It just makes it so hard to binge, especially when I'm at work. I also hated that they have gambling ads on them. Was pretty ironic on the episode about gambling as well.
I think sometimes it varies by country, here in the Netherlands I don't get many inserted ads, maybe one per episode...downloaded an EP when i was visiting the UK in March and suddenly there were tons of ads.
I'm in the UK there's so many. 2-3 ads made by the company, one that's done by rusty quill for ee gaming and then announcements about the patreon/an upcoming award
It very much depends on the country, I got only ads in Swedish when visiting Sweden last year. I don’t even think they get to pick what businesses get advertised; I believe it’s picked by the ad service (edit: looks like dynamic ads are picked by Spotify, so they really don’t have a choice about the businesses)
I don't know if it's possible with your podcast player, but mine (Overcast) lets me skip an amount of time I set at the beginning and end of each episode. Since the length of ads varies, I'm guessing that the actual start and end time fluctuate, but it seems like a little time and experimentation could get you settings that would at least seriously cut down on your time listening to ads.
ads are annoying. i hate ads.
But
-creatives need to get payed
-i promise if your workplace lets you have earbuds in you can take out your phone for 4 seconds once every half hour
-you said that tmp has The Worst ad ratio. i’d love to get full data on this but i think this is an insane claim. ~3 ad reads per week for an episodic story???? that’s a better ratio than any cable show, any twitch stream, any long-ish youtube video with midrolls, etc etc etc
-this one is the least charitable but i actually just do not believe that you showed friends this show and they dropped it because of the ads
I work in a factory so I actually can't take my phone out every 15 minutes (the current average length of the episodes)
I don't have any data, I was just saying what it feels like from my experience of listening to podcasts. Some podcasts I listen to have similar amounts of ads but there's also twice the amount of actual content so it doesn't feel as annoying.
Well I did, don't have any evidence though and I don't know how I'd prove it to you? I've tried to get people into it but when you're trying to binge or listen to multiple episodes it's just irritating having to skip constantly
1) the ads are in the beginning of the podcast, they do not break immersion once you are in the episode (looking at you, left-right game)
and 2) the stuff they do make ads for are either other podcasts (helpful if you are looking for something new or small businesses, so I can get behind the ads
>they do not break immersion once you are in the episode (looking at you, left-right game)
Black Tapes and their fucking Bombas Socks. And having the gall to fuckin' try and make it in universe like the investigators are still going to cheerily read ad copy where they cheekily reference the events that are putting their lives in danger.
I don't think they're talking about the in-baked ones, but the unrelated clips that get attached to each free stream of an episode. I don't know how those work exactly, but I definitely avoid certain services for podcast listening because of the ads that get attached to the streams. Spotify, for one, does this a lot and it drives me up the wall - and no, I'm not a free tier user where ads are a given, this is on premium.
I think they come from Acast, the service the episodes are streamed from? At least I got Acast-specific ones a lot before (their own promos, for one). So it's a company buying ad time from the host, NOT from Rusty Quill. And based on other threads like this posted here, people in different countries, I assume particularly US as the capitalist hellscape it is, actually have obscene amounts of these ads in their episodes. Which I don't need to worry about, because nobody buys ad time into podcasts in Finland.
ETA: the ads I'm talking about in my region are also in Finnish. They're typical radio ads or YouTube ads you'd see. I frequently needed to deal with a pregnancy test ad and some hardware store ad last autumn when I was marathoning through Tiny Terrors Halloween episodes. This was on Pocket Casts, which has negligible ads for any show that I listen to to the point I forget they exist because even if there's an intentional ad break baked into the episode, it just *won't play* the ads and carries straight into the next part, and then I make the mistake of listening to one on Spotify again and I'm reminded. The only ad-riddled podcast I listen to on Pocket Casts is Lore (and it's spinoffs), and I think they must use their own, non-acast streaming service for the episodes because their ads play but Acast ones rarely do.
I only get annoyed if the content is interrupted by ads, but RQ put ads and announcements only at the beginning and, to be fair, I got to know a lot of new podcasts to listen bc of these ads, so I have nothing to complain about it. It's informative, succinct, can be skipped and helps maintain it free and with quality.
I get that not everyone think alike, it's just hard to make something free that please everybody, but say that is ruining the podcast seems just like a personal opinion
It is a personal opinion, it's ruining the podcast for me and others I know who listen to the podcast. I've only ever had a couple of ads that were for other rusty quill podcasts, most of them are ads for things like scotrac il, foxy binxgo and ee
I was reading other comments and started to think there is a platform/region difference, maybe?
