Acast buys Pippa; three more publishers come off Luminary

Acast have announced the acquisition of Pippa, a podcast host. Ross Adams, the company’s CEO, told Podnews that the acquisition of Pippa will effectively double the company’s number of shows. “In the past we’ve had strict minimums required to join, ” he added, saying that Pippa’s acquisition will allow any size of podcaster to join the network for the first time. Pippa, which Adams describes as a good cultural fit for Acast, is popular for publishers in countries like the US, France and Norway; while Acast itself is based in Sweden. Acast achieved over $33m in funding last year.

• Three more publishers have pulled their content off Luminary. Mikey Fowler, EP of Podcasting for Barstool Sports (8th currrently in Podtrac), tells us that they have requested all of their RSS feeds be removed from Luminary, which would mean a total of 26 shows will be unavailable. Endeavor Audio podcasts have been withdrawn from the service, and the Joe Rogan Experience is also removed - that’s been replaced with another characteristically snippy message. The subscription podcast app launched earlier this week with high-profile podcasts from Spotify, Gimlet Media, Parcast and the NYT’s The Daily being unavailable.

• Luminary appears to be fighting back with PR: Matt Sacks, the co-founder and CEO of Luminary, has written a long piece explaining Luminary’s model, the sole post in a hastily-erected Medium blog. Manoush Zomorodi is also interviewed in Digiday hawking the company, saying “As a creator, it’s hard to get a production off the ground if you don’t know you have a steady income”. Her podcast Note To Self is relaunching as a Luminary-funded production. Luminary have also placed sample episodes of all their premium podcasts in Apple Podcasts (and therefore most other places).

• What to do with podfading podcasts? Mark Asquith from Rebel Base Media has some ideas: and a few searches in Apple Podcasts that are less than ideal.

• Bitrate, samplerate and codec - what difference do they really make to your audio? Here’s an episode of the Podnews podcast encoded in a lot of different ways.

• The BBC is advertising for a Controller for BBC Sounds. (The BBC uses “Controller” as a broadly similar term as “Managing Director” for a business unit). This is a new role, announced yesterday, alongside a role of Controller for their TV product BBC iPlayer. The iPlayer job has been taken by Dan McGolpin, currently Commissioning Controller for Daytime and Programming.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 12 2023

• When do people install new apps? Weekends, according to this graph from Radioplayer, a radio and on-demand app in many different countries.

• The Webby Award for “Best Host” went to Pod Save The People. Magellan analyse the advertising within that podcast.

• The List, a US nationally-syndicated TV program, featured Stitcher in a story recently. They tell us this is “a good step in raising awareness for the medium as a whole”, and it’s certainly a nice piece to link others to. (Both The List and Stitcher are owned by EW Scripps).

  
  Aug 12 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Stitcher is also advertising for a Stitcher Breakthrough Fellowship. “