AdSkip for Deezer by Babuh

You pay for a Deezer subscription, you start a podcast, and the episode
opens with a 30 second ad. The subscription can't do anything about it,
because those ads don't come from Deezer. They are added by the company
hosting the podcast, directly into the MP3, right before the file is sent
to you. For an ad blocker, the ad and the show are the same file: there is
nothing to block.

It turns out the host tells your browser exactly where it put them.

HOW IT WORKS

When Deezer plays an episode from a supported host, the address of the
audio file carries the byte position of every ad, along with the bitrate
and the offset where the audio starts. With a constant bitrate, turning a
byte position into a timestamp is a single division.

The extension reads those values, checks them against the duration
measured by your browser, and moves the playhead past each ad when
playback reaches it. Nothing is downloaded, the request is left untouched,
and the file itself is never modified.

That makes it different from crowdsourced ad skippers: there is nothing to
submit, nothing to vote on, and no waiting for someone else to mark an
episode. It works on an episode published minutes ago.

The toolbar badge counts the ads skipped in the tab, and the popup lists
the ones found in the current episode.

WHAT IT SKIPS, AND WHAT IT DOESN'T

Skipped: ads inserted by the podcast host when the file is downloaded.
They're the ones that change from one listen to the next.

Never skipped: sponsor messages read by the hosts themselves. They're part
of the recording, and for many independent shows they're what pays the
bills.

Never touched: music. Songs on Deezer are protected and played through a
different path. The extension only acts on podcast files from a supported
host.

PRIVACY

Nothing leaves your browser: no analytics, no account, no server, no
tracking of any kind. Two things are stored locally, your settings and the
number of ads skipped.

LIMITATIONS

Supported podcast host: Audiomeans. Plenty of shows use other hosts, such
as Acast, Ausha, Megaphone or ART19, whose URLs haven't been studied yet.

This works because a podcast host happens to publish the ad positions. If
that changes, the extension stops skipping rather than guessing. Same if a
file turns out to be variable bitrate: the episode is left alone.

Works on the Deezer web player only. The desktop and mobile apps can't run
browser extensions.

Open source, MIT licensed. Bug reports, testing and new host adapters
welcome on GitHub.

Not affiliated with Deezer or Audiomeans.