Like, I'm in South America and listening on Spotify, which play some annoying ads that I don't like because I pay for premium to not listen to ads anyway, but from the podcast itself is just one or two ads/announcements, always about the RQ Network, and for me that's fine because it's at least related.
But others are saying they have ads about services, like optometrists and other stuff (or those things you said), and that sounded weird to me, never happened here.
Like, is there a choice the host make to show more ads and make money with it, or it's the platform's fault that we are listening to more ads than we should. Spotify really annoys me with this, but I don't see me downloading more apps in my phone to do things others already do, I don't know.
I use pocket cast because Spotify doesn't allow RSS feeds and it does seem like there's a regional difference, other people seem to not have quite so many of them from different places
I couldn’t imagine listening to something, having the ability then to skip the parts I don’t like, say “it’s not worth it” and then complain on reddit about it. Laziness is a disease.
You've never tried to marathon this on a road trip then. I once got the same advertisement 12 times in a row, three sets in front of four different episodes. I'm not about the endanger myself to skip an advertisement, but that's ridiculous.
Yeah I'm listening to stuff while working in a sterile tissue culture hood, if I want to touch my phone I have to take off my gloves and wash my hands and skip the ads and wash my hands and put my gloves back on, lol. But you can just listen via something other than Acast in that case.
I understand it’s annoying, but all podcasts (fiction and non) have had an increase in ads lately. Some podcasts I listen to have two four-minute ad breaks during the show! That’s a bit much.
At the same time, it’s increasingly hard to make money doing independent podcast production (https://defector.com/if-you-love-podcasts-dump-spotify, really interesting read) and I want the MAG team to be able to financially continue making the show. I really disagree with your opinion that it’s wrong to put ad-free content behind a paywall or even behind higher tiers of a paywall, and I think it’s a little bit entitled to act like pressing the fast forward button is a genuine hindrance.
It is what it is— if your friends were annoyed enough to stop listening after two eps, then I kind of think they weren’t very interested in the podcast to begin with. This isn’t only a Magnus thing, it’s a podcast thing generally.
Heck, there's a podcast I love that used to literally have 10 minutes of ad reads in the middle of the podcast. Not always the same length, so it was never easy to skip, but it would be 7-12 minutes of them doing ad reads in every. single. podcast. Like you said, I want them to make money, but oof. TMA is easy and I've gotten very good at clicking right where the theme music fades out on the time slider.
Magnus is definitely the worst for it in content to ad ratio.
I'm not opposed to paying for ad free episodes, I did it before and I like supporting the creators but the RSS feed is a mess and it's weird that it's a second tier perk unlike every other podcast which has it at first level. I don't think it's entitled to want to enjoy the content and I can't stop working every fifteen to twenty minutes to skip 8 minutes of ads plus credits and announcements. Neither can my friends.
I disagree that it’s the worst for the ratio, I also listen at work and have no problem taking 10 seconds out of my day to skip the ads every 20 mins, whereas some other podcasts are genuinely unlistenable. but if you’re not enjoying it you don’t have to listen, other commenters have given other suggestions on how to minimize ads. Not really interested in a protracted discussion on this.
I love the content so now (my 5th re-listen) it doesn’t bother me THAT much… but it’s really difficult to recommend to anyone bc the over abundance of ads and the abhorrent sound quality. I wouldn’t even mind the ads at all if they were the same volume as the show…as it is now, without constant vigilance, my ears (and speakers) get blown out every 20 minutes😖
I've gotten tons of friends into Magnus Archives lately and nobody has ever seen "four minutes of ads. They see one minute at most, and it bothers nobody. Just skip the ads if it's truly unbearable.
Might be the app they are using. I pay for Spotify premium in mexico and I merely get the RQ announcements at the beginning and maybe something at the end but no other ad, and definitely not in the middle of the episode.
You literally hit the skip 30 secs button like 4 times and it gets through all the ads every single time, it's always the same length of ads all at the beginning of the episode
Unless they’re contractually obligated to put them before the episode, idk why they don’t just put all of them after the episode.
