Best podcast handler for archival/organizational issues
August 25, 2013 1:25 PM Subscribe
Better podcast handler/podcatcher wanted. My current setup is iPhone 4S 32GB / Windows 7 / iTunes - I have been using iTunes since my first iPhone and I'm ready to switch. I am an avid podcast listener and this is where iTunes and I have come to a parting of the ways.
I'm fine with its vagaries in other arenas (not much of a music person), but mess with my podcasts and I will cut you. Many of these annoyances have been around for a while, and I have tried multiple suggested solutions found online (see list bullets for details), but I'm ready to look for a program that will let me actually manage my podcast files and subscriptions.
Necessary features for the new podcatcher:
Does what iTunes doesn't:
- If subscribed, downloads all new episodes and keeps trying. I'm sick of having to go in and manually download half of The Economist podcast episodes on a weekly basis. This is first b/c it's so fracking simple, right? Right?!?!??!
- If subscribed, doesn't unsubscribe, even if I never listen to a single episode. Probably the most annoying thing it does. Right now, I'm managing this by playing an episode and then marking unplayed again, but I have to do this for every podcast on the regular to keep iTunes from "helpfully" unsubscribing me from podcasts I'm only listening to occasionally. I like to save up favorite podcasts as bribes, binge on certain podcasts and I frequently wait for all chapters of audiobooks by podcast to download before I begin listening. iTunes is not helping!
- Allow you to "merge" podcasts. Probably the most annoying thing it doesn't do. History Extra from BBC History magazine podcast is now rift in twain and this is only one of many. The suggested iTunes solution (from the apple and stack exchange sites) is to download an mp3 tag editor and edit the ID/RSS/something I forget and then re-import (?) which I have been able to get to work sometimes. It's been a while since I did it, which is why I'm hazy on the detail. Surely there's an easier way - a podcatcher that lets you say "as you might have guessed, these two podcasts which have the same name and digitally identical files are, in fact, the same podcast." It doesn't even have to do this automatically or anything magical like that - I'd be more than happy (in fact happier!) to point out the duplicate podcasts and episodes. Really, really happy.
- Allow to you re-order/re-number podcasts. I was going back to listen to The History of Rome podcast and discovered that it is desperately out of order in the early episodes - possibly due to date issues from the typepad move? I could (and have!) used playlists here, but again, permanently merging/rearranging the episodes seems like the better way to go. I might be able to delete and re-download this podcast's 100+ episodes to get the right order, but that's not an option for podcasts which take down old episodes.
- Allow you to accurately see all downloadable podcast episodes and download them either all at one go or one at a time. The accuracy of every episode (downloaded/listened to/any other status) is paramount here - I'm not afraid of a little effort, so if I have to scroll endlessly through 8 years of episodes and click to download each one individually I will, but it would be awesome not to have to.
- Allow for seamless archiving of podcasts elsewhere and re-loading back in to main computer. Did I mention I listen to a lot of podcasts? I don't have a huge hard drive, so I have an external drive where I store old episodes in case of removal from the stream. Currently it's easy-peasy to drag-and-drop the files onto the hard drive. Getting them back (and in order, natch) is more complicated - way more complicated. A client that handled archiving/re-loading would be great.
Does some of what iTunes does or kind of does:
- Sync with iOS device reasonably well. Also open to a PC client with its own iOS app.
- Allow you to mark episodes as played/unplayed.
- Allow you to sync X oldest/newest unplayed/all/etc. Would be really nice to get to do this on a podcast by podcast basis - ie all unplayed episodes of the short podcasts, but only the X oldest unplayed of the epic hour+ podcasts. Maybe done by space allowance?
Would be nice to:
- Deal with duplicate episodes. You'd think that digitally identical files would be pretty easy to find and terminate. I'm not talking This American Life-style rebroadcasts, but artifacts from when iTunes does recognize changed RSS streams. One of the podcast presenters said (understatedly) that "we've moved our feed, you might see a couple of duplicate episodes". Try all of the episodes, every last one. Sigh.
- Allow you to add in audio files. Some podcasts let you purchase extra or older content - Answer Me This! paid specials and back catalog are what I'm thinking of here, and would be cool to have in the stream.
Don't care about:
- playing content in the PC client
- time it takes to sync/download/etc
- downloading on the go
- finding/researching new podcasts - I can always go into iTunes and/or find them elsewhere online
Absolutely does NOT:
- Stream without explicit permission - I'm not always on wifi and when I am, I still don't necessarily want to stream. Totally fine if an iOS client has it, but there should be an absolute kill switch for streaming.
