Pocket Casts on the web: now open to everyone

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• Pocket Casts has opened its web player to everyone. You don’t need an account to listen - here’s our daily podcast to try it out. You can also download Mac and Windows desktop apps, too - and if you sign in, you can rate shows and store your favourites, and keep tabs of what you’ve listened-to (which syncs to the app, too). Until now, it was behind a paywall, and only available to Pocket Casts Plus users.
  • The company’s press release includes significant promotion of the benefits of open RSS. “The future of podcasting shouldn’t be locked behind walled gardens,” it says; “podcasts belong to the people, not corporations,” adding that “Podcasting is one of the last open corners of the internet, and we’re here to keep it that way.”
  • We’re linking to the Pocket Casts web player from our podcast pages, like this for The Joe Rogan Experience. One way to link programmatically is to use the Apple iTunes ID, like https://pca.st/itunes/1325018583 - this will also open the Pocket Casts app if it’s installed on mobile.
  • The Pocket Casts web player is not (yet?) optimised for mobile, and doesn’t show transcripts. An Apple Podcasts web player was launched last year - and while it, too, doesn’t show transcripts, it works flawlessly on mobile: especially when installed as an app on Android.
• As the number of podcasters, producers and students from across higher education get involved in podcasting, the HigherEd PodCon has been announced. In the podcast conference capital of Chicago, at the University of Illinois campus in the city, on July 12. Already confirmed as a speaker is Matt Abrahams from Think Fast Talk Smart.
• Magellan AI now lets advertisers measure podcast ad reach against their own first-party and third-party audience data. “Magellan AI ingests advertiser-supplied hashed email lists of their audience segments,” says the company, “and we match them against podcast ad exposure, for insights on reach, audience overlap, and targeting effectiveness.”

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