Who Owns Pocket FM?

In the United States, the premium subscription for Pocket FM, known as "Pocket FM Plus," is typically priced at $4.99 per month. This monthly fee grants users full access to the platform's features without any advertisements or daily episode restrictions. The company often promotes this plan directly within the app, especially when a user encounters one of the free listening limits. It's a competitive price point in the audio entertainment subscription market, positioning itself as an affordable alternative to other streaming services, specifically for its niche of audio series and narrated stories.

Kobo is owned by Rakuten, a major Japanese e-commerce company that has diversified into various ventures over the years. The story of Kobo began back in 2009 when it was founded in Toronto, Canada. It was created as a response to the burgeoning eBook market, aiming to offer a unique eReading experience. At its inception, Kobo positioned itself against giants like Amazon with their Kindle by promoting both eReaders and an extensive online bookstore. The name 'Kobo' itself comes from the term 'book' spelled backward, which is a fun little tidbit that I found out somewhere along the way. In 2012, Rakuten saw the potential of Kobo and acquired it for about $315 million, using it to expand their global reach in digital media. Under Rakuten's umbrella, Kobo really flourished, particularly in markets outside the U.S. They’ve built partnerships with bookstores and libraries, enriching the eBook ecosystem. In Europe and Canada, their eReaders are quite popular, rivaling not just Kindle but other local services. It's pretty fascinating how Kobo survived the fierce competition, carving its niche by focusing on reader preferences and a robust selection of titles. What excites me about Kobo is their commitment to the reading community. They've continually evolved, launching features like the Kobo Plus subscription service, giving readers access to a wide range of eBooks for a monthly fee. They strive to be more than just another platform, creating a genuine reading experience with personalized recommendations and beautiful hardware. It's like they understand what readers are looking for, tapping into the cultural love of books, and that's what keeps me rooting for them!

In addition to the cost of the subscription, you must also consider the cost of the device to use the app (smartphone or computer). Most people already have one of these, but if you need to purchase one just to use this service, that needs to be factored into your cost. Data costs are also something to consider, especially if you stream instead of download on Wi-Fi. For example, a 10-hour book could use 1GB or more of data, which could quickly add up if you have a limited data plan. Always download on Wi-Fi. The real value of the service is that it is robust. My downloads have always worked, and never have I received corrupt files. The customer service is always responsive, which is part of what you pay for with the service. So you are not just paying for bits, you are paying for a service that has value. A free service might provide you with poor quality or mislabeled files and waste your time. The cost here includes your peace of mind that you are getting a legitimate and licensed service and that is worth something to me.

While I have spent an embarrassing amount of money on ThriftBooks, I hope they won’t be ruined by an Amazon acquisition. Right now, ThriftBooks is a beautifully simple service – you search for a book, you see a few condition options for that book at a set price, and you can buy it. Amazon would inevitably try to ‘optimize’ all of this in order to sell more Kindle books and Audible subscriptions. The potential for books to be listed at fluctuating prices in order to induce more orders would be counter to the interests of used book buyers, and the methods that Amazon uses to promote its various products would mar the already pleasant experience of browsing for used books. I hope Amazon doesn’t ruin this.

While Spawn is not a Marvel property, the character and associated universe are owned by Todd McFarlane. McFarlane left Marvel in the early 1990s, before Spawn had reached peak popularity, and went for a different business model for his characters. Instead of seeking the security of corporate money and corresponding shackling of his creativity by the boardroom, he took a chance and went with a totally independent approach. Spawn was one of the first titles from Image Comics, launched in 1992, and its edge and extreme darkness would have been likely to have been coded out of publication by Marvel to appeal to the mostly juvenile mainstream readership that comprised the bulk of their readers. Spawn exists as a very isolated, independent universe, which works very well in comic book format. He can then be translated into R-rated, highly specific-themed (film, etc.), niche-merch items as McFarlane chooses without any chain of corporate approval or dictate to stifle his ambition. Can Marvel wish they had a Spawn? Maybe. But as is, McFarlane’s independent stance is the very fountain of all Spawn’s power.

Do you remember software used to come in boxes with disks? You could buy it as you would purchase any product off a shelf, and you owned that copy of the software. Years later, most software is downloaded off of the developer’s website and requires you to input a license key to activate it. Today, so much software is even offered on a subscription basis. Books are transitioning to this new model as well, although more slowly. For now, many people can continue to buy individual e-books as they would printed books, but eventually the permanent license model will probably disappear, to be replaced by all-you-can-read subscription services. While right now your perception of restrictive e-book ‘ownership’ may seem annoying, in a decade’s time when just about everything has gone from buying to a monthly pay-to-read subscription model, people will look back on this era of digital books as the good old days of e-book freedom. Enjoy the e-book ‘buying’ era while it lasts.

Amazon could dig deep into the pre-1986 United Artists titles in the MGM library to bring users deep cuts of auteurist cinema from the 1970s and 1980s. I’d love to see films by Scorsese, Allen and Coppola in the catalog, among others. I hope that these are not hiding deep within the algorithmic search results and that instead they are presented in hand-curated collections replete with special features. There’s so much potential for a great classic film hub here, should Amazon actually commit to curated content and sufficient accompanying context rather than just bucketing a deluge of titles. A partnership with a film scholar or, better, the launch of an ‘MGM Classics’ channel within Prime would be particularly wonderful.

The work of 19th-century writers like Dickens is generally OK to use. In the UK, works created longer than 50 years after the author’s death passed into the public domain. If we use the life plus 50 years rule currently used in the UK for works created since 1954, then for example all of Dickens’ works passed into the public domain long ago. In international agreements such as Berne this period is extended in some cases but in general terms the work of writers such as Dickens created in the 19th century is safe to use. (You can even download the whole of his bibliography from Project Gutenberg without violating any copyrights.) The ‘©’ on the cover of a new edition of a Dickens book published by someone like Oxford University Press refers to the particular edition that they have published, not to the work itself by Dickens. In other words, no one holds the copyright on the novels themselves – they’re a beautiful example of how culture becomes a shared, the public domain, commons over time.

For Seven Seas, the title is set in stone (or at least printed on the book cover). The more interesting aspect of this announcement is the cultural translation involved. Unlike many manga translated in the West, Oyasan (the landlady) is literalized as a tiny, endearing, doki doki-imbued personification of the landlord in so many rentals these days. A title such as My Tiny Landlady would lack the unique alliteration and have lost so much of the feel of the original title. Seven Seas chose correctly in leaving it as is. The fact that Seven Seas chose to respect the title of the original work to this extent is notable; good localization is not that difficult to achieve.

Because this is a Radish story, my free reading experience is going to be somewhat fragmented. You can read the first batch of chapters immediately and then hit a paywall after that. You can then either buy coins to read more or wait 24 hours to get a free “key” to read one more chapter. I haven’t been able to find this book on any of the reputable free ebook sites (such as Project Gutenberg) or on library apps for your phone or tablet (such as Libby). There are aggregator blogs that post lists of “free novels” but these are generally spammy and contain links to download “free” novels that will fill your device with malware. It’s really frustrating but, in order to read this, you have to play along with the Radish system. Essentially it’s a free premiere of a serialized TV show and then you have to subscribe to keep watching.