Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

https://github.com/adblockradio/adblockradio

by albertzeyer • 7 years ago

471 268 7 years ago

github.com

motdiem• 7 years ago

previous conversation here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18855029

dest7• 7 years ago

Hello, author of Adblock Radio here. Thanks for posting this. I can answer questions if you have any.

You can read more on the context of this project in this article: https://www.adblockradio.com/blog/2018/11/15/designing-audio...

amrrs2• 7 years ago

I know we don't want to see / hear ads. But at the same time, these ads on the podcast are making livelihoods/income for those content creators and If we strip that off of them, saying I don't like ads but hey I do like your content. Where do you think we can have the line?

gdhbcc• 7 years ago

Their need to make a living is not a legitimate excuse to brainwash me.

If they cannot find an ethical business model, then they must go out of business.

dest7• 7 years ago

My dream would be that people that are fine with ads should have them, while people against should be able to subscribe to the content. Like Spotify actually, but radio does not offer that.

matz1• 7 years ago

The "line" can be different for everyone. For some, all ads is bad and should be block, for other some ads are good and shouldn't be block. You should fight for your own preffered line, wherever that is.

In the reality there are no one "correct" line. The line is just the equilibrium between this opposing sides.

onemoresoop5• 7 years ago

If ads were less invasive we’d tolerate them for sure. The problem is that they devoure any medium completely with an excessive quantity of ads, volume bumping, flashing banners, page hijacks, dubious js and are really innefective to begin with. If they were more expensive and used more sparingly they’d be tolerated. But they’re not and people are fighting back.

imglorp• 7 years ago

I'd like to give a shout out to one pod caster in particular that might be of interest to this audience: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com

There are ads, but they are spoken by the host in his normal tone. No loudness tricks, just one minute reading the copy. I suppose OP's tool won't detect this unless a human tags all the spots.

Second, the ads are focused to the audience and may actually be useful sometimes: hosting companies, SAS tools, etc.

willio58• 7 years ago

The line is different for all people. I love the concept of ad blockers in all forms of media. Why should I be forced to take in your ads? I can already skip them with a quick 2 or 3 taps of the skip button, why should I be forced to do that while I go about my day?

joe-collins• 7 years ago

I don't know about podcasting, but for music, streaming royalties are so abysmal that I can't feel guilt about blocking ads on those services. If I want to support an artist, I'll buy their music on Bandcamp, where I know they'll get the majority of the purchase price.

jccalhoun• 7 years ago

They get money on downloads so they have no idea whether i listen to the ad, skip through them manually, or use this.

SkyBelow3• 7 years ago

Maybe it will cause improvements in how ads are done.

I buy lots of games of certain genres. I'm always wanting to know about similar games in those genres that match my taste. But almost all game ads are for the major big games that I generally either don't buy or already know about and will buy ad or not.

Ads that inform me of new games that meet my taste will easily convert to sells far beyond the rate of standard ads. But such ads rarely exist at all, the closest thing being sponsored reviews but even those I generally have to know about to look up.

But at the same time, I want these relevant ads without giving up medical information, health information, relationship status, political views, or similar such information.

inglor• 7 years ago

As a fellow tfjs user - what were the most annoying parts in the API access for you?

dest7• 7 years ago

API was fine when I used it, my main concern is that it was significantly slower than the Python / native one. Maybe performance is ISO now, I haven't tested for a while.

dddw• 7 years ago

interesting project, kudos! what does the program do when it identifies an ad? skip it like tivo? how much seconds buffering would you need? some ads (podcasts) can be quite long. with a small buffer can it inject some smooth jazz or something? radiosilence isn't an option of course ;)

benoliver9992• 7 years ago

I just tried it and it worked so well I started laughing maniacally

Justsignedup• 7 years ago

Wonder if this can be applied to generic audio on Android. Also for things like YouTube ads.

Possibilities are endless.

Can this be applied to sponsor messages on podcasts. Wonder if there's enough of a difference to notice it.

MadMatt132• 7 years ago

Ok This is incredible. Can we make PRs or something to propose new radio streams? I will definitely use it a lot.

dest7• 7 years ago

Head to https://github.com/adblockradio/available-models

MadMatt132• 7 years ago

Thanks I didn't notice. I love the initiative, will try to become maintainer of my favourite radio.

Yuval_Halevi• 7 years ago

Usually, I don't like when projects describe themselves using large brands as comparison.

But this one is great

'Machine learning meets Shazam.'

heavenlyblue• 7 years ago

This is like saying "SERP meets Google".

dest7• 7 years ago

Actually Shazam is tech for acoustic fingerprinting, which is quite far away from machine learning. In your example SERP and Google name almost the same thing.

