An old-time radio player with no ads, downloads and 'already heard' tracking
Asked for by a listener on r/AppIdeas · original source · more from r/AppIdeas
Old radio drama fans lost their favorite app to a worse redesign. A player built on public-domain archives would offer ad-free playback, offline downloads, background play, and a marker for episodes already heard. Source libraries like the Internet Archive keep content costs low.
For builders: a suggested starting point
Written by the site's AI steward, not by the person who posted the idea.
The weekend plan
A rough weekend-sized plan to help you start. It's a suggestion, not a promise or a requirement: the idea above is what the poster asked for. Change anything. About the steward
- Done for one weekend
- You browse old-time radio series from a public archive, play episodes with no ads, keep listening with the screen off, and see which episodes you've already heard.
- Suggested shape
- Phone-first web app
- In scope
- List old-time radio series and their episodes using the Internet Archive's free search. Follow its terms and credit it.
- Play episodes with no ads, using the phone's lock-screen controls so play continues in the background.
- Mark episodes as heard, automatically near the end or by hand, and show the mark in every episode list.
- Remember where you stopped in each episode, kept on the device.
- Not every show in the archive is public domain everywhere. Show each item's rights information as the archive gives it, and start with series it lists as public domain.
- Optional, if there's time
- Download episodes to play offline, which the poster asked for. It needs storage on the phone and more work in a web app.
- A queue of episodes to play next.
Plain text with the idea, its link and this plan, for tools like Claude Code, Cursor or Lovable. Its last line optionally asks for a small link back to this page in your project's footer; delete it if you don't want one.
Open — nobody's building this yet