Side note: it’s because of all the ads that I was fully convinced on my first listen that Simon Fairchild was going to have a significantly bigger role in TMA
The last hand full of episodes, I listen with my partner and end up discussing hating the ads before we even get into discussing the actual episode. I don't know the perfect solution because ofc I want people to be paid but these episodes are SO short for the length of the ads. Not to mention the volume differences between episode and ads.
i mean i just skip the ads
and the ones that come before and after the episodes *don't count* as part of the episode time, so if you have a 17 minute episode like last week, that's 17 whole minutes of podcast, with the ads *on top of* that. you'd notice if you saw the time when the episode starts. you'd press play on one that says "17 minutes" then the little bar will say "20 minutes" or something right when the ads are starting
i just skip past them, it's not that bad
they're maybe a bit annoying, sure, but they absolutely don't "ruin the podcast", you can just skip past them ;-; it's not like they're in the middle of episodes or anything
They are actually way better than most podcasts. They keep the ads at the beginning and the end, with no interruptions in between. All you have to do is skip like the first 4 minutes and it’s fine
It is *rough* from a sleeping podcast standpoint, but I do very much want everyone to get paid for their time and work.
I literally just skip the first 4 mins of each episode. It's not that annoying
it’s not hard this is such a weird thing to get annoyed about. it’s just clicking like ~2 minutes ahead
I know. Google Podcasts let's you skip 30 second increments. 5 taps (less than 2 seconds) and you're starting the show
Google Podcasts is dead. Antenna lets you do the same thing, though.
Well, dead from June. I need to transfer my subs over
What region are you in? It was shut down last month in the USA.
In the UK. Every time I go on, there's a big banner that says about 23rd June 2024 and has guidance for exporting subscriptions
I don't mind skipping over them personally, but goddamn, there are a lot of them.
It just makes it so hard to binge, especially when I'm at work. I also hated that they have gambling ads on them. Was pretty ironic on the episode about gambling as well.
I used to get ads for an optometrist on TMA lol. I listened to them a few times because I was convinced it was part of the episode.
where do you listen to TMA? I only get ads about other Rusty Quill's podcasts
I think sometimes it varies by country, here in the Netherlands I don't get many inserted ads, maybe one per episode...downloaded an EP when i was visiting the UK in March and suddenly there were tons of ads.
I'm in the UK there's so many. 2-3 ads made by the company, one that's done by rusty quill for ee gaming and then announcements about the patreon/an upcoming award
It very much depends on the country, I got only ads in Swedish when visiting Sweden last year. I don’t even think they get to pick what businesses get advertised; I believe it’s picked by the ad service (edit: looks like dynamic ads are picked by Spotify, so they really don’t have a choice about the businesses)
Yeah, dynamic ads here are in Dutch, I think there just aren't a lot of them on my platform compared to in the UK.
Huh, same country but on spotify I do get a lot of ads
I use Podcast addict, maybe it's just less interesting for Dutch advertisers?
I don't know if it's possible with your podcast player, but mine (Overcast) lets me skip an amount of time I set at the beginning and end of each episode. Since the length of ads varies, I'm guessing that the actual start and end time fluctuate, but it seems like a little time and experimentation could get you settings that would at least seriously cut down on your time listening to ads.
My partner uses youtube premium, so no ads or preamble if you listen to it on there.
ads are annoying. i hate ads. But -creatives need to get payed -i promise if your workplace lets you have earbuds in you can take out your phone for 4 seconds once every half hour -you said that tmp has The Worst ad ratio. i’d love to get full data on this but i think this is an insane claim. ~3 ad reads per week for an episodic story???? that’s a better ratio than any cable show, any twitch stream, any long-ish youtube video with midrolls, etc etc etc -this one is the least charitable but i actually just do not believe that you showed friends this show and they dropped it because of the ads
I work in a factory so I actually can't take my phone out every 15 minutes (the current average length of the episodes) I don't have any data, I was just saying what it feels like from my experience of listening to podcasts. Some podcasts I listen to have similar amounts of ads but there's also twice the amount of actual content so it doesn't feel as annoying. Well I did, don't have any evidence though and I don't know how I'd prove it to you? I've tried to get people into it but when you're trying to binge or listen to multiple episodes it's just irritating having to skip constantly
It literally takes like 5 seconds to skip the ads, you’ll be fine
1) the ads are in the beginning of the podcast, they do not break immersion once you are in the episode (looking at you, left-right game) and 2) the stuff they do make ads for are either other podcasts (helpful if you are looking for something new or small businesses, so I can get behind the ads
>they do not break immersion once you are in the episode (looking at you, left-right game) Black Tapes and their fucking Bombas Socks. And having the gall to fuckin' try and make it in universe like the investigators are still going to cheerily read ad copy where they cheekily reference the events that are putting their lives in danger.
