Breaker's app looks good, but I agree in that I hope they won't succeed. Their monetization strategy is to "own" podcasts and have people pay for access, if I understand correctly. Which podcasts do they have lined up for this? Will those podcasts still have ads in them? When will they start charging? Too many unanswered questions for me at this point which stops me from switching from my current podcast setup, and to advocate my friends to switch to this new "social" platform which might shut down when money runs out.
I pay for Spotify, Netflix etc. to avoid ads. Some podcasts manage to incorporate ads tastefully with respect for the listener. Others are not done that well, and produces the same horror as when you're used to Netflix and suddenly see how a show looks with frequent commercial breaks on a hotel TV.
Here's an idea: Crowdsourced ad-filtered podcast RSS streams you have to pay to access, where the profits go back to the podcasts themselves. Users mark the start and end of the ads in the podcast audio, and a podcast player skips those parts. That's something I would pay for, and hopefully would generate more money to the producers of podcasts than ads.
Fortunately, podcasts do seem to be one area that is apparently working reasonably well today for both producers and consumers.
Consumers get mostly free podcasts. Producers are either fine with not monetizing; the podcast is a hobby or it's in support of other activities that do bring in money. Or a pretty reasonable ad density (apparently) brings in enough money that people find it worthwhile to produce podcasts.
Interesting, as from what I have seen of the app screenshots it looks far to busy and full of useless features compared to the podcast apps I use regularly or have used in the past. As a simple example, the idea that I want to have a comment section for a podcast seems laughable at best and for the most part each major panel of the app seems to be working on a 'how many buttons can we stick in here' theme that would lead me to look elsewhere.
I pay for Spotify, Netflix etc. to avoid ads. Some podcasts manage to incorporate ads tastefully with respect for the listener. Others are not done that well, and produces the same horror as when you're used to Netflix and suddenly see how a show looks with frequent commercial breaks on a hotel TV.
Here's an idea: Crowdsourced ad-filtered podcast RSS streams you have to pay to access, where the profits go back to the podcasts themselves. Users mark the start and end of the ads in the podcast audio, and a podcast player skips those parts. That's something I would pay for, and hopefully would generate more money to the producers of podcasts than ads.