Do you like podcasts? Do you usually use iVoox to listen to them? It would not be surprising if you answered yes to both questions, since the podcast phenomenon is experiencing its golden age – not to say that we are in the midst of a bubble… – and iVoox has been the platform of reference for a long time, at least in Spain. Well, there are news that you may not know, but that will interest you.
As you know if you use iVoox, from being a crude repository of audio files, the service has been reconverted for a few years now into a whole podcast platform, you can call it the YouTube of podcasts if you want: there is a lot of everything and with the professionalization of the sector came the indispensable monetization for such a thing to be possible.
Thus, iVoox introduced a good number of income channels at the time: advertising for those who use the application for free; and, most importantly, varied payment models to incentivize model support that have evolved over time. Specific, in iVoox you can:
- Listen to almost everything for free, with advertising in the form of banners and wedges inserted at the beginning and end of each chapter.
- Pay a reduced subscription (€3.99 per month or €39.99 per year) to remove all iVoox advertising (some programs include their own advertising) and access some additional features, such as synchronization between devices.
- Pay a specific personalized subscription (from €1.50 per month) for each podcast you follow, which does not eliminate the general advertising of the site, but which helps you to support the creator and access exclusive content.
- Pay a monthly subscription of €9.99 that gives access to all of the above.
He takes the issue of exclusive content in a curious way, and that is that with all the reformulation of the platform a few years ago, he introduced the so-called “iVoox Originals”, a kind of selection of programs that can only be found available in his application. or in some other spot, although it is not common, and that they are one of the biggest attractions to end up “trapped”.
You can find Originals programs on other sites, but as I said, except for a few cases, you will only be able to listen to the first few minutes of each one, before the advertising spot appears, sending you to the corresponding site, if you want to continue listening to what they say. Exclusive content, however, can have both the programs part of iVoox Originals and any other podcast.
I’ll explain all this so you don’t get confused, since the change that iVoox is now announcing is to “offer these exclusive episodes through private feeds and integrations with other platforms, so that you can get support from new listeners who prefer to listen to you outside of iVoox”. Do you think it’s a minor change? Yes and no. Depends.
The truth is that the details they comment on are scarce, but if those who pay had the opportunity not only to listen to the exclusive content -I remember: paid content- in the application they want through a feed private -usually with a username and password-, but also to listen to the complete program of iVoox Originals -these are welcome, but only on iVoox- would be a most interesting preview. That is, since you pay, they let you listen to everything wherever you want.
But why use a non-iVoox app to listen to material that’s on iVoox? For several reasons. The main one is that the iVoox application leaves a bit to be desired in some aspects, even though the mobile application was renewed not long ago. Now, the web interface is atrociousIt’s worth the decade spent being generous and they seem to have the intention or hurry to change this.
Other reasons are… advertising, for example. Many people use iVoox to listen to podcasts of traditional commercial radio programs and just by linking with them, you don’t always want to swallow advertising when you wouldn’t have it in almost any other application.
Apart from this change, iVoox has also announced others related to the financing model of the platform and the creators, or the organization of live podcasts, not as a technical function, but as a social event.