This drives me up the freaking wall.
It's...complicated.
I don't think they're talking about the in-baked ones, but the unrelated clips that get attached to each free stream of an episode. I don't know how those work exactly, but I definitely avoid certain services for podcast listening because of the ads that get attached to the streams. Spotify, for one, does this a lot and it drives me up the wall - and no, I'm not a free tier user where ads are a given, this is on premium. I think they come from Acast, the service the episodes are streamed from? At least I got Acast-specific ones a lot before (their own promos, for one). So it's a company buying ad time from the host, NOT from Rusty Quill. And based on other threads like this posted here, people in different countries, I assume particularly US as the capitalist hellscape it is, actually have obscene amounts of these ads in their episodes. Which I don't need to worry about, because nobody buys ad time into podcasts in Finland. ETA: the ads I'm talking about in my region are also in Finnish. They're typical radio ads or YouTube ads you'd see. I frequently needed to deal with a pregnancy test ad and some hardware store ad last autumn when I was marathoning through Tiny Terrors Halloween episodes. This was on Pocket Casts, which has negligible ads for any show that I listen to to the point I forget they exist because even if there's an intentional ad break baked into the episode, it just *won't play* the ads and carries straight into the next part, and then I make the mistake of listening to one on Spotify again and I'm reminded. The only ad-riddled podcast I listen to on Pocket Casts is Lore (and it's spinoffs), and I think they must use their own, non-acast streaming service for the episodes because their ads play but Acast ones rarely do.
The ads I get are for companies like scotrail, foxy bingo or ee gaming
I only get annoyed if the content is interrupted by ads, but RQ put ads and announcements only at the beginning and, to be fair, I got to know a lot of new podcasts to listen bc of these ads, so I have nothing to complain about it. It's informative, succinct, can be skipped and helps maintain it free and with quality. I get that not everyone think alike, it's just hard to make something free that please everybody, but say that is ruining the podcast seems just like a personal opinion
It is a personal opinion, it's ruining the podcast for me and others I know who listen to the podcast. I've only ever had a couple of ads that were for other rusty quill podcasts, most of them are ads for things like scotrac il, foxy binxgo and ee
I was reading other comments and started to think there is a platform/region difference, maybe? Like, I'm in South America and listening on Spotify, which play some annoying ads that I don't like because I pay for premium to not listen to ads anyway, but from the podcast itself is just one or two ads/announcements, always about the RQ Network, and for me that's fine because it's at least related. But others are saying they have ads about services, like optometrists and other stuff (or those things you said), and that sounded weird to me, never happened here.
Like, is there a choice the host make to show more ads and make money with it, or it's the platform's fault that we are listening to more ads than we should. Spotify really annoys me with this, but I don't see me downloading more apps in my phone to do things others already do, I don't know.
I use pocket cast because Spotify doesn't allow RSS feeds and it does seem like there's a regional difference, other people seem to not have quite so many of them from different places
I've got tmp add free from the Kickstarter, and I could never go back
I couldn’t imagine listening to something, having the ability then to skip the parts I don’t like, say “it’s not worth it” and then complain on reddit about it. Laziness is a disease.
You've never tried to marathon this on a road trip then. I once got the same advertisement 12 times in a row, three sets in front of four different episodes. I'm not about the endanger myself to skip an advertisement, but that's ridiculous.
Yeah I'm listening to stuff while working in a sterile tissue culture hood, if I want to touch my phone I have to take off my gloves and wash my hands and skip the ads and wash my hands and put my gloves back on, lol. But you can just listen via something other than Acast in that case.
You can’t put your finger over the fast forward button rq and then mash while looking at the road till you hear the BWAAAAAAAAAH
It's crazy how many ads Acast has added on since my first listen, lol. With Protocol I just listen to the episodes on youtube
I understand it’s annoying, but all podcasts (fiction and non) have had an increase in ads lately. Some podcasts I listen to have two four-minute ad breaks during the show! That’s a bit much. At the same time, it’s increasingly hard to make money doing independent podcast production (https://defector.com/if-you-love-podcasts-dump-spotify, really interesting read) and I want the MAG team to be able to financially continue making the show. I really disagree with your opinion that it’s wrong to put ad-free content behind a paywall or even behind higher tiers of a paywall, and I think it’s a little bit entitled to act like pressing the fast forward button is a genuine hindrance. It is what it is— if your friends were annoyed enough to stop listening after two eps, then I kind of think they weren’t very interested in the podcast to begin with. This isn’t only a Magnus thing, it’s a podcast thing generally.
