The WordPress Sync plugin now respects capabilities, limiting access to the Pinecast admin panel to users with the manage_options capability. By default, this is available to admins and super-admins. Editors, contributors, and others will not be allowed to access the Pinecast settings tab.
This is available in the 1.2.1 release, which should be available as an update soon.
The podcast ("playlist") player is limited to 100 episodes for the Starter plan. However, the Growth add-on has historically allowed unlimited episodes to be shown in the player.
As of today, the Hi-Fi add-on will also remove this limit. Growth add-on customers' subscriptions are unaffected by this change.
If you are a customer with both Growth and Hi-Fi add-ons enabled, and you only choose to subscribe to the Growth add-on for the unlimited episodes in the podcast player, you can now discontinue your Growth add-on to save $10/mo.
Uploading audio and images is one of the most fundamental parts of creating and managing a podcast. To help improve this core part of Pinecast, we've invested time in making our uploader more robust in the case of different kinds of failures.
First, we've improved our error messaging. We'll now note errors which are likely caused by ad blockers or other browser extensions [0]. You'll also see errors formatted more sensibly throughout the dashboard.
Second, we've adjusted some of the wording in the UI to help eliminate confusion:
Lastly, we've fixed a number of small bugs. Notably, a long-standing bug where clearing audio or artwork while on the "add metadata" or "add artwork" steps would cause a crash has been resolved.
[0] We encourage you to disable you ad blocker on Pinecast. We do not use marketing tools or tracking software, and we'll never advertise or sell your data to advertisers. Ad blockers frequently interfere with our dashboards, as many podcasting concepts seem "advertising-y".
Due to Apple's April 2021 update, we're no longer able to measure podcast subscribers.
Podcast subscribers are measured by counting the number of unique devices that access a podcast feed in a 24 hour window. In April, Apple began rolling out an update which centralized feed downloads to Apple's servers: instead of each Apple Podcasts app requesting a feed, only a single copy was fetched by Apple's server (and subsequently distributed to all devices). This change essentially eliminated our ability to measure subscribers inclusive of Apple Podcasts.
While we did identify ways to preserve this feature for some podcasts, we were regrettably unable to scale this to work with podcasts of all sizes. We have made the decision to remove the "Subscribers" and "Subscriber Locations" analytics charts (and aggregate counts) from podcast dashboards, as these no longer return accurate information.
We're disappointed by Apple's decision to do this, as it is another step towards centralization and corporatization of the podcast ecosystem.
We've put the finishing touches on the first version of our most-requested feature to date: an embeddable playlist player! Here's a live preview:
You'll find the new player under the Player tab on your podcast dashboard. You can configure the height and colors (primary, secondary, and accent).
Unlike our episode-level embeddable player, you'll also find that we allow all customers to use our playlist player. If you're not on our Starter plan, you can use the playlist player with our logo and up to five of your episodes. With our Starter plan, our logo goes away and the episode limit increases to 100 episodes. Our Growth Add-on eliminates the restrictions.
We've taken time to make sure that the player works well on a variety of screen sizes, and did our best to ensure that it should be compatible with most screen readers.
If you're a Starter plan customer, you'll also notice that the UI features a slimmed-down short link UI:
You'll also notice that the player UI features:
This is the first iteration of many, and we hope that you'll give us feedback so that we can improve it in the future!
You can now submit and link your podcast with iHeartRadio on the Distribution tab on your podcast dashboard.
Your show will appear in iHeart's web and mobile apps, and your listeners will be able to quickly access your linked directory listing from your Pinecast short link:
Many podcasters eventually stop podcasting. Sometimes it's a temporary hiatus, sometimes it's an extended break between seasons, and sometimes it's indefinitely due to external factors.
For folks who are no longer producing episodes, a full Pinecast Starter subscription—or any hosting service subscription—can be expensive to maintain, especially if the podcast is unlikely to grow very much over time. Keeping the show online is desirable, but the continued hosting cost can be burdensome.
Pinecast Icebox is a solution for these folks: it allows you to place your account into a low-cost annual subscription in exchange for read-only access while maintaining most of the features of our Starter plan.
The Icebox is priced at $2/mo, billed annually ($24 at the time of enablement and every year thereafter). The cost of enabling the Icebox is prorated. As with all of our subscriptions, the Icebox applies to your whole account rather than individual podcasts.
Add-on packages are not available for Icebox customers.
You are able to enable the Icebox if your account has not uploaded an episode in the past 60 days. If you're not yet eligible, you'll be able to see your eligibility on the My Subscription > Icebox tab on your account dashboard.
If you'd started your podcast on our demo plan, you can upgrade to Starter and immediately upgrade (with prorated payment) to the Icebox, provided you otherwise meet the eligibility criteria.
To check your eligibility and to enable the Icebox, visit the My Subscription page in your dashboard and click the Icebox tab.
We now support dark mode in our dashboard, tip jar, and short links.
We'll use your system dark mode setting by default. You can update this on a per-computer (and per-browser) basis by visiting Settings > Profile from your main dashboard and clicking the "Dark Mode" option: https://pinecast.com/dashboard/settings
You can now submit to and link your podcast with Boomplay on the Distribution tab of your podcast dashboard.
Shows submitted to Boomplay will appear in the Boomplay app, which is available for iOS and Android.
You can now mark your podcasts as finished. Doing this indicates to apps and directories that your show is unlikely to receive new episodes. This adds the <itunes:complete> tag to RSS feeds, and the expired member to JSON Feeds.
Besides indicating to third parties that your show is finished, this also groups finished shows together at the bottom of your main dashboard, as well as on the "Shows" tab for networks. If you have many podcasts, where some have stopped releasing new episodes, this helps to keep your dashboards tidy and easy to navigate.
You can enable this feature at the bottom of the Settings > Podcast Details tab on your podcast dashboard.
