I find ads in general, and particularly audio ones, to be a super annoying cognitive burden. I have to interrupt my train of thought and consciously block the message they're trying to pipe into my brain.

I'm happy to pay for things if its low friction and reasonably priced, but will never accept being advertised to (in any form really, but especially audio and video ads).

An audio adblocker seems like a great thing, and I'm excited about this. If enough of us use it, hopefully we can force creators to abandon ads and find a model where they work for us, not the ad companies.

I wish there was a way to block billboards too. Back when google was making google glass, I thought it'd be possible to block out billboard advertisements someday.. to bad that didn't work. Or, just move to a state that bans them, I guess.

> If enough of us use it, hopefully we can force creators to abandon ads and find a model where they work for us, not the ad companies.

Why not just stop listening to what they’re creating?

Because the content is desirable.

Agreed. I believe a lot of people have beef with online advertising primarily because of the programmatic nature of it, which hurts user privacy and site UX by causing the page content to jump around, not to mention loading new ads if the page stays open,.

But, I don't have issues with podcasts where they work directly with a company to pitch a product. It's old school and it isn't as impersonal and cash-grabby as a junky website with an Adsense account.

I can imagine a tool like this becoming necessary when Amazon/Google start piping in ads through their home speaker products.

We just can't have nice things, I guess.

like they'll let you run this on your amazon/google ad-supported home speaker product...

> what are other viable revenue sources for content creators besides ads?

I don't mind paying content creators directly. I do mind allowing them to commodify parts of my mind.

I'd like to see a model where Patreon expands into making their apps more optimized for audio/video playback.

People could produce ad-free versions of their podcast for Patrons.

Apple or other podcast vendors would also be in a good position to provide an open standard for subscription podcasts without ads.

This happens already. A few podcasts I support via Patreon have ad-free feeds that they supply to patrons as unique URLs for the RSS feeds. Presumably they can cut you off if they find that you then rebroadcast or share those URLs broadly.

The Economist also does this - if you have a digital subscription you get a private/unique URL with an RSS feed serving the complete audio edition. If you cancel the subscription the feed stops working.

> This makes me wonder, what are other viable revenue sources for content creators besides ads?

people willing to pay for content worth paying for

Completely agree. I use multiple ad- and tracker-blocking browser extensions, but mostly due to the tracking. Incidentally, while blocking ads online can be noticed by the serving party (to e.g. display an annoying warning) those behind the goods/services being verbally advertised are none the wiser.

> There are ways to overlay inaudible tones

Are you referencing prior work or was that hypothetical? There is actual prior work on this. They were able to engineer a POC that could trigger "Hey Siri" and "OK Google" inaudibly by broadcasting it with ultrasound on a harmonic of the correct frequency, but at a pitch inaudible to humans [1]

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.09537.pdf

The ads might not track you, but you might be tracked when downloading the podcast and the included ads might be personalized. I've noticed that the ads in certain podcasts are completely different when downloaded from a different location while traveling.

This is correct. I received Illinois relevant messaging on political podcasts towards the last US primary election, and it remained when in other states while traveling.

Other viable revenue sources must include, and I mean this seriously, having a full-time job and doing podcasting on the side.

Something that does not generate revenue (easily) is often referred to as a hobby, r&d, or fun.

I'm much more interested in the podcast that is made for fun, than one made for profit.

If you end up producing value to others with your hobby, and you decide to ask for value in return, by all means, do so, and provide a non-de-platformable method of compensation.

So you also prefer art, food, clothing, software, and housing created by hobbyists?

Food, clothing, software as part of an integrated system, and housing, no.

> And spoken ads (hopefully) are not tracking me

While I understand that there is value in physically locating you as you play it, but the fact that the spoken ad got onto your podcast means that you are in some way located, right? I've gotten area (ie. ISP that don't exist anywhere else) specific messages in my podcasts.

I guess they don't get as much usage data as lot of other apps, unless the playback app shares it.

Advertisements sell their product in a narrative that I don't subscribe to. I aggressively block all forms of advertising, and on the occasion when I'm forced to watch an ad I usually can't believe what I am hearing or seeing.

I can't help but think that advertisements are somehow toxic to the mind.

Patreon. There are quite a few which have never run ads and are making bank.

The ideal format, arguably popularized by Chapo Trap House, is that you have a weekly free show and then at least one weekly bonus episode.

Having a free tier of service is not a new concept.