gPodder for Podcasts
gPodder is a pretty good podcast program. I use it to organize my podcast subscriptions and check for new episodes. In a similar vein to my last article Khal a TUI Calendar: Procrastination in Python where I searched for a suitable calendar. I had a hard time finding the podcast application that suited my use case when migrating from Windows to GNU/Linux. I tried many that were not to my liking and many media players that have podcast support as well. Ultimately I opted for a program that does one thing well in gPodder.
The Dawn of Internet Broadcasting
I’m a podcast Fiend. It started with talk radio in my Dad’s puttering Plymouth Reliant bouncing on the flaking red velveteen seats. My mind became trained to passively consume audio as the we twisted down the highway. I took some Hiatus from the medium until it came time for myself to be behind the wheel commuting many miles. However by this time the content on terrestrial radio had waned and been usurped by the budding broadcast medium of the internet. The iPod was a popular commodity but the podcast was something that few people had explored in their media diet.
I remember the first time a friend picked me up in their extremely unreliable sedan that only sometimes had power steering and breaks. They had a podcast playing over the FM transmitter plugged into the cigarette lighter. “Podcasts have completely replaced radio for me”, he told me. “Cool” I said pretending to be in the know, and we rolled down the road listening to some early podcast desperately trying to recapture the normal terrestrial radio vibe but with a Strenian lewdity. I saw the potential for this type of thing to be huge. Its free for listeners the barrier to entry is low and soon most people would become occupied by portable media. The first podcasts I listened too were interest based. Soon however many personality based podcasts would emerge and mainstream broadcasts would adopt the medium as an extra appendage in the media industrial complex.
The old King
For the time the de facto podcast player for almost everyone was iTunes. I used iTunes until I discovered Songbird in 2017. Both of these are bloated applications with tens of features, and only songbird had some modularity. Realistically I don’t need my music library and podcast library managed by the same program. However I was so trained by iTunes to believe this was the superior workflow that I tried gPodder and decided I didn’t like it. I tried almost every other application that manages podcasts and then came back to gPodder.
gPodder is a simple program. It reads and manages rss feeds for podcasts and downloads new episodes. It uses external media players to play the files. I use vlc with Preferences>Interface>Continue Playback set to always so that my spot is saved if I decide to take a break from listening. gPodder is extensible and comes with a plugins menu. You can view episode details to read show notes and manage downloads in the downloads tab.
I still love podcasts despite the creep of commercial pollution. My favorites are all small ventures that have stood the test of time. They are community funded and driven much like my favorite free software projects. Some early podcasters even distributed their media under creative commons license commonly used in free software. gPodder is a free and open source program in development for the past fifteen years that helps me enjoy my favorite boradcasts.