from the heavens: "How much do you like this?"
How much do I like what? The grocery store? The Mars bar? Being asked the question at all?
My guess is that most people leaving 5 star reviews for the Apple Podcasts app had a similar experience. If you just finished listening to a 2 hour podcast that you enjoyed and are greeted with a "rate your experience" pop-up after unlocking your phone, you might be inclined to select 5 stars without thinking about what you're actually rating.
Is this some dark pattern from Apple added to pump up their app ratings? I have no idea. But I do think that the lines are very blurred, intentionally or not, in something like a podcast app. An app certainly _could_ mislead its users into leaving positive reviews.
If you bought a Dyson vacuum at Target and it was rubbish, you wouldn't later go to a Walmart to buy a Dyson for your mum because you trust Walmart more than Target (ok, contrived example). However if you go to a store and buy generic products that turn out to be shoddy, you're likely to hold it against the store.
If you've gone through the trouble of downloading the app, and finding a podcast and listening to it, I'd say you're more likely to give it a positive review.
More technically inclined people, who know the difference between the player and the podcast, are probably also more likely to use a different player, like Overcast.
Now, the worst I've ever encountered are books with pages out of order.
If you're just doing reviews independent of medium, review just the content. The fact that you were reading a poorly stapled together print out from Jimmy down the hall is immaterial.
If it's more like Amazon, where I'm reviewing this particular item I bought, people should know that the item being sold is of substandard quality and they should get the item elsewhere.
Maybe you think that is too niche; but Amazon has Amazon-specific versions of some books and also does print-on-demand. Without people reviewing the quality of these things, how am I to know the quality? This also extends to Blu-Ray collections and other things which contain content. Even a Kindle book isn't just the content; how well the book has been formatted matters.
To the extent there is a norm, the norm is that anything related to the thing you are purchasing is fair game; things related to the seller or shipper are not. (Understanding that sometimes Amazon is more than a seller.) If you want reviews specifically of the content, you should go to sites that are specifically for reviewing content.
To the extent there is a problem, the problem is that the star-rating is global for the entire review. I can't give a book 5 stars for content and 2 for book quality. And no matter how good the content, if you're charging me $20+ for a book with pages falling out, you're not getting five stars from me.
Amazon's packaging and the delivery boy is pretty funny though.
Googling 'site:amazon.in "delivery boy"':
- There is no problem with the product,but the delivery boy charged extra 12 Rs,and said it will be adjusted in the next order.
- But delivery boy is very bad. Delivery boy has no manner how to talk with costumers.
- Ur delivery boy was not ready to do door delivery. He called u from the main road asked me to pick. I went to the main road and asked him, y u rnot doing
The only thing that sucks about it is that Amazon seems to mix around reviews of "the same" book (different printings, possibly even slightly different content since some may be expanded, have different forwards, et c.), plus sometimes ship different products with the same product page, so you can't be sure whether the review that says the binding fell apart or the paper felt crappy was for the same product you'll receive if you press "buy now".
Which would be why I basically only buy books on Amazon if someone gives me a gift card (still safer than buying electronics there). Their product pages at best suggest what you might receive. I continue to be confused at how the shit they pull doesn't put them on the wrong side of several laws.
Do they trick people into reviewing the app favorably or something else?
I had a terrible experience with their app and don’t understand how they’re managing to game the App Store rating system.
The whole industry operates on exclusivity of inventory (in this regard, Comcast and other ISPs are quite apt comparisons), so it simply does not matter how much customers hate the company selling the tickets, because their only options are to buy from them, buy at a higher price from scalpers (or the increasingly popular scalping platforms), or not attend the event at all. I think you're pretty rare in your commitment to the third option.
Even if you make it through the crazy fees and whatnot, they spam you. If I buy a ticket from some random ebay seller, that doesn’t happen. I risk ticket fraud over the definite unhappy experience of using TM.
Not sure where you’re from, given the 1.8M reviews I’m assuming US. In the Dutch app store, the TicketMaster has a 1.7 based on 171 reviews. 171 reviews seems low since TicketMaster is also the biggest company selling tickets here.
So then I imagine the count is based on the reviews since the last rating reset.
I don't trust the appstore reviews anymore.
I mean how can this be: https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/bunq/id1021178150#see-all/revi... ?
The ratings are very broadly 80% 5-star and 20% 1-star, so technically 4.2 is right. It's just that it's massively bimodal rather than mostly 4-star reviews as you might expect (which you can see if you look at the histogram) and that recent reviews are overwhelmingly bad (which you can't directly see, but those new 1-star reviews seem to be the featured ones).
Right now the app developer chooses with each new release whether to keep existing ratings or restart from scratch. It would be better if the users get to decide (i.e. actually see the chart of ratings over time) and/or it's automated somehow (e.g. if there's a big step change in the latest release, that gets detected and highlighted automatically).
This way they ensure that only users that are already satisfied with the app rate it and don't "waste" the popup on unsatisfied users.
Only if you click 5 stars are you then redirected to the app store for the actual rating, for which the slightly confused user presumably just clicks 5 stars again
Overcast is my app of choice now, and I subscribe to it since it's such a great app.