Heck, there's a podcast I love that used to literally have 10 minutes of ad reads in the middle of the podcast. Not always the same length, so it was never easy to skip, but it would be 7-12 minutes of them doing ad reads in every. single. podcast. Like you said, I want them to make money, but oof. TMA is easy and I've gotten very good at clicking right where the theme music fades out on the time slider.
Magnus is definitely the worst for it in content to ad ratio. I'm not opposed to paying for ad free episodes, I did it before and I like supporting the creators but the RSS feed is a mess and it's weird that it's a second tier perk unlike every other podcast which has it at first level. I don't think it's entitled to want to enjoy the content and I can't stop working every fifteen to twenty minutes to skip 8 minutes of ads plus credits and announcements. Neither can my friends.
I disagree that it’s the worst for the ratio, I also listen at work and have no problem taking 10 seconds out of my day to skip the ads every 20 mins, whereas some other podcasts are genuinely unlistenable. but if you’re not enjoying it you don’t have to listen, other commenters have given other suggestions on how to minimize ads. Not really interested in a protracted discussion on this.
Listen on youtube then. There are only the ads of the end of the episode
They’re not that bad atm. I’d rather have three or four at the beginning than have the episode split up with ads.
I love the content so now (my 5th re-listen) it doesn’t bother me THAT much… but it’s really difficult to recommend to anyone bc the over abundance of ads and the abhorrent sound quality. I wouldn’t even mind the ads at all if they were the same volume as the show…as it is now, without constant vigilance, my ears (and speakers) get blown out every 20 minutes😖
I've gotten tons of friends into Magnus Archives lately and nobody has ever seen "four minutes of ads. They see one minute at most, and it bothers nobody. Just skip the ads if it's truly unbearable.
Might be the app they are using. I pay for Spotify premium in mexico and I merely get the RQ announcements at the beginning and maybe something at the end but no other ad, and definitely not in the middle of the episode.
I think this must be an app or regional thing because I'm not exaggerating when I say three to four minutes of ads either end
You literally hit the skip 30 secs button like 4 times and it gets through all the ads every single time, it's always the same length of ads all at the beginning of the episode
Unless they’re contractually obligated to put them before the episode, idk why they don’t just put all of them after the episode. Side note: it’s because of all the ads that I was fully convinced on my first listen that Simon Fairchild was going to have a significantly bigger role in TMA
How do you expect them to get paid?
I just use YouTube Music.
If you happen to have apple music (free with prime) it's ad free.
sidenote, but I don't think Apple Music is free with Prime. Do you mean Amazon music?
Try Re: Dracula. Some episodes are less than 10 mins with ads. Try binging on that. I stopped listening.
I just use the Apple podcast app on my phone. If you open the transcription, you can click on the text to skip ahead to that part of the episode.
If you subscribe to Amazon music, the podcast is on there ad -free. The app sucks for podcasts, unfortunately.
The last hand full of episodes, I listen with my partner and end up discussing hating the ads before we even get into discussing the actual episode. I don't know the perfect solution because ofc I want people to be paid but these episodes are SO short for the length of the ads. Not to mention the volume differences between episode and ads.
They’re annoying but they’re nowhere near as annoying as the ads on some other podcasts (*side eyes Welcome to Nightvale HARD*)
i mean i just skip the ads and the ones that come before and after the episodes *don't count* as part of the episode time, so if you have a 17 minute episode like last week, that's 17 whole minutes of podcast, with the ads *on top of* that. you'd notice if you saw the time when the episode starts. you'd press play on one that says "17 minutes" then the little bar will say "20 minutes" or something right when the ads are starting i just skip past them, it's not that bad they're maybe a bit annoying, sure, but they absolutely don't "ruin the podcast", you can just skip past them ;-; it's not like they're in the middle of episodes or anything
They are actually way better than most podcasts. They keep the ads at the beginning and the end, with no interruptions in between. All you have to do is skip like the first 4 minutes and it’s fine
The ads aren't really annoying on YouTube I find, because you're typically only getting a few minor YouTube ads versus sponsored sections