Tepix• 7 years ago

I think the podcasts i listen to will not work, the moderators speak the ads themselves. Luckily it‘s easy to skip ahead 15 seconds at a time. At least ads in podcasts cannot track me so i don‘t feel i have to block them for that reason alone.

dest7• 7 years ago

Indeed in this situation it will not work in the current state of the ad detector.

Nextgrid6• 7 years ago

There's a thing called "server side ad injection" (more like cancer injection) that inserts arbitrary ads directly in the audio stream so the ad is independent from the original producer. Presumably they do some rudimentary tracking based on IPs, user-agent and whether your podcast client downloaded the file past the point where the ad is injected.

datenhorst• 7 years ago

Yeah I listen to a somewhat niche podcast from the UK, and recently I've been getting ads in my native German in it.

t0mas88• 7 years ago

I worked in that industry 12 years ago, and already back then indeed there was a simple method to link some ID (usually cookie) to the injected content.

The startup I worked at used it for contests, out of 100k downloads of a podcast, 1 of them would get a different starting or ending segment to give away something. So it was persistent to your user-login on the podcasting portal (which was a thing back then :-))

the_watcher• 7 years ago

I'm fine with podcast ads because I want the excellent podcasts I enjoy to continue existing. That said, I cannot stand injected ads, since they're often injected in awkward places and are jarring to the experience. I'll (not exactly happily but not angrily) listen to a live read where the podcaster has at least taken the time to try not to destroy the flow of the entire podcast.

All that said, the best ads (from a listener experience POV) are the extremely short, to the point ads that are honestly too short to put the effort into skipping. Planet Money (and the NPR podcasts I listen to in general) does this well. I'm curious what their CPMs are relative to a typical ad.

benoliver9992• 7 years ago

Also, there's difference between a company sending in a clip to be played, and actually having the presenter say the ad out loud themselves.

The latter is unthinkable on commercial radio, where separating ads from 'content' is a skill unto itself.

sambe• 7 years ago

There's something deeply satisfying about the idea that the annoying tone and shoutiness (and volume increase) of most ads could be used against them for filtering.

smhost2• 7 years ago

at the same time, i don't know how comfortable i feel about incentivizing ad distribution companies to become more stealthy.

TeMPOraL22• 7 years ago

Take a closer look at that feeling. If you're not comfortable with what they're trying to do, but also not comfortable with trying to mitigate it, as it'll only incentivize them to do worse - then how comfortable are you with them existing?

The problem is ad distribution companies here and now. The problem won't be gone until they're gone.

nautilus122• 7 years ago

Lol, they will have to start writing songs (again)

tomr_stargazer• 7 years ago

Carl Sagan, in the novel "Contact" (1985), actually predicted an ad-blocking technology that worked along these lines! He called it "Adnix" [0]

[0] http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Content.asp?Bnum=2223

WhiteOwlLion• 7 years ago

You'd think Google AI could easily block audio ads with TensorFlow. Oh, conflict of interest. Never mind.

person_of_color• 7 years ago

Could this wrok on TV?

joshvm• 7 years ago

I was about to say that Tivo has offered this in a limited capacity for a while. Unfortunately it looks like they're actually forcing people to watch ads on recordings now.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/21/20876976/tivo-pre-roll-ad...

tiborsaas• 7 years ago

It would be relatively simple to implement since you have image data as well besides audio and animations before and after ads remain the same for months.

diffeomorphism• 7 years ago

Neat software, but I think this is less defensible than other ad blockers.

With web ad blockers you protect against tracking, privacy violations and potentially malware and thus don't see "unacceptable ads". In contrast this seems to be about blocking ads just for the sake of blocking ads.

throwawawathrow7• 7 years ago

Yeah that's the point. Fuck ads.

obituary_latte• 7 years ago

Why would anyone have to defend blocking ads? It’s a personal choice that doesn’t negatively impact anyone. You could argue that if enough people did it, it could effect the potential advertising revenue, but if that were the case then the end result is not that “people are bad for blocking ads” but rather that the current state of advertising is incompatible with user needs and desires.

detuur• 7 years ago

I can't be the only one who literally can't stand the sound of radio advertising. They make a point of using as many annoying and attention-grabbing sounds as possible, not to mention the cheap and cheesy jingles.

I'll often find myself turning the radio down to the second-lowest volume it goes, so I can turn it back up when there's actual music. Equally often I turn it down and then forget about it for the rest of the trip. Honestly, a trip in silence is sometimes preferable to one where I have to micro-manage the volume knob, let alone one where I have to listen to radio ads.

