Pocket Casts makes its web player and desktop apps usable without a subscription

In a rare recent example of a product becoming more affordable (rather than moving full-speed in the opposite direction), the popular podcast service Pocket Casts no longer requires a subscription to access its web player and desktop apps. Although the premium tiers are still there for some paywalled features, the only platforms where you can't listen for free are now smartwatches without a paired phone — a niche within a niche, if ever there was one.

Before Tuesday's announcement, you could listen for free on the Pocket Casts Android and iOS apps, but its web player and desktop apps required a premium subscription starting at $4 monthly or $40 annually. Now, you can check in with your favorite podcasters on your Mac or PC without paying a dime. Although you could already do that on free alternatives like Spotify, Apple Podcasts or YouTube Music, Pocket Casts enthusiasts (including some Engadget staffers) swear by its clean UI, silence trimming and voice boosting features and queue management.

Pocket Casts / App Store

The Automattic-owned service framed the move as standing up for open podcasting that's freely accessible to anyone, everywhere. "By making our Web Player available to everyone, we're reinforcing our belief that podcasts belong to the people, not corporations," the brand wrote in its announcement post.

That's a noble sentiment — and one we would love to see more companies embrace. But if we read (perhaps a bit cynically) between the lines, YouTube announced last month that it's passed one billion monthly active podcast viewers, with third-party data showing that it's the most popular podcast service in the US. When combined with Apple's recent addition of a web player for its free podcast service, perhaps Pocket Casts realized it was limiting itself to a diminishing piece of the pie by paywalling everything but its mobile apps.

As it stands, Pocket Casts hopes its subscription-gated features will entice some folks into throwing a few bucks its way. The Plus tier adds (deep inhale) a shuffle feature, bookmarks, the ability to preselect chapters, 20GB of cloud storage, watchOS and Wear OS apps (which you can still use for free as long as the content is streaming from your phone) and other goodies like themes, icons and a year of content from Slumber Studios. Meanwhile, the Patron tier offers all that plus early access to features, 100GB of cloud storage, extra icons and, the most important of all, a profile badge.

Pocket Casts Plus will set you back $4 monthly or $40 annually, while a Patron subscription costs $10 monthly or $100 annually.

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