[Closed] Does anyone pay for podcasts?

I pay £15 a year to be a "friend" of the Cycling Podcast. I never used to but I realised I listen to nearly every show they do, especially their daily ones during the grand tours and that's quite a lot of entertainment I was getting for free. I don't pay for any others though

No, I tend to find one listen to 4 or five in a week or so then get bored / want some thing else and go away. I'm just not a regular consistent listener of anything to subscribe to anything

I pay Oh God What Now (formerly Remainiacs) £3 a month on Patreon. For that I get the podcast a day early and advert free, plus a shorter subscriber only one on Mondays. They’re part of the same crowd as Bunker and Arthur Snell’s excellent Doomsday Watch series. I’m considering a Noiser subscription as their history podcasts are excellent quality.

It’s amazing how tight people are when it comes to paying for stuff like this. I’m as guilty as anyone else to be honest.

Yeah, I do patreon for a few that I listen to every week. Ad revenue only goes so far and I’m happy to support stuff I like.

Yes. I pay for the cycling podcast, I’d happily pay for never strays far and lantern rouge too.
Also The Bugle. Alice Fraser is a legend.

RHLSTP - I paid a pound!

(a month for quite a few years)

I pay as a friend of the Cycling Podcast as well. I did pay for Radiotopia and Velocast for a couple of years but had to curtail a few subscriptions so they went.

Quite a lot of my favourite podcasts are from the BBC so I guess I pay for those.

I have sent a few pounds throigh ko-fi to the We Buy Records podcast...and watch Herring whenever he's in town so feel like supporting RHLSTP even though I'm not a badger.

I support Escape This Podcast on Patreon.

https://www.consumethismedia.com/escape-this-podcast

Money well spent.

I don't pay but listen to quite a few regularly. Rhlstp I have paid to watch the screening a few times.

Seems to me as a casual observer the pods are moving towards being a platform for other revenue generating stuff. Some of them are well produced so will cost a lot, some just 2 guys chatting (smith and sniff).

I suppose if a presenter started saying they needed subs to keep going I would just start paying.

I am also a 'friend' of the cycling podcast as they provide an insight into bike racing that I don't get anywhere else. The quality of content they produce is excellent, and I very much enjoy the spin-off series like kilometer zero and explore. I support them because I would be sad if they stopped producing the shows.

I also support Back to Blading which is a rollerblading podcast and you tube channel. I support him because it helps pay for skate reviews, which is really helpful as there aren't magazines or websites dedicated to blading like there are for cycling, so reviews are hard to find. The podcast gets into the geekier side of blading, which interests me, and again I would be sad if it disappeared so it's worth supporting.

I pay for the When Saturday Comes Podcast.
It's about football but not about football.

Makes me laugh and is only a few pounds a month. The magazine is always an interesting read too.

https://www.wsc.co.uk/

I did a cheap Audible trial to listen to As yet untitled with Alan Davies.
Didn’t renew as the series ended.

Hmm, seems I should perhaps step up.
There's a few I listen to every week and have for years and would be genuinely sad if they stopped, Running Commentary and The Grade Cricketer being 2.

@StirlingCrispin, i need to try the WSC pod, the mag is awesome, but tried the pod.

Not podcasts here, but I like watching the Corridor crew youtube channel, mainly the reacts series, they now have a website to pay for and get an extended version, wondering about joining that to see watch those.

My main podcasts which are elis james and john robbins and the parenting hell podcasts are free at the minute with no pay option, but I do buy some merch which must help.

I listen to Smith and Sniff and pay £1 per month on Patreon to get the show notes etc, normally a few photos or links to give context to things they've discussed, or just random shite, the odd bonus episode, but I like the podcast, it's a weekly ritual (that makes me laugh ridiculously hard most weeks) and I don't think £12/year is a lot to pay for the privilege.

Edit: Some early episodes had adverts, which were TERRIBLE. I'm very happy to pay a little bit to keep them at bay. Podcast adverts are just the worst I think, especially when they voice them themselves.

Yip, follow a couple of comedians from home on Patreon for a couple of quid a month. More podcasts, ad free, extra vlogs etc.

I've made donations to some podcasts I really enjoy. I sent a £10.00 paypal to Dan Carlin for instance.

There's one I think is worth paying for (@distantpod) but I'm finding it harder and harder to get time to listen, I'm months behind now. Ironically they made the full length show available only to Patreon supporters, but the "free" version on Spotify is much easier to squeeze in while cleaning or whatever, so I listen to that.

Kinda... Does Spotify count? It's where I listen to a few podcasts.

Idle curiosity really.
There’s a few that I listen to that have Patreon or Acast pages, or something similar, where you can pay a few quid and get early releases or maybe some additional content.
I wondered how many people actually did pay? There’s a couple that I’ve been tempted to sign up for but for reasons I can’t explain, I never have.

On Patreon (no idea about Acast) you can usually see how many subscribers or the total revenue - I assume its some sort of setting people can turn on/off. I've never subscribed to anything on Patreon but I have donated on "Kofi" (sp?) very occasionally (for youtube rather than podcasts - but if I listened to more podcasts I likely would).

I've also bunged some money Dan Carlin's way in recognition of his 'maxiumum effort epics' approach.

I love Oh God What Now (Ian Dunt in particular) and have paid good money to see them live, I really should support them on Patreon.

The Revolutions Podcast and Slow Burn are also well worth it.

Mike Duncan, who does Revolutions started out pretty straight down the line and has got progressively more snarky and sarcastic as time has gone on.

Slow Burn is realy good at pulling apart recent historical events that you think you're familiar with and showing intersting new angles on them and the people involved. The recent one on the LA Riots was grimly fascinating.

I pay £2 a month for the Blood & Mud Rugby Podcast.

