Pocket Casts Shows Ads to Paying Users
▼ Summary
– Pocket Casts is showing ads to legacy users who were promised an ad-free experience, which the CEO states is a bug that will be fixed.
– The app originally charged a one-time fee but switched to a free, subscription-based model in 2019, granting lifetime Plus memberships to previous paying users.
– After being acquired by Automattic in 2021, these lifetime memberships were rebranded to “Pocket Casts Champion” in 2024 with assurances that nothing would change.
– A Pocket Casts employee stated that ads were introduced to sustain the app and can only be removed by purchasing a Plus subscription, contradicting the CEO’s bug claim.
– The CEO confirmed the company honors legacy “lifetime” purchases for the few thousand existing members, considering it a gift rather than a sustainable business model.
A significant controversy has erupted around the popular podcast app Pocket Casts, as users who were guaranteed an ad-free experience for life are now encountering advertisements. The issue, which began generating user complaints in early September on platforms like the app’s official support forum and its subreddit, has been attributed to a software bug by Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg. He has publicly stated that the company is actively working on a correction.
The app’s history is central to the current frustration. Initially launched in 2010 as a paid application with a one-time download fee, Pocket Casts shifted its strategy in 2019 to a freemium model. This move involved making the app free to download while introducing a premium, ad-free subscription tier called Pocket Casts Plus. Following significant user backlash over the pricing change, the company made a concession: anyone who had previously purchased the web or desktop versions was granted free lifetime access to the Plus features, explicitly including an ad-free environment.
After Automattic acquired Pocket Casts in 2021, these legacy accounts were recently rebranded as “Pocket Casts Champion” in August 2024. A support page assured users this was merely a name change that would not alter their membership benefits, with no indication that advertisements would be introduced. Despite these assurances, some Champion users are now seeing ads and are being prompted to subscribe to the standard Plus plan, which costs $40 per year, to remove them.
The discrepancy in communication from the company has further fueled user anger. On one hand, a Pocket Casts support representative stated in a forum post that the banner ads were intentionally introduced to help “sustain the continued work and maintenance of the app,” and that the only way to remove them was to purchase a Plus subscription. This directly contradicts the statement from CEO Mullenweg, who insists the ads are an unintended error. He emphasized that Automattic honors the legacy agreements made by the original Pocket Casts team, stating that anyone who ever paid for the app should not see ads.
Mullenweg also provided context, noting there are only a few thousand of these lifetime members. He expressed a personal philosophy of not believing in “lifetime” purchases but stated the company’s intention was to treat the arrangement as “more of a gift” rather than force a migration to a subscription model. For affected users, the conflicting messages and the appearance of ads have eroded trust, with one forum member commenting that the change feels like a tactic to “increase your conversion rate by making the base product worse.” The situation remains unresolved as users await a permanent fix.
(Source: The Verge)
