Using NPR as an example, I looked at their NPR News Now podcast. The RSS feed has tracking by Chartable, Spotify, Podtrac, and Megaphone on each episode. Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend also needs you to load his podcasts via trackers from Chartable, ArtsAI, pdrl.fm (not sure who they are), and SimpleCast. Rachel Maddow (and probably all of NBC) uses Chartable, Podtrac, and SimpleCast. This American Life has VPixel, Podtrac, Chartable, Podsights, AND SimpleCast…a whopping FIVE trackers!
For comparison, TWiT’s public feeds use Podsights, Podscribe, and Libsyn. We also have our own internal tracking which only analyzes log files to count downloads for episodes and does absolutely no tracking to any third-party sites such as advertisers. The Club TWiT feeds only use the internal tracking so we can see how many downloads Club TWiT episodes get for our own internal use. There is absolutely no third-party tracking of any kind for anything in Club TWiT feeds.
To me, the Discord server is the primary benefit of joining Club TwiT - other than supporting the network, of course. There are plenty of other podcast Patreons out there that cost more per podcast than $7 that offer less.
As much as I would like to - I don’t the Discord that much. Mostly because the shows that I want to comment on Discord about are typically on days where I have to work on-prem for my day-job.
So that means the primary benefit of ClubTWIT that I use most frequently is ad-free custom RSS feeds for the shows. And I really like that. But - to be honest - I would probably support TWIT for $7 a month even if I didn’t get anything out of it. I love this network and the hosts so much - I feel like I’ve gotten the better part of the bargain in having the joy of listening to these incredible shows.
I really wish the Discord was more useful for me. Maybe I am just old, but 1) I find the layout and organization confusing compared to this forum, and 2) the stream of real-time chat is less interesting to me than the posts here; maybe it is a signal-to-noise thing. I periodically jump into the Discord and always come away thinking “Why can’t we get half of these people active in the TWiT Community forum instead?”
As a Club TWiT member I hope this change increases membership and attracts more advertisers. My TWiT interests have narrowed over the years and now the only shows I subscribe to are TWiG and HOM. I do hope the network survives and thrives (and can bring Ant Pruitt back).
I just renewed my subscription to help support the TWiT army. I don’t really “need” the ad-free versions, but the video versions of the hands-on shows will be nice to have as well as the discord access to be a part of the shows live recordings etc. I hope that the TWiT army is able to support the work that Leo does for many years to come!
Why not just put in the Ad tracking and all that - I suspect many of us won’t care! I joined the club on day one to support the network, don’t really care about the Club Twit exclusives and don’t use the Discord much
When we tried Chartable many many listeners complained that it was causing their ad blocker to prevent downloading our shows. You may not care - but I’d guess at least half our audience world.