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Pocket Casts, a popular podcast application, changes strategy to make money and launches a subscription service. The company had previously charged users between $ 4 and $ 10 to download the application, depending on the operating system and platform. The app will now be free, but users will have the option to pay $ 0.99 a month, or $ 10 a year, for a premium service.
The subscription service, called Pocket Casts Plus, includes access to exclusive desktop applications, icons and app themes, as well as 10GB of cloud storage for people who want to download their audio and video content. People who have already purchased the desktop application will receive a free three-year Pocket Casts Plus.
Owen Grover, CEO of Pocket Casts, imagines that podcast creators will use cloud storage to listen to or watch a show before publishing it. He adds that this allows Pocket Casts feature enthusiasts to use it for all their media. Regarding the new subscription model, Grover said the team understood that the single download fees were "out of date," so they dropped it.
"This is not because we are trying to transfer users to Pocket Casts Plus and recover those revenues, but we can better comply with the open access philosophy of our public media property," he says. did he write in a comment sent by email to The edge. "In fact, we do expect that a small percentage of experienced users will opt for Pocket Casts Plus." (NPR, WNYC Studios, WBEZ Chicago and This American life acquired Pocket Casts in 2018.)
If Pocket Casts does not expect most people to pay for its premium service, it's hard to know how it will recover the revenue loss generated by downloading apps. Grover says the company will have "more details on monetization in the future".
Pocket Casts has always competed with Apple Podcasts on iOS, but was also considered one of the best podcast apps for Android. Now, however, with Spotify looking to further capture the market for podcast listeners and the launch of Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts has more competition and it's harder to convince people to buy a podcast app.
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