July 21, 2019 10:02 pm

Announcing StarTalk+ and Other Changes in Your StarTalk Experience

You might have noticed a few changes going on here at StarTalk.

To start off, we’ve upgraded the way you can listen to or watch our podcasts on our website. Our new “multiplayer” allows you to easily choose whether you want to listen to the free audio versions of our podcasts, or the ad-free audio and video versions of our shows. You’ll notice tabs in the multiplayer called “Ad-Free Audio” and “Ad-Free Video.” These tabs relate to our new StarTalk+ subscription offering, available via Patreon.

But that’s just the start of our changes.

What is StarTalk+?

StarTalk+ is our new, improved approach to our subscription service, and it’s replacing StarTalk All-Access.

If you’re a StarTalk All-Access subscriber, don’t worry! All-Access will be sticking around for a little while, but we’re pretty sure you’re going to want to change to StarTalk+. For the same $5 per month you’ve been paying for All-Access, you’ll still get ad-free audio and streaming video versions of our shows. Now, with StarTalk+, you get a few new things many of our All-Access subscribers have been asking for, but we just weren’t able to provide with our current All-Access technology.

Downloadable Ad-Free Audio and a Better User Experience

The biggest request we’ve had from All-Access subscribers was the ability to be able to download ad-free audio episodes. With StarTalk+, you can download ad-free audio of all current episodes.

The other issue was a very convoluted sign-up process and technical support that wasn’t all that it could have been.  By moving our subscription service into StarTalk’s Patreon channel, we’ve been able to address all of these concerns.

But there’s even more!

For the same $5 monthly fee you used to pay for All-Access, you’ll also get to ask special Patreon Patrons Cosmic Queries, a perk formerly only enjoyed by Patrons at our $10 Patreon Reward Level.

And we’ve totally revamped our Rewards levels, giving you more opportunities to have a deeper relationship with our shows! Please check out our Patreon channel here.

If you’re an existing All-Access subscriber, and you are interested in switching to StarTalk+, you’ll need to cancel your All-Access subscription, and head over to Patreon to subscribe at the $5 StarTalk+ level. (We can’t do it for you.) We’ll be sending you emails keeping you notified about when we will be shutting down All-Access, but we’re not going to rush you. You can still watch or listen using the “Legacy Audio” and “Legacy Video” tabs in the multi-player on startalkradio.net, where you’ll just see a single page for each episode. These changes are also improving your StarTalk experience on mobile.

Note: Everything related to your StarTalk All-Access account can now be found under the StarTalk+ tab by clicking All-Access (Legacy).

As always, we want to hear from you. Tell us what you think about StarTalk+, about our new and improved Patreon offerings, or anything else in the universe. (We’re not worried – you’ve never been shy about telling us what you think.)

We appreciate your support, and you’re the reason we developed our new and improved StarTalk+ service.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Stacey Severn, Community Manager