As such, the only way to do podcast transfers in a reasonable amount of time is to do them on the charger, because you probably wouldn't want to have your watch die half way through the day because several of your subscriptions released a bunch of long episodes. This is also why I don't listen to audio from the watch pretty much ever.
I've personally have been using Pocket Casts since it was the defacto podcast app on Android in like 2012, grandfathered into the premium plan since I purchased it way way back before NPR bought them. Thought I'm considering giving overcast a try. I've heard very good things about it but I'm not sure if it's worth switching over with the subscription.
The problem is that it used to work just fine, things broke with iOS 13. I would be happy if they reverted to the Podcasts app circa iOS 11 or 12.
These developers are pretty interactive and responsive there. Lots going on around podcasting 2.0 right now.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/19/22791968/apple-podcasts-...
> We weren’t able to track down a copy of the prompt ourselves to confirm when and where it appears or what it looks like
It sounds more like they just didn't have any in-app prompts before 3 months ago, and then they added them.
Worse, stores do not encourage customers to follow proper channels for things like support or feedback. People clearly can’t figure out any other way to communicate so they use that giant “review” text field to vent about anything and everything.
What’s better? Remove all reviews. Publish real numbers, like: downloads, time spent using, time installed on device (I would love to see scam apps fail once everyone can see they have an “average time on device” of 30 seconds). And, make proper support channels much more obvious on store pages (not to mention, enough gatekeeping: let developers interact with their customers much more directly).
Note that you don't even need to update the app to enable this popup review feature, this can be done with A/B tests at any moment.
Or they got people in from Wells Fargo to advise them on meeting targets?
More seriously, isn't it time that app stores were pushed to define common industry standards and those were enforced by external parties. In other spheres of life, we typically don't let companies mark their own homework when in a position of power like this (at least not all the time).
Apple and Google are known for their unreasonable behaviour this way, be it lacking transparency with rules, ignoring appeals from devs and users, and letting malicious software in (last one is admittedly a tough call at times)
In the United States, yes we do.
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/11/19/podcasts-rating-prompt-...
The article contributes nothing new to our understanding:
> But in the nearly three months since I helped point this out at The Verge and brought it directly to Apple’s attention, the only thing that’s changed is Apple Podcasts’ rating has gone up from 4.7 to 4.9 — and each of its five little gray star marks is now completely filled in, for a five-star rating overall.
Downcast is pretty nice. It's not as polished as the Podcast app but I actually like it better and it works just fine. Also lets you archive.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/19/22791968/apple-podcasts-...
> I wondered if maybe this was a common confusion with podcast apps, where listeners think they’re reviewing a podcast instead of the app itself. But no, I didn’t see that obvious pattern when I checked reviews for other top podcast apps in the App Store. Almost every review on competing apps was a review of the apps themselves.
> Apple confirmed to The Verge that it’s using a new prompt but claims it’s nothing out of the ordinary. “With iOS 15.1 released last month, Apple Podcasts began prompting listeners to leave a rating and review just like most third-party apps — using the standard Rating & Review prompt available to all developers,” wrote an Apple spokesperson who only agreed to comment if they were not named.
This seems very likely.
There are a lot of dark patterns about Apple's app store review process. Users get a "thank you we'll look at it" but never get a way to check the status of the review submission. It's like a slapping a "feedback receptacle" label on the side of a shredder.
My favorites now are Breez [1] for all Value4Value[2] podcasts, and Overcast[3] for all podcast that haven't upgraded yet.
[1] https://breez.technology/technology.html
> What is it that these apps offer that the default Google podcast doesn't?
For one, donating directly to the podcaster herself instead of to Spotify/Google/Anchor/Apple or whoever else runs the app.
> Does it give better discovery options?
Sort of, yes. Let me explain: All podcasting apps rely on the Apple podcast index. [1] One of the very early podcasters, Adam Curry, was worried about this index being run by Apple, who may or may not one day decide to censor the index or ask money for it. So he set up his own [2].
[1] http://adam.curry.com/html/PODFATHER-g6c2RMsVnxgTdZ2DgHlVfMv...
The Value 4 Value initiative [1] incentives podcasters by paying an x amount for every second that you listed to a podcast. You can also donate an arbitrary extra amount if you wish.
Would you be interested in the Fountain.fm [1] podcast app? Are you still interested if someone told you it runs on a 2nd layer on top of bitcoin?
Why would you pay a credit card fee and a Patreon fee if all you want to do is directly sponsor a Podcaster?
You see, lightning transactions are more or less free (as in, sub $ cent transactions) [1].
And using the Fountain.FM or Breez podcasting app's allowes not just you to stream money to the podcaster herself, but also a % of that "donation" to be split or even wholly donated to yet another person. [2]
[1] Scroll down to Median Fee: https://1ml.com/statistics
[2] For example, when you listen to this episode it will not stream money to the podcaster, but to the Human Rights Foundation: https://player.fm/series/closing-the-loop-2955490/ep-14-rodo...
No, I think that actually dilutes the value of a "decentralized" network.