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Pocket Casts has a new owner... again
WordPress.com parent Automattic takes over a money-losing podcast app
The parent company of WordPress.com and Tumblr will acquire podcast player Pocket Casts from a public media consortium that included NPR among other organizations.
NPR inks international podcast distribution deal with Spotify
Because RSS feeds do not exist anymore
Apparently, podcasts can spread through not just with RSS links, but with expensive distribution agreements as well. With that said, Spotify will be distributing 26 of NPR's shows internationally.
SirusXM is best known as a broadcast provider for satellite radios in cars, but the company expanded its business to smartphones long ago and recently bought the streaming platform Pandora. Now SiriusXM has teamed up with Google to bring its lineup of radio stations to the Assistant across all of Google's devices. This should drastically expand the number of radio stations available on the company's smart home speakers.
Read update
- Pocket Casts' creators have dispelled some concerns from users on their blog. They address the questions about selling and collecting user data, ads, and pushing content from the four networks instead of independently curating content.
Podcasts are pretty popular these days, and there are a lot of different ways to get your fix. One of the most well-known apps on Android (and iOS) is probably Pocket Casts. The app's days of independence have ended, though. Just earlier today NPR has announced that it—as part of a larger public radio group including WNYC Studios, WBEZ Chicago, and This American Life—was acquiring the fan-favorite app.
Play Music will soon let you listen to podcasts. No, I'm not trolling you. I know we ran a headline that said this way back in October. But we were just repeating Google's words. This time, we have a date: April 18th.
National Public Radio has had an official Android app for years now, but it wasn't particularly pretty then, and it doesn't look any better now. Fortunately the organization has now released a separate piece of software that doesn't look like it's put together by donations and held together by aging strings of code. NPR One is a new radio streaming app that puts out stories from the national organization and its many local affiliates to provide a personalized, easy-listening experience.
One of the ugliest, but most functional, news apps on the Android Market has to be that of NPR News. While the app does provide a great deal of news and live streaming radio, it's completely hideous. Luckily though, this is all about change. We've landed some screenshots of a new refresh coming to the NPR for Android app. The update, which should be hitting the Android Market by the end of the month, looks to give NPR for Android a more polished look, matching the NPR for iPhone app.