Back

@pluralistic

Looks at the tour longingly from Tacoma WA
#Solidarity

@pluralistic

> * The internet’s memory problem https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct5zpf

So, I clicked here, it took me to BBC sounds, which now says: "We're replacing BBC Sounds outside the UK and bringing you BBC.com, a seamless way to read, watch, and listen - all in one place."

I remember your rant against BBC sounds when they first set it up. They were going to keep RSS but delay podcasts for weeks unless you used BBC sounds.

It seems like now, only 2 years later, they're keeping BBC sounds for UK residents, but reverting to / switching to BBC.com for international listeners.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/help/questions/listening-outside-the-uk/outside-uk-changes

Apparently though, the RSS feed for the Business Daily podcast still exists and isn't delayed by 2 weeks. You can find it here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p002vsxs/episodes/downloads

I'm not quite sure what's going on here. AFAIK, the podcasts I listen to were never delayed, and the RSS feeds for them still work. Maybe there's other stuff that was exclusive to BBC sounds and never had RSS feeds and are now unavailable outside the UK?

@merc @pluralistic I was thinking about this yesterday. This is tax payer funded work in the UK. It offends me that we pay for it only to have it blocked behind completely arbitrary sign in (it doesn't actually check if you're paying the BBC license fee, and even if you have a UK account if you listen from abroad you get ads, so what's the point) and app (most podcast listeners already have a podcast app of choice).

On exclusives: Anything that was radio broadcast has to be made available via RSS. What I have seen a lot of is non-live shows that are recorded in batch get released on sounds in one go so people can 'binge', but then are released on a weekly basis after broadcast. There are some true exclusives to BBC sounds, which I have never and will never listen to, despite however much I might want to, and I refuse to call these 'podcasts' because if I can't listen to it in my podcast app then it's not a podcast.

I understand that globally bbc.com is technically-but-not-really separate, but hearing now they might get to avoid the sounds app just leaves me bitter. It's even more annoying that if they do break exclusive content then they're not just throwing away published work, but throwing money away because they could have served ads alongside it.

@merc @pluralistic "seamless" is public-relations-speak for "you're all shit-outta-luck so don't bother us further"