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@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.