Why isn't LanguagePod101 any popular here?

[dampingwire]

This review convinced me not to bother: http://www.nihongonobaka.com/japanesepod101-com-individual-season-reviews/

It is true that there is a lot of content in JPOD101 and it is also true that of the 900+ lessons, there are a good few that you won't want to listen to twice. However, there's a great deal of excellent content there (the Upper Beginner series, the Lower and Upper Intermediate series and probably most of the Advanced Audio Blog too).

There's hours of pure Japanese with no English at all if you listen to just the Dialogue MP3 of each lesson. The Advanced blog had an annoying English intro/outro, but Audacity seems to have ripped that out on the versions on my phone. In addition, every dialogue has an accompanying transcript. For the audio blog, the entire lesson has a transcript.

I got all of that for the price of a 1 year premium subscription (~$150). I could have perhaps got it for less, but my company was paying and I was much happier putting the time into studying rather than trying to save a few quid here and there.

Personally I'm very happy with it and I'm still getting value out of it years later.

There's a lot of truth in that review, but I've still not found anything else with that much excellent content, even when you take out all the stuff that is of a lower standard.

[ASEAN]

I was going to use the service to study Thai because it is a tonal language and it is possible to download audio without the English explanations, but the woman who is the face of ThaiPod101 sounds like she has a retainer in her mouth. I simply can't listen to anything with her on it. Their advanced materials for Thai seemed to only discuss tourist attractions.
LanguagePod101 had a great sale a while ago, but when I went to the website, the "monthly" sale price was only good with a year's subscription. That was a bit of bait and switch.

Quite frankly, I have been able to collect enough free Thai resources between my public library and the internet that I don't really need to purchase any materials.

[Cavesa]

And we'll back to the usual problem: a jack of all trades.

It is definitely worth discussing which LP101 courses are worth the price and which ones are not. But we can clearly see that enthusiastic universal recommendation is not going to happen.

Actually, the point about non native speakers making teaching videos is unsettling. And I agree that using the word "Advanced" on rather basic stuff about tourism feels like false advertisement.

From my memory:

The GermanPod101, which is the one a forum member created a big part of, looked really good. But I could get a lot of just as valuable stuff elsewhere and for a better price. Were such a course available for a less popular language, it would be awesome.

FrenchPod101? I was way beyond that level to actually try, I was just curious, but I'd say the quality and amount of stuff wass not as great as in the GermanPod101 and there were tons of other French resources available.

Spanish and Italian would have been my level back then, but at least Italian wass already noticeably poorer than the previous ones. I didn't find the resources systematic and exhaustive enough to be worth the price and they were too slow paced.

I tried a few more, while I was considering other languages and looking out for the options, and they were courses were significantly poorer that these four. I am not sure which ones, I think I tried Swedish, Polish, and something else.

[leosmith]

Why isn't LanguagePod101 any popular here?

I think when most people evaluate a language course they consider how far it can take them in a language. Most languagepod101s that I've used make fine components to a well rounded language learning plan imo, but by themselves are very lacking. So I wouldn't necessarily let negative reviews here keep me from using them.

There's a trick to purchasing them. Join for free and around the end of the free trial week you should receive an offer to get access to everything for $1 (I think I actually had to pay $7 for Tagalog). You can download all the content with one click and then unsubscribe.

[zenmonkey]

I like HebrewPod101 and have paid for the content.

It has issues (lots of wasted time with the little music and wasted time in the dialogues but you can work directly with the dialogue lines). It's a great complement to other material.

[Sayonaroo]

too much english, bad jokes, and not enough of my target language.

there's just better ways to learn a language...

[dampingwire]

too much english, bad jokes, and not enough of my target language.

I've only used JPOD101 so I can only comment about that one. I'd agree with both of those comments for the Newbie and several of the Beginner levels. The amount of English reduces when you get to the Intermediate levels and at the Advanced level (for which there is still plenty of content) there's essentially no English (and I've deleted the English intro/outro from the copy on my phone).

there's just better ways to learn a language...