I am willing to:
- Revisit iTunes and/or tag editors - I couldn't get them to work for me, but user error/stupidity/etc is always an option. In this case explicit, detailed help would be appreciated. Perhaps I'm not syncing often enough or too often or something else? Perhaps it requires sacrifices or offerings? Maybe I should delete and re-download everything that's messed up by feed changes (not always possible)?
- Revisit playlists for podcast episode order issues. Although that seems like a lot of work for something that isn't permanently in the audio file metadata.
- Throw money at this. Pay for software (PC or app) or for cloud/subscription service or anything else solution-wise. I support my favorite podcasts monetarily and this is one of my main sources of entertainment. There is a budget (not unlimited, as much as I would like a full-time podcast butler), but there is totally a budget. Awesome client that only does backups to dropbox? (and I'd need a paid account for the amount of space I'd use) - totally an option, I'm not married to any of the tech (other than a smartphone player of some sort - doesn't even have to be iPhone since I'm up for renewal in September).
- Consider phone-only solutions, but it would need some way to archive content and reorder/rearrange/manage/merge/etc and I can't see that that would be very phone-friendly, but I'm willing to be convinced.
- Have all my audio in another program. The little music I have is easily movable and I don't really care about it.
Hope me, MetaFilter! I'm particularly interested in hearing from other podcast addicts. Do you listen to 60+ hours of podcasts a week? Do the podcast files on your hard drive outweigh all of your other documents (including media) 99% to 1%? Is your personal podcast archive approaching 1TB of data? How do you deal?
I'm fine with its vagaries in other arenas (not much of a music person), but mess with my podcasts and I will cut you. Many of these annoyances have been around for a while, and I have tried multiple suggested solutions found online (see list bullets for details), but I'm ready to look for a program that will let me actually manage my podcast files and subscriptions.
Necessary features for the new podcatcher:
Does what iTunes doesn't:
- If subscribed, downloads all new episodes and keeps trying. I'm sick of having to go in and manually download half of The Economist podcast episodes on a weekly basis. This is first b/c it's so fracking simple, right? Right?!?!??!
- If subscribed, doesn't unsubscribe, even if I never listen to a single episode. Probably the most annoying thing it does. Right now, I'm managing this by playing an episode and then marking unplayed again, but I have to do this for every podcast on the regular to keep iTunes from "helpfully" unsubscribing me from podcasts I'm only listening to occasionally. I like to save up favorite podcasts as bribes, binge on certain podcasts and I frequently wait for all chapters of audiobooks by podcast to download before I begin listening. iTunes is not helping!
- Allow you to "merge" podcasts. Probably the most annoying thing it doesn't do. History Extra from BBC History magazine podcast is now rift in twain and this is only one of many. The suggested iTunes solution (from the apple and stack exchange sites) is to download an mp3 tag editor and edit the ID/RSS/something I forget and then re-import (?) which I have been able to get to work sometimes. It's been a while since I did it, which is why I'm hazy on the detail. Surely there's an easier way - a podcatcher that lets you say "as you might have guessed, these two podcasts which have the same name and digitally identical files are, in fact, the same podcast." It doesn't even have to do this automatically or anything magical like that - I'd be more than happy (in fact happier!) to point out the duplicate podcasts and episodes. Really, really happy.
- Allow to you re-order/re-number podcasts. I was going back to listen to The History of Rome podcast and discovered that it is desperately out of order in the early episodes - possibly due to date issues from the typepad move? I could (and have!) used playlists here, but again, permanently merging/rearranging the episodes seems like the better way to go. I might be able to delete and re-download this podcast's 100+ episodes to get the right order, but that's not an option for podcasts which take down old episodes.
- Allow you to accurately see all downloadable podcast episodes and download them either all at one go or one at a time. The accuracy of every episode (downloaded/listened to/any other status) is paramount here - I'm not afraid of a little effort, so if I have to scroll endlessly through 8 years of episodes and click to download each one individually I will, but it would be awesome not to have to.
- Allow for seamless archiving of podcasts elsewhere and re-loading back in to main computer. Did I mention I listen to a lot of podcasts? I don't have a huge hard drive, so I have an external drive where I store old episodes in case of removal from the stream. Currently it's easy-peasy to drag-and-drop the files onto the hard drive. Getting them back (and in order, natch) is more complicated - way more complicated. A client that handled archiving/re-loading would be great.
