Neutral FYI: VLC on OSX had unremovable sponsored radio/podcasts in its sidebar last time I used it

Are you sure you weren't using a VLC clone that added this stuff? Because these things exist (e.g. "VLC plus"). They're basically malware, tricking people into downloading what they think is the genuine article.

Yeah I'm sure it was a genuine installation. See this: https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=99040

I found this thread from 2012 while researching my post. There are in fact not a lot of posts about this topic. Are you sure these entries are sponsored? It doesn't say sponsored in the screenshot.

It's been half a decade since I last used VLC and looked this up, but I'm certain there was a VLC staff member, perhaps a moderator, who explained the presence of these sidebar entries as measures to cover development cost.

  There are in fact not a lot of posts about this topic

You mustn't have looked very far ;)

Well, a couple of minutes on Google. I just looked at all results for "sponsored" on the forum and it is in fact the only thread that uses it in that sense.

I'm still waiting for any concrete evidence, as I am genuinely curious what kind of sponsorships of that kind there are, or were, if any.

You're fully aware I was making an assumption or a false recollection. There's absolutely no need for this adversarial tone.

The official, upstream VLC installer, or some third-party repackaging?

Official, there are numerous forum posts about it. One of which can be found here https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=99040

They have "Jamendo Selections" nowadays, but that service offers independent music under creative commons licences, you can also right click and remove it.

Did the VLC people get paid to include the Jamendo plugin? Because it's not sponsored if they weren't (I realize you never claimed otherwise).

> you can also right click and remove it.

Are you sure? For me, I can only "Disable" it, and it gets promptly re-enabled right after clicking on some other item in the sidebar.

There doesn't seem to be any way to disable it permanently, or, preferably, removing it entirely.

This list is filled with a LUA script in a VLC dir, and you can override it with a user list. IT's not available through GUI but if it bothers you it's possible to remove it entirely that way.

Unfortunately on a Mac, by touching files in the app bundle (VLC.app/Content/MacOS/share/lua/playlist) you break the app signature :(