I think, for me at least, there's no one single way to learn. JPOD101 was very useful for me at the start (despite the English and the jokes) and has provided me with lots of material that I can use for shadowing and listening comprehension practice. It's been the main source of my listening during commutes and cycling. However, I can't imagine not having access to various textbooks, a tutor, online resources, youtube videos, being spurred on by the JLPT ... The pod stuff is just one small part of the Japanese learning framework that I've built for myself. It's by no means essential, but I think it has sped up the learning process for me.

For German, French or Spanish, I think there is enough material on the net that I'd not bother with {language}POD101.

[Sayonaroo]

too much english, bad jokes, and not enough of my target language.

I've only used JPOD101 so I can only comment about that one. I'd agree with both of those comments for the Newbie and several of the Beginner levels. The amount of English reduces when you get to the Intermediate levels and at the Advanced level (for which there is still plenty of content) there's essentially no English (and I've deleted the English intro/outro from the copy on my phone).

there's just better ways to learn a language...

I think, for me at least, there's no one single way to learn. JPOD101 was very useful for me at the start (despite the English and the jokes) and has provided me with lots of material that I can use for shadowing and listening comprehension practice. It's been the main source of my listening during commutes and cycling. However, I can't imagine not having access to various textbooks, a tutor, online resources, youtube videos, being spurred on by the JLPT ... The pod stuff is just one small part of the Japanese learning framework that I've built for myself. It's by no means essential, but I think it has sped up the learning process for me.

For German, French or Spanish, I think there is enough material on the net that I'd not bother with {language}POD101.

I disagree completely. I think the japanespod stuff just slows people down. well at least after I abandoned it completely and did other things I felt like I went from doing 1 mile per hour to 100 miles per hour. It's up to you how you want to learn the language but especially for japanese there are wonderful resources like rikai-sama and yomi-chan and kindle that enables you to jump into native material asap like song lyrics. not every language has a pop-up dictionary or if they do they kinda suck. also there's a lot of wonderful free resources like tae kim's guide to japanese grammar, sub2srs, anki plugins, so and so forth.

If you're trying to re-listen to and whatnot to fully "learn" or "learn" the jpod content to 100% or 90% or whatever it is you should really stop and do something else. It's just really inefficient putting time in to master whatever material in a textbook or podcast. I just think you're better off exposing yourself to japanese in general and just let the common, useful stuff stick when they repeat over and over and over again and native materials are just so much better than jpod101 though they come with extra struggling if you're beginner but there's so many cool, free programs and whatnot for japanese that help make that stuff more accessible.

[Cainntear]

My single biggest issue with LanguagePod101 is the scummy marketing.

When you sign up for a free account, they immediately give you a one-time offer. I took them up on it for Polish, and it turned out that at that point they had literally no content at my level.

If you sign up for a subscription, there's no guarantee they're going to give you anything useful.

I like to know what I'm paying for, so feel free to sell me stuff, but don't expect me to pay a monthly fee for no guaranteed anything.

[Ogrim]

My single biggest issue with LanguagePod101 is the scummy marketing.

When you sign up for a free account, they immediately give you a one-time offer. I took them up on it for Polish, and it turned out that at that point they had literally no content at my level.

If you sign up for a subscription, there's no guarantee they're going to give you anything useful.

I like to know what I'm paying for, so feel free to sell me stuff, but don't expect me to pay a monthly fee for no guaranteed anything.

That is my issue with them too. I signed up for a free account for Arabic. They immediately started bombarding me with e-mails talking about AMAZING offers etc etc. I signed up to one of those offers expecting to pay around 10 USD once, but it turned out that they started charging me automatically every month for a premium subscription. Fortunately it was relatively simple to cancel the subscription, once I read the "small print" on their site, and I should have been more careful when going for that offer in the first place, but they certainly don't make it very transparent what you are actually paying for when you sign up.