Siemer• 7 years ago

Ever since raising the volume on ads was banned they simply switched to using using limiters, that basically boost all frequencies to achieve the same effect. They'll even use common ring tones or the buzz of a silenced phone to draw your attention.

Personally I mute or switch channels as soon as the commercials start and I've actually turned down at least one job offer because they had radio on the office floor.

onemoresoop5• 7 years ago

Had absolutely the same sentiemnt, forgot the radio off and realized how much joy I got from it. I gave up on TV about 14 years ago and felt a lot less invaded in my home.

soylentcola• 7 years ago

Since (commercial, music-based) radio in the US became dominated by a handful of companies running syndicated programs, I just found myself moving away from it in general.

Too little variety, no real local personality, basically none of the things radio was great at doing.

When I'm in the car now, it's all a mix of public radio/podcasts for news and discussion and Shoutcast-type streaming radio for music. I do sometimes pull up specific stuff from my personal uploaded music collection on Google Play Music or find something else I want to hear on YouTube, etc. but not often.

The funny thing is that I've found more streaming "radio" stations that do a better job of (the things I liked about) radio than actual radio stations do. It dropped off a lot since the '00s when the cost of legally running a station skyrocketed but it still beats the endless Clear Channel wasteland on the FM dial.

smhost2• 7 years ago

it's about users being able to control information flow on their own devices in whatever way they want. the privacy concerns are secondary.

TeMPOraL22• 7 years ago

There is a reason ad blockers are called "ad blockers", and not "tracking protectors" or "privacy protectors" or "malware protectors" (the latter three being their own category of software). It's because they exist precisely for blocking ads "just for the sake of blocking ads".

Ads are malicious. It's perfectly fine to block them. Privacy protection is just a convenient side effect.

mkolodny• 7 years ago

I agree that it's perfectly fine to block ads. And that ad blockers' primary feature is blocking ads.

At the same time, I think most ads aren't malicious. They aren't "intending to do harm". Ads sell things. Sometimes things people want. I'd guess that most people who use ad blockers just don't like being sold things.

Scirra_Tom• 7 years ago

It's perfectly fine to block them.

I think there were some legal rulings IIRC in the UK regarding software to auto mute/block/skip ads on TV/Radio, but for the life of my can't find them.

If it was ruled illegal, then it being "perfectly fine to block them" might be correct ethically but not legally, although I suspect the details of implementation might be the important point.

Nextgrid6• 7 years ago

Isn't technology supposed to make our lives better and solve problems? If skipping the ad manually is fine and defensible, then so is telling a machine to do it for you.

Frankly, I don't care whether people think it's defensible or not. If something's only purpose is to waste my time and sell me shit I don't need I will use every possible solution (whether technical, legal - GDPR complaints, etc - or else) to get rid of it and make my life better.

Maybe instead of thinking whether blocking/skipping ads is defensible, we should ask ourselves why as a society we are accepting having an industry whose only mission is to waste as much of humanity's time as possible while manipulating them to do things against their best interest?

Hitton2• 7 years ago

On the contrary I would say it's more defensible than other ad blockers. When blocking ads/analytics the potential advertiser sees that the ads reach just part of the audience. With audio blocking, advertiser has no feedback and only thing he an do is to guess how many people listen to the station. This blocking would have to become incredibly widespread to start matter.

FroshKiller2• 7 years ago

TV and radio ads are probably embedding inaudible signals meant to be overheard & catalogued by your smartphone, smart home devices, etc.

Don't defend advertisers. They are vampires. Don't mournfully look upon them and proclaim, "Even these wretches must eat." Plenty of jobs need doing. Advertising is not, never has been, and never will be one of them.

noitsnot• 7 years ago

I would like to assume at least Facebook and Google are doing it through their apps and devices but they might not even need the inaudible tones.

cwkoss10• 7 years ago

Has anyone developed a system to embed redundant inaudible signals into an audio signal? Seems like you could support publishers 100x+ more than any other listener by spoofing these, while poisoning the advertiser's dataset.

mnm1• 7 years ago

Ads themselves are not defensible. Trying to manipulate others for gain is a disgusting practice. It can lead to depression in individuals and encourages extreme materialism in culture. There's no such thing as an acceptable ad.

iamstupidsimple7• 7 years ago

Advertising is necessary (paid or not it's the same shit) for small businesses to get off the ground, at all. Cut off ads and you'll strangle thousands of startups/SMBs. Physical ads haven't lost their effectiveness. If they had then we'd be in real trouble.