Mainly for the "Big Light or Lamp?" and DIY Chat.

Used to be a "friend of TCP", but let that lapse as I don't listen as often as I did.

I happily pay the BBC licence fee as about 30% of my pod listening (a lot) comes from them.

I’ve also bunged some money Dan Carlin’s way in recognition of his ‘maxiumum effort epics’ approach.

Yeah, that. Just so guilty really. There's 100 of hours of really high quality output that you can listen to for free!

My main podcasts which are elis james and john robbins and the parenting hell podcasts

If you like them, you'll probably like Comedians playing fantasy premier League football (as with all of these podcasts, there's not a great deal of football). It's with Jon Richardson and Matt Forde, really funny.

Another friend of the Cycling Podcast, i also pay for the Empire Magazine film podcast specials as part of a deal with digital magazine subscription, also just started on Patreon for We Have Ways of Making you Talk, the excellent Al Murray/ James Holland WW2 pod

I use (the excellent) BBC Sounds app and pay my license fee, so kinda.

If you like them, you’ll probably like Comedians playing fantasy premier League football (as with all of these podcasts, there’s not a great deal of football). It’s with Jon Richardson and Matt Forde, really funny.

The Moon Under Water with John Robbins is brilliant too.
Ridiculous at times, but lovely listening. and you absolutely will spend hours debating your choices too.

If you like them, you’ll probably like Comedians playing fantasy premier League football (as with all of these podcasts, there’s not a great deal of football). It’s with Jon Richardson and Matt Forde, really funny.

I tried the comedians playing FPL as I like some of the people on it and was playing FPL, but it didnt do enough to catch me and after a few episodes I stopped being up to date and accrued a huge backlog which I've cherry picked odd shows from. Not sure if it was not having enough time to listen to it every week or that I'm not big fans of the hosts...

I've been regularly listening the Photography Daily podcast, from back when it was daily (it's now weekly). There are additional episodes for Patreons but tbh I'm not tempted to contribute. Rightly or wrongly I feel like I contribute with my clicks - similar to subscribing to STW 🙂

I'm a Patreon supporter of the Cosmic Shambles Network, and have paid into the annual Radiotopia funding drive a couple of time.

Urgh, I've been an avid podcast listener for years, they always seemed to be a wholesome little corner of the internet. Often home-made, or at least with very limited production values. Just interesting people telling their stories. Over the last decade when the rest of the web has turned to ads and content is just, well, worse, podcasts were a little bastion of little people doing it for the love. Brilliant.

But the last couple of years (lockdown-related?) has seen them all commercialised to within an inch of their lives. Half of the podcasts I used to listen to are now full of ads, but more upsetting is the rise of commercially-backed, heavily curated / edited / sponsored content (and obviously loads of ads). It's a sign of the times I guess, but highly disappointing.

The BBC are, at least, still producing ad-free podcasts. Annoyingly now only available via their own app, but mostly good content.

Core

I listen to Smith and Sniff and pay £1 per month on Patreon to get the show notes etc, normally a few photos or links to give context to things they’ve discussed, or just random shite, the odd bonus episode, but I like the podcast, it’s a weekly ritual (that makes me laugh ridiculously hard most weeks) and I don’t think £12/year is a lot to pay for the privilege.

Same here I keep adding the podcasts to the car HDD and rotate through them, the 90's Bristol theme is a good laugh, also Patreon HubNut but that's on YouTube

I pay Oh God What Now (formerly Remainiacs) £3 a month on Patreon. For that I get the podcast a day early and advert free, plus a shorter subscriber only one on Mondays. They’re part of the same crowd as Bunker and Arthur Snell’s excellent Doomsday Watch series. I’m considering a Noiser subscription as their history podcasts are excellent quality.

It’s amazing how tight people are when it comes to paying for stuff like this. I’m as guilty as anyone else to be honest.

same here. I also pay for the Bunker podcast but the benefits aren't as good, but I get so much value out of that group of podcasts that I don't mind.

Although I didn't get a shout out at the end of the podcast when I subscribed ages ago, still gutted as I'd have loved Ian Dunt to have uttered my name

I should also patreon subscribe to 'history of rock n roll in 500 songs' as it really is a masterwork of epic proportions.

The BBC are, at least, still producing ad-free podcasts. Annoyingly now only available via their own app, but mostly good content.

Many of the things I listen to on the BBC Sounds app say they're available "wherever you get your podcasts from".

they always seemed to be a wholesome little corner of the internet. Often home-made, or at least with very limited production values

That's what convinced me to support EtP. Their Patreon sales pitch back when I subscribed was "we'd really like to buy a better microphone for the podcast." They want me to pay the price of a pint towards something which would directly improve my listening experience? It seemed rude not to.

The BBC are, at least, still producing ad-free podcasts. Annoyingly now only available via their own app, but mostly good content.

Get most of my BBC pods on PocketCast.

Sometimes they start on Sounds for a bit beforehand though.

I sub to This Week in Tech TWIT.tv - been a weekly listener for as long as I can remember it's an absolute highlight for every Monday

Should probably support some youtubers.....

I don't pay for a podcast per se but I do have a subscription to support The Bugle and its related podcasts. They are brilliant and I want them to keep going.

I subscribe to Sam Harris' making sense. It's very expensive at £15 per month so I dip in and out rather than keep it up permanently. Some of his stuff is great, some more average, but the complete lack of ads or sponsored content makes it worth it. Agree that all the monetisation ruins a lot of other podcasts.

I sponsor two 'creatives' on Patreon - Peter Millard (wood work) and Chris Beardsley (Strength and Conditioning). Not sure either are really podcasters, one is on YT and one creates infographics. You can get all their stuff for free, I just really like what they do, so happy to contribute a bit.