After plenty of time to work on improvements, the Howl.fm website and Android app are still ass and a chore to navigate and search. Been an off and on subscriber since they launched and really figured they were going to fix both before instituting a paywall.
The way it was handled left a bad taste in my mouth too, flipping the switch without informing the hosts or users. Seems like this will create a new barrier to entry for shows that thrive on continuity, as well as ones like HDTGM where new listeners might want to look up movies they're fond of to ease in. That's how I started with that one. Plus if you were one of the folks that donated lump sums of cash to shows current and past in order to keep them free, oh well, tough shit.
Might be feeling a bit salty but I'm inclined to just grab all the Hollywood Handbooks off Earwolf now before they disappear and cancel my Howl.fm subscription until they fix their shit. The Giant Bomb podcast paywall idea didn't go so smoothly either, and they came to the conclusion that exclusive content + other perks was a fairer subscription model than taking away what used to be available to all (and is still ad supported). Maybe the Earwolf folks will feel the same eventually as well, though it sounds like the time for that conversation has past.
