The biggest benefits are likely:
- Single service for all your podcasting needs (ie: searching, storing, playing, tracking, and syncing podcasts + listening history)
- Multi-device, cross-platform support (I know this can be somewhat accomplished through the process that you mentioned, but you would need separate apps for iOS and desktop/web)
- (speculation/assumption) It may be easier to get newer features added to Pinepods (especially those that you or the community contributes and/or for server-related features) since the project is focused on just podcasts
- I’m not aware of a similar all-in-one podcast server + client service. As Pinepods matures, it can offer features/services that may not be easily included in the services you mentioned. For example, searching by transcript across all downloaded podcasts or summarizing/combining multiple podcasts (which may be helpful if you listen to multiple daily/weekly/monthly “news” podcasts of a similar topic).
- Supporting a newer project and open source community
The first two may not apply to you in particular, but I’m sure if you have other users that use the services you support then I’m sure they would appreciate having to learn/use a single app/interface for podcasts instead of having to learn one for searching/downloading (if they care about that at all), one for listening on mobile, one for listening on web, and another for managing their download/play sync.
madeofpendletonwool@lemmy.world 5 months ago
In the addition to everything the other commenter said, I would ask that you glance at the documentation briefly on the official site. There’s just a mind numbing number if features that set Pinepods and Audiobookshelf apart and there’s docs for just about all of it. Absolutely no shade, Audiobookshelf it’s a phenomenal project. But Pinepods is podcasts, that’s it’s entire identity, and it shows
pinepods.online
flightyhobler@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Fyi, there’s an Adguard blocklist for *.online urls :(
madeofpendletonwool@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Can’t win em all :/ No matter what I do there’s always difficulty that comes from somewhere. Difficulty getting the app released in certain countries due to Apple’s strict rules, difficulty with people confusing pinepods with pine64s pinebuds and commenting on every post about it, difficulty with using .online domains now. I just picked the best available domain at the time. I really wish I had pinepods.com.
I’ll continue making the app the best it can be taking on one challenge at a time. There will always be blockers for some people for one reason or another.
flightyhobler@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I feel your pain, man. IIRC this is not a standard list. Just one I added afterwards. Keep at it. Seems like you are doing many things right. 👍🏼