Pod fade tracking

App version: 2.2.0-beta2 (9f88e3c7c) (Google Play)

Problem you may be having, or feature you want: I spend a lot of time on finding new podcasts, I don’t always check the last podcast released. So I would love the visual indication (maybe not DOA) of possible pod fade.

Suggested solution: a option in settings / display to show DOA.

Screenshots / Drawings / Technical details: lol, I am a needs based scripter, with no talent for UI design and color deficiencies to :boot:. So I would not have any idea.

Sounds like a good idea, what is DOA?

Sorry, while at it, can you also briefly explain what is pod fade? :innocent:

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I think DOA stands for dead on arrival! Kidding but I wonder as well.

Pod fade is when a podcast stops being published, it implies that it is sudden and without warning. You get your regular podcast, then without warning you get no more. Some fade graceful (you get a last podcast that informs you there will be no more) and some just stop without any warning. I have hundreds of podcasts, if 1 just stops, I am unlikely to notice. Not that any major resources are lost if I don’t unsubscribe to a podcast,I just prefer to be thorough.

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How about sorting the podcasts by “recently published” and scrolling to the bottom?

I do a filter on “not kept updated”. Thisis doable, but Iwould love a visual indicatoror notificationthat a podcast has faded. It is really only needed if you have a lot of podcasts. I hoped more people would be interested.

Not kept updated is a filter on what the settings for the podcast has been set to.
It’s not a filter on podcast which stopped releasing episodes, it’s a filter on podcast for those that AntennaPod won’t refresh / update because it has been set not to. (Same things than automatic download)

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Darn it, thanksfor the information, guess I will have to… I guess I will just be annoyed lol. I am not doing this manually. Oh well.

Thanks @EdwinHolley for that explanation of what podfading :slight_smile:

Why would you want to know your which podcasts have (silently) stopped anyway? Would you follow up on it, and kick them off of your system?

I think the whole discussion over at the Podcast Index might be relevant:

If they track/calculate somehow the release frequency and can serve it over API, they could inform clients via the API when a podcast has stopped. In fact, Dave mentioned in the last Podcasting 2.0 episode that 37% of the podcasts in the database aren’t active any-more, and that (if I understood correctly) they already stop checking for new episodes. If that’s indeed the case, they might as well expose that info via the API.

That sounds great. I don’t know why it matters, but I would definitely remove/unsubscribe a podcast that is not currently active. Probably so I can know how many subscriptions I have (active). I am OCD, sorry.

Update: there even is a ‘dead’ tag: API Docs | PodcastIndex.org (/podcasts/byfeedid)

dead: integer
At some point, we give up trying to process a feed and mark it as dead. This is usually after 1000 errors without a successful pull/parse cycle. Once the feed is marked dead, we only check it once per month.

However, this is, if I understand correctly, about the feed not working. If the feed is still up & running, but just doesn’t get new episodes, it doesn’t get the ‘dead’ tag. For this case I guess the discussion linked above (about Frequency tag) is still relevant.

@tonytamsf Any thoughts?

On a related note: Podcast Addict has a filter when searching for podcasts to add: Hide canceled podcasts (no content published in the past 4 months). Might be useful to exclude ‘dead’ podcasts from the search results. And if we ever get an implementation of ‘inactive’ podcasts, that could be useful as an option.

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I have the same problem, but I created a new thread because I didn’t understand the “pod fade” term, too :slight_smile:

Here my opinion so we can keep this single thread:

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For the use case of finding which podcast has not updated

  1. Go to subscriptions
  2. Sort by last updated
  3. And scroll down to the least updated
  4. I can then see podcasts that have not updated and unsubscribe

So for that use case, it does not belong with the statistics?

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An indication for an outdated podcast sounds alright when you are looking at the podcast detail page.

Having a notification seems over kill

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Once I sort subscriptions by last updated, I would still have to check manually. I would have to estimate how often the episodes were released, then I would have to see how many cycles it has been since a podcast has been released. Then remove the subscription if appropriate. My preferencewould obviously be for just getting a notification that a subscription might be dead.

It doesn’t account for how frequent a podcast ‘normally’ releases new episodes. But it certainly serves that use-case in a much simpler way ^^

True. But if it’s been over a year ago since the last episode (example from my list), it’s safe to assume it’s dead. If there’s some that are a bit more recent, I’d personally just leave them.

Anyway, I agree an actual ‘is inactive’ label would be nice. Would just be more efficient to wait for an external service that can do that for us/the user (rather than making AP code more complicated/heavy to do it locally, unreliably). (Especially given that there’s a workaround.)

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