If there’s a favourite app amongst the Ausdroid team it has to be Pocket Casts from South Australian developers Russel Ivanovic and Philip Simpson of Shifty Jelly. Today they’ve announced that they’re ‘partnering’ with a public radio consortium comprised of WNYC, NPR, WBEZ and This American Life.
In the announcement post on the Shifty Jelly blog, Russell says the consortium approached Shifty Jelly ‘with the goal of partnering for the good of the entire podcast industry’ — a lofty goal in a medium that’s expanding rapidly. While Shifty Jelly are talking partnership, NPR on their announcement talk about the ‘acquisition of Pocket Casts’
In terms of company structure though there are changes. Founders Philip Simpson and Russell Ivanovic will be taking the roles of Chief Technical Officer (Phil) and Chief Product Officer (Russell), with ‘audio veteran’ and former iHeartRadio Executive Vice President and General Manager, Owen Grover serving as CEO of Pocket Casts. The rest of the Pocket Casts team, comprising Chris, Priya & Simon will be staying with the company.
Now, it’s a big shock, but from the Shifty Jelly announcement it appears everyone can relax – because nothing appears to be changing in terms of the app itself.
There are changes or at least ‘great things’ coming, which Russell and the team aren’t ready to talk about yet, but the combined resources of the consortium will give them the ‘passion, scale and laser focus’ to achieve these great things.
No sale price has been announced, but it seems that there’s no big exchange with Russell saying ‘Sadly we chose to not sell our souls or you all out for crazy amounts of cash money’.
The combined consortium comprises some top content producers especially when it comes to podcasts. In terms of seeing where this goes, Pocket Casts has a permanent home on my phone and we wish the guys luck.
Had a moment of panic until I got to the nothing likely to change bit. An indispensable daily app for me.
No mention on the blog as to what’s happening with PocketWeather. Probably nothing though.
They haven’t, yet, had the decency to admit their sellout, in their PocketWeather thread in the Android Phones section of Whirlpool.
I paid for pocketcast over 5 years ago and I use the app nearly every day, just hope down the road nothing changes my experience.
I hope nothing changes but I’ve seen where such acquisitions can go…
sad to see another Aussie company sell out to yanks. I love pocket casts but looks like I will need to jump ship soon
I wouldn’t – and won’t. Still the best podcasting platform around and Russell and Phil have my trust.
This comment from the verge really sums it all up:
“Having a little Australian owned company bought out by a bunch of American radio shows I don’t listen to seems weird”
True so True – Thank you pocketcasts for selling your soul
As big and popular as PocketCasts is here – remember Australia is (at most) 25 odd million people. America is what, 325 million? Of course there’s going to be more users there, and thus, interest in an app which can serve those potential listeners.