I don't like ads either but remember there are multiple perspectives here. We should focus on purging bad actors than the entire practice. For now though, I see ad blockers as the tools of change and fully support them.

lostgame2• 7 years ago

This is an over exaggeration that doesn’t imply a lot of thought for the consequences.

How are new products and inventions supposed to create word of their existence? As a musician I see ads for new VSTs and instruments or accessories all the time I’ve never heard of, and affect my workflow in a massively significant and positive way.

ekianjo• 7 years ago

Podcast ads are extremely annoying though. They tend to repeat the same message 2 or 3 times, then spell out the name of the products as if people were dumb, and this like 5 times in an hour.

criddell3• 7 years ago

Podcasts feel like they are at an inflection point. Ad tech people are either going to wreck podcasting or there will be a podcasting bubble pop and the ad tech will go find some other field to destroy.

AlexandrB3• 7 years ago

I feel like I'm living in a parallel universe where podcasts either don't have ads (and are Patreon-supported) or the ads are read by the podcast hosts themselves as a humorous "bit". Which podcasts are you listening to?

fiblye• 7 years ago

I block ads because I don't want to be conditioned to buy things I don't need or legitimately want. I don't want the mega rich to gradually chip away at my mind day by day, hour by hour in order to make themselves another fat pile of cash. If a site shows me some sad puppy image about me stealing their money by blocking their brainwashing, I just add their whole site to my filter.

Content on the internet powered by ads is almost entirely content made to distract people. Cutting it of my life is only doing me good. Until everything decides to block me, I'll just be blocking ads because I hate them and the industry behind them.

dmix2• 7 years ago

That’s nice. Do you use gmail and other services? Because those were built and delivered for free based on the same ideas you dislike.

Invictus02• 7 years ago

Well if you hate ads so much, then just pay for the damn radio.

AlexandrB3• 7 years ago

Content on the internet powered by ads is almost entirely content made to distract people.

If you honestly believe this about podcasts running ads, then why are you listening to them at all!?

josefresco• 7 years ago

My clients are small business owners. They run ads. They are not "mega rich" and are not building a "fat pile of cash". You need to step outside your bubble, and consider the broader ad landscape.

pavel_lishin3• 7 years ago

Neat software, but I think this is less defensible than other ad blockers.

Why is the onus on me to defend what software I run on hardware I own?

ghego1• 7 years ago

I don't see why blocking ads for the sake of blocking ads shouldn't be a good enough reason to block ads. As a user I'm not in charge of ensuring that the market works, and I'm certainly not required to ensure that corporations make a profit. It's their duty to do so, and companies making a profit out of ads have proven repeatedly that they will seek profits however feasible. The worst thing one might be doing by blocking ads is to breach some contractual agreement, assuming that one was ever undersigned. The only reason one should refrain from blocking ads for the sake of blocking ads would be if that was illegal. But I don't know of any criminal law that punishes such a behavior, and honestly I don't think it would easy to draft one. I certainly will block ads whenever possible, which in first place means paying for the services I like (entertainment, email, productivity, news, etc.). But when paying is not an option, and too often it is not, I simply quit the service (e.g. Facebook), or block the ads when even that won't work (surfing the web).

HoveringOrb• 7 years ago

Why would you feel the need to defend it? It's your bandwidth. Your paying for it. Filter the content you access however you like with a clear conscience.

RickS• 7 years ago

You have a point that radio ads are less hostile and invasive than more targeted advertisement, but that argument feels a bit like "It's less defensible to resist a stabbing, because it's better than getting shot"

Resisting psychological manipulation by entities that don't want the best for you remains highly defensible.

Media creators want what's best for the hand that feeds them.

Both advertisers and mediums that host advertisements are subjecting me to messages that are intentionally designed to influence my behavior, often in ways that 1) I did not ask for, and would not elect given a choice 2) are misleading 3) are interruptive or otherwise undermine the utility of whatever I'm watching/listening to.

There's a similar justification/motive outlined on the main site https://www.adblockradio.com/en/

SkyBelow3• 7 years ago

Many ads are justifiable to block in and of themselves because of the message they send.

"Do you have ugly crooked yellow teeth..." Why do we need to tell people that crooked teeth are inherently ugly. This sort of add is the reason we have girls under 10 worrying about getting braces when their dentist never even mentioned the idea and who are whitening their teeth.

Not all are that bad, and some ads exist just to inform. But given that someone doesn't know until they have already had to listen to the ad, it makes simple enough to justify.

jordanpg3• 7 years ago

Right now, there's teams of people at companies like Spotify and Stitcher, frantic in front of whiteboards, trying to plan a future for podcasts wherein it will be harder/impossible to skip the ads.

First, they have to control the distribution. Then, they have to build the tech, which will obviously involve some kind of DRM.

To say that I hope they fail is an understatement.

But I know they'll try because in the internet economy, companies simply must fight, kick, and scratch for every last fraction of penny of advertising revenue.

I hope that they are unable to wrest sufficient control over the distribution channels to force this ugly future upon us. Indie podcasts will be safe, but the well-produced, mainstream podcasts will go the way of cable TV and it will be gross. Ads ruin everything.

harel4• 7 years ago

A lack of balance is why we can't have nice things. There has to be a middle ground where publishers make money to keep publishing and consumers of those publishing keep consuming the content without being annoyed to the point of wanting to abolish all ads.

The result of extremism here is that it wouldn't be viable financially to produce content. Paid subscription models don't seem to work leaving advertising the only revenue stream publishers have.

I'm saying all this from a content consumer point of view, not a publishing one.

na85• 7 years ago

The false dichotomy of "ads vs any content at all, whatsoever" plays perfectly into the narrative of the scummy advertising industry.

Consumer tastes change. Just as we saw a precipitous drop in smokers from the 1950s to now, we are witnessing a sea change where the human parasites are slowly waking up to the revelation that their business model has a sunset.

Consumers are starting to be more vocal and active in their (justified) desire to not be bombarded with advertising everywhere they go.

throwawawathrow7• 7 years ago

'What about my business model' is not a valid argument. You are not in fact entitled to one. Personally I'd rather see 95% less 'content' on the Internet if it meant it were ad free. I'd rather have no Facebook than one that serves you personalized ads. I'd rather have no online news media than news websites that serve ads. I'd rather have no television programs than watch programs with commercials. 'Content creators' often overestimate how much people care about their 'content' and they think we couldn't do without them. Well, most of us can. And most of us hate ads.

I'm sure, in an ad-free world, that content creators who really care would find a way to make it work. Maybe there'd be less content this way, but so be it. Quality isn't quantity.

johnsea2• 7 years ago

Why do paid subscription models not work?

Apple Music, Spotify and Tidal seem to work. Switched to Tidal recently, love the reach incl. ECM label!

(If there would be something comparable for newspapers I'd pay too, as is, I ublockorigin (or abstain))

TeMPOraL22• 7 years ago

Paid subscription models don't work in presence of advertising, because advertising-based models have a huge advantage of being ostensibly free. If we could get rid of the advertising-based models, paid models would become profitable again.

(It's like observing that horses don't work for races because motorcycles outpace them. Well, get rid of the motorcycles and horse racing makes sense again.)

We can't have nice things because advertising is inherently cancerous in nature. It will grow and repurpose everything it touches until it too serves to feed the advertising machine and depends on it for survival. There's as much balance to be found here as there is with cell growth rates - you want them at the level that supports the functioning of the organism, and not somewhere in the middle between that and the fastest-growing cancer cells.

mrmonkeyman• 7 years ago

The problem is us. We don't pay. We spend ridiculous amounts on nice cars, vacations, fancy clothes, but everything else gets scraps.

50 dollar for a book? Ha! 9,99 max and that's pushing it.

100 dollar to get access to a podcast with 200 hours of quality content that may change your life. Ha! 19,99 if I'm having a good day.

100-300 dollar a month for quality TV? Ha!! I'll pay 10 and then watch BS commercials all fucking day.

dirtyid2• 7 years ago

I'm waiting for a podcast app with crowd sourced timestamp like sound cloud for people to mark ads. Alternatively for injected ads, it would be somewhat trivial to run the same podcast episode downloaded in different regions through transcription services and clip over the difference. Or build fingerprints of similar sounding clips from different podcasts to single out ads. I suppose you'll also have people manually clipping out ads once podcast piracy becomes more prevalent as shows become platform exclusives.

There was a post about NPR raking in ad dollars yesterday, and I've heard in passing that their research team have evaluated DRM before.

seqizz• 7 years ago

Could it be.. Native advertising for songs? /s

nyolfen• 7 years ago

i will never listen to a podcast on spotify, stitcher et al for exactly this reason.

nickjj3• 7 years ago

trying to plan a future for podcasts wherein it will be harder/impossible to skip the ads.

Aren't most podcasts selling flat rate slots to run ads?

Example: Company A gives podcast author $X amount of dollars to run a 30-60 second ad in their 1 hour podcast.

If all 10,000 listeners don't listen to the ad then the podcast author still gets the same amount of ad revenue.

My thought process on that is, if I begin to hear an ad on a podcast and it's for something I didn't plan to buy anyways, then I will skip the ad by fast forwarding within 3 seconds. But if a solution existed where I couldn't do that then I wouldn't end up making the purchase by listening to the ad. I'd probably switch the podcast off for something else until the ad played out and that comes with the risk of me not going back to the podcast because I found something more interesting.

ilogik• 7 years ago

If nobody buys the product, the Company won't buy ads again from that podcast

efdee6• 7 years ago

If nobody listens to the ad, how much more episodes will the advertiser be willing to pay for?

neumann• 7 years ago

currently Malcolm Gladwell is doing sponsorship for Revisionist History by splicing episodes with mini 30-60sec advertorials in which he interviews AT&T Chief Marketing Officer about the awesomeness of AT&T's 5G. It's genius, because it comes across as

- informative

- non-spammy

and with the typical easy to digest Gladwellian narration.

What's egregious about it to my taste is that much like Gladwell's podcasts, it suggests to the audience that is simply the facts and totally fair, while all the questions are very much, "Is AT&T's 5G offering fantastic or awesome? And how long before I can use it?"

For someone literate in the topic it goes beyond the normal "don't let facts get in the way of a good story" that most podcasting falls into and you can hear the AT&T ad guys writing the script. But for the average listener it is just smooth, easy listening that draws you in without you realizing it is paid advertising attempting to win you over for a financial goal.

dirtyid2• 7 years ago

Native ad reads can be fun and deceptive. Linus Tech Tips WAN Show has the courtesy of including timestamps that allows you to skip past ads or at minimum, identify which segments are clearly delineated as ads. I don't suppose most content producers will volunteer that information and have it marked on the seekbar or some other clear UI element to indicate when advertisement is playing. Isn't that a legal requirement for videos even on youtube? Podcast gets away with it by dumping a sponsorship disclaimer in the show info metadata.

ramshorst• 7 years ago

Great to see you pop on the homepage of HN man !

dest7• 7 years ago

Thanks Toon ;)

buboard5• 7 years ago

We also need to start seeing advertising as a way for publishers/performers/makers to cut a slice of benefit from corporate profits. If we remove advertising everywhere, corporates are just going to seek non-media ways to market , and the whole mediascape will lose.

throwawawathrow7• 7 years ago

As far as I remember there was an Internet without ads. I don't think we need literal garbage stimuli for media to thrive.

buboard5• 7 years ago

When?

cwkoss10• 7 years ago

Sounds like a net positive to me.

Media living in fear of offending advertisers limits the range of acceptable discourse and causes it to slant corporatist.

buboard5• 7 years ago

nah , ad-supported media are invariably more diverse. Fear of offending subscribers leads to much more self-censorship

DoctorPenguin• 7 years ago

Great idea by the way. Of course skipping commercials in any kind of media was always a thing to do and was not invented for web ads only.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_skipping

tinus_hn• 7 years ago

Be sure to complain when there’s no more free radio targeting your taste!

waylandsmithers• 7 years ago

It's a cool technical achievement, sure. But as a listener of many podcasts I do not support this at all. I love that podcasters can make a living or at least a little money while I listen for free.

FroshKiller2• 7 years ago

I suppose you've never once fast-forwarded through an ad in a podcast you listen to.

L3viathan• 7 years ago

Do not use it, then.

Hitton2• 7 years ago

Even though I don't really listen to radio or podcasts, this looks great. How does it handle blocking ads when listening to live radio? Just silence?

exDM692• 7 years ago

I absolutely hate advertising on the radio.

But thank goodness in "socialist" Scandinavia I have several ad-free radio stations to choose from. We've got a tax-funded national broadcaster (used to be a fee on radio ownership, then TV ownership before, but now it's tax funded) and some volunteer-run organizations that have their own radio station. Our national broadcaster also has a world feed from other national broadcasters (in their own language), the BBC World feed for example.

Not only do they provide ad-free content, but the broadcast is usually more interesting than the commercial stations. Where the commercial channels have a very short playlist that repeats over and over again (something to do with licensing deals from the record producers), the non-commercial channels have radio show hosts/DJs who can choose what they play. Some of the programs are rather specialized, like a show that plays only Cuban music and another one that plays Estonian music.

In addition to ad-free radio and TV broadcasts, they also have a news website without ads.

Not everyone agrees with me, but I'll gladly pay some taxes for this service. The ad-free radio and TV is only a bonus, what I really want to pay for is the independent news outlet.

mxuribe• 7 years ago

Cable tv service in the U.S. started originally without ads - if i recall correctly. In fact, the whole premis was: you pay for tv, wouldn't need to watch ads, and that's how tv programs would get funded...But, that changed severely along the way. </sigh>

draugadrotten• 7 years ago

But thank goodness in "socialist" Scandinavia I have several ad-free radio stations to choose from.

It is naive to say that they are "ad-free". They are free from classical ads, but they are politically very left. More than 50 percent(!) of the journalists employed by Public Radio SR and Public Television SVT are voting for the Green Left, a party which has only 4% of the national voters. The journalists are hence very different from the average Sven.

"Över 50 procent av journalisterna på Sveriges Radio och Sveriges Television sympatiserar med miljöpartiet, kommersiell radio och tv kommer därefter. Minst andel sympatisörer har miljöpartiet i landsortspress och populärpress."

https://www.jmg.gu.se/digitalAssets/1369/1369226_journalist-...

The bias is very noticeable when it comes to coverage of topics like Greta, Trump, Macron, Pride, etc.

Please also note that SVT Public television is broadcasting sponsored content, and ads.But they call it sponsored content. Public radio SR is allowed to do it as well by the same laws.

exDM692• 7 years ago

If there is a political bias here, it's not major and mostly affects non-news items like columnists and opinion pieces. The news reporting is mostly pretty neutral.

In comparison to American commercial news outlets like Fox News, it is very neutral indeed.

savingGrace• 7 years ago

It keeps being mentioned that podcasters will be hurt by this, but I'm not sure how that is so?

Are the advertisers going to know that someone didn't hear their ad? Are the podcasters not going to get paid for still playing the ads? Are the people who are in love with listening to ads, still not going to get to listen to their ads? Why is this not a win all the way around?

dwighttk• 7 years ago

Possibly: podcast explosion is being funded by these advertisers who will move on to a different medium if their ads stop performing.

jplayer01• 7 years ago

I'm totally okay with ads in my podcasts if they're helping fund one of my favorite activities without profiling and tracking me as an individual. I don't want even more podcasts to go to Patron route - I can't afford it. I seriously hope this doesn't become popular.

Abishek_Muthian2• 7 years ago

Nice! Wanted to try something similar for a while using SDR to capture FM radio and start switching radio stations when the radio jockey starts speaking i.e. automatically switch stations when songs are not playing.

The Radio jockeys here (India) have started promoting ads as part of their regular content without any disclaimers or mentions that it is a promotion. e.g. They just say, 'you should put your child in this college for 100% placement' without mentioning they are being sponsored to say so.

So, just adblocker wont cut; I need (RJ+ad) blocker. I might have a jumpstart thanks to this project!

cwkoss10• 7 years ago

Contact the advertiser's sales department, waste their time, then chew them out for their shady advertising practices. Tell them that every time you hear an ad for them without a disclaimer, you will personally tell 10 friends or strangers that their organization is run by unethical crooks and should be avoided at all cost.

Since you're in India, I wonder how economical it would be to hire a telemarketing company to do this for you.

Abishek_Muthian2• 7 years ago

Although it might legally possible for me to take them to court for their advertising practices, integrity in Indian media is very negligible.

Only few news media, mostly those which had been existing for over hundred years as news paper, still maintain some integrity after switching to online media but obviously they are at the verge of bankruptcy as they cannot compete with limited attention, instant gratification, confirmation bias fuelling media houses.

nautilus122• 7 years ago

This will result in advertisements working their way deeply into songs themselves same way podcasters now just talk about how they like products on their podcasts instead of explicitely advertising (example: Joe Rogan and Tesla)

justforfunhere• 7 years ago

I have mostly given up on Radio when I am driving my car ( Thanks Bluetooth and Amazon music). It has gotten worse over the past few years. I live in Delhi, India, and we have our fair share of Radio channels here.

Over the last ten years, I have noticed a pretty interesting ( disturbing ? ) trend in the Ads that are streamed across all the Radio channels. Back when the whole Radio scene was just starting up, the ads were few, the RJs used to talk a lot more ( and made sense ) and songs were played in entirety.

Slowly they have changed to a point where RJs are just meant to be show pieces who are there to say not more than four-five lines of jokes/sarcasms during a two hour period.

The Songs are not played in their entirety. They are stripped at both ends.

The Ads have gotten louder, more offensive, aggressive etc.

And now some Radio Channels tend have small sound bites that are played repeatedly all day, that justify the streaming of Ads. This I really don't understand.

Edit: Typos

Nextgrid6• 7 years ago

I've recently been to Romania and rediscovered radio. I haven't listened in a decade due to ads, but seems like at least one station there manages to keep a good balance: https://www.dancefm.ro/ - their ads are relatively rare and not obnoxious (I guess not understanding the language helps).

onemoresoop5• 7 years ago

ADS should be more expensive for advertisers and pushed more sparingly on users. If that was the case we’d probably tolerate them, there would be no need for ADBlocking and such.

donclark• 7 years ago

Has anyone applied this to Alexa or Google Home devices? I am interested in funding DEV for the Google Home device. Anyone interested in talking further?

snakeOyl2• 7 years ago

In the same way that the mp3 changed the music industry, bittorrent changed how Hollywood made movies adblockers are going to reshape how the internet works.

Because adblockers drive down the value of ads so substantially companies will give up on trying to pay their overhead costs by using advertising and instead switch to a Netflix like subscription model.

The irony with this is that once you’ve had to log in to a site with payment information your privacy and anonymity are completely erased and you’ve often given the provider the ability to run background and credit checks on yourself.

BAReF00t• 7 years ago

I used to block ads on ShoutCast, 15 years ago.

StreamRipper cut the streams by ID3 tag change and accompanying silence. My script just played the ripped MP3s, and ignored the ones with an ad-like ID3 title or that were too short to be a song. You could either pre-record and then skip backward and forward, or listen live and have nothing played back in the ex-ad gaps.

I even had a remote control with "keep current" and "keep previous" buttons, to put the songs into my archive.

Until the Content Mafia ruined everything to keep their cocaine flowing. :/ (I worked in there, and I have enough material, to testify on the cocaine abuse that dominate[ds] the industry.)

_bxg15• 7 years ago

This is not a good thing.

Ad-blockers on the internet are justified because of invasive tracking. Radio and podcasts have no such thing, and ads are are central to their sustainability.

If you want to push the world to improve, you can't just rage blindly, you have to identify and move towards a solution that's sustainable for everyone. In the case of ad-supported businesses and services, this means non-tracking, non-intrusive advertisement (combined with subscription models, but that doesn't work for everything).

If you want to push back against tracking in ads, you have to support non-tracking ads. Otherwise there's no incentive for anything to change.

chmln• 7 years ago

If you want to push back against tracking in ads, you have to support non-tracking ads.

Why? I don't want any ads whatsoever.

Maybe it's harsh but if they can't survive without ads then let them go? Many good podcasts already charge money.

_bxg15• 7 years ago

Well for one thing, it would be literally impossible to establish a subscription model for radio stations. For another thing, online news sources have been trying to make subscriptions work for years and nobody's figured out how to do it yet.

But going beyond that, who are you to declare that entire mediums' worth of content is invalid simply because of the lack of available mechanisms for collecting the revenue they need to sustain themselves? What a gross oversimplification.

If you want behavior to change, you have to provide a valid alternative. You can only say "I won't put up with X" if there's a viable Y to replace it with. Otherwise it's just "I won't put up with you". In which case, when it comes to businesses, the other party will either get even more aggressive with their tactics, or just die altogether.

neilobremski• 7 years ago

Inevitably the goal of a project like this is going to start the fiery debate around artist compensation, free content, and advertising in general. BUT this is a great way to really see (or rather hear) ML work.

It reminds me a little of some TiVo competitor back-in-the-day where you could hit a "skip commercials" button and it would try to get back to the show by some visual or audible change/gap. Since then, somehow we've lost interest in being able to skip commercials but I still remember fast-forwarding on my VCR and how it hurt that DVDs prevented even that.

This is solid progress on one side of the fence because you know the other side is working on new things too.

wayneftw• 7 years ago

I listen to a radio show every morning and the only ads I tolerate are the ones spoken live, by the hosts.

If all ads were done like that again, I’d listen to much more advertising.

magic_beans2• 7 years ago

Podcasts are free.

Let me repeat that: PODCASTS. ARE. FREE.

I hate ads as much as the rest of you, but how the eff does anyone on HN expect brilliant, creative, and hard-working podcast creators to earn a living? (there are truly some podcast gems out there).

sizzle2• 7 years ago

Please do television next, I'll donate for this functionality even if all it does is auto-mute my "smart" tv, so I can tune out the mindnumbing advertising.

oriettaxx• 7 years ago

totally agree!

I Italy very often ads are in higher volume: so annoying, so maybe a filter will sure add info on how to spot ads

sizzle2• 7 years ago

Smart TV's might have some developer accessible APIs, would love to contribute to an open source smartTV OS, anyone know if this project already exists?

dzonga• 7 years ago

for one thing, I don't mind ads in podcasts since they're usually relevant and use no tracking. Ads like those, are a pass. What I hate are the intrusive ads on the web & mobile that want to track the color of your underwear: looking at your fb. & I think the path to a sustainable open web is having a small dose of non intrusive ads e.g just a static banner for a sponsor on a site. no tracking or maybe coupon codes.

Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

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