Does some of what iTunes does or kind of does:
- Sync with iOS device reasonably well. Also open to a PC client with its own iOS app.
- Allow you to mark episodes as played/unplayed.
- Allow you to sync X oldest/newest unplayed/all/etc. Would be really nice to get to do this on a podcast by podcast basis - ie all unplayed episodes of the short podcasts, but only the X oldest unplayed of the epic hour+ podcasts. Maybe done by space allowance?
Would be nice to:
- Deal with duplicate episodes. You'd think that digitally identical files would be pretty easy to find and terminate. I'm not talking This American Life-style rebroadcasts, but artifacts from when iTunes does recognize changed RSS streams. One of the podcast presenters said (understatedly) that "we've moved our feed, you might see a couple of duplicate episodes". Try all of the episodes, every last one. Sigh.
- Allow you to add in audio files. Some podcasts let you purchase extra or older content - Answer Me This! paid specials and back catalog are what I'm thinking of here, and would be cool to have in the stream.
Don't care about:
- playing content in the PC client
- time it takes to sync/download/etc
- downloading on the go
- finding/researching new podcasts - I can always go into iTunes and/or find them elsewhere online
Absolutely does NOT:
- Stream without explicit permission - I'm not always on wifi and when I am, I still don't necessarily want to stream. Totally fine if an iOS client has it, but there should be an absolute kill switch for streaming.
I am willing to:
- Revisit iTunes and/or tag editors - I couldn't get them to work for me, but user error/stupidity/etc is always an option. In this case explicit, detailed help would be appreciated. Perhaps I'm not syncing often enough or too often or something else? Perhaps it requires sacrifices or offerings? Maybe I should delete and re-download everything that's messed up by feed changes (not always possible)?
- Revisit playlists for podcast episode order issues. Although that seems like a lot of work for something that isn't permanently in the audio file metadata.
- Throw money at this. Pay for software (PC or app) or for cloud/subscription service or anything else solution-wise. I support my favorite podcasts monetarily and this is one of my main sources of entertainment. There is a budget (not unlimited, as much as I would like a full-time podcast butler), but there is totally a budget. Awesome client that only does backups to dropbox? (and I'd need a paid account for the amount of space I'd use) - totally an option, I'm not married to any of the tech (other than a smartphone player of some sort - doesn't even have to be iPhone since I'm up for renewal in September).
- Consider phone-only solutions, but it would need some way to archive content and reorder/rearrange/manage/merge/etc and I can't see that that would be very phone-friendly, but I'm willing to be convinced.
- Have all my audio in another program. The little music I have is easily movable and I don't really care about it.
Hope me, MetaFilter! I'm particularly interested in hearing from other podcast addicts. Do you listen to 60+ hours of podcasts a week? Do the podcast files on your hard drive outweigh all of your other documents (including media) 99% to 1%? Is your personal podcast archive approaching 1TB of data? How do you deal?
I admit I stopped reading about halfway through that list, but it sounds like Downcast will fit the bill for most of it.
posted by JaneL at 8:54 PM on August 25, 2013
posted by JaneL at 8:54 PM on August 25, 2013
Response by poster: I've never been able to work out how app-only downloaders handled the enormous library of past podcasts. Does it try to store all my past episodes on the phone or does it have a server somewhere? They're not deleted when played, of course.
posted by clerestory at 12:02 AM on August 26, 2013
posted by clerestory at 12:02 AM on August 26, 2013
Seconding Downcast. It supposedly has the ability to back up to your computer or the cloud, although I've not used that myself. The ability to explicitly downloading episodes to wifi connections is great, and was what drove me to it from the native podcast app. Good search feature when looking for new stuff, too.
posted by MarchHare at 3:24 PM on August 26, 2013
posted by MarchHare at 3:24 PM on August 26, 2013
While I listen to an embarrassing number of podcasts, I don't archive any after I've listened to them - I barely keep up as it is. Here's their support site, though. The answers about archiving may be there: Downcast Support
posted by JaneL at 5:51 PM on August 26, 2013
posted by JaneL at 5:51 PM on August 26, 2013
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Strictly speaking iTunes doesn't unsubscribe, it simply stops fetching new episodes. But yes OH MY GOD SO ANNOYING.
I suspect your manual "play then mark unplayed" task could be automated by scripting -- Windows iTunes has a pretty good COM interface -- although I haven't yet got annoyed enough to try it. And it would still leave you all your remaining iTunes problems.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 4:12 PM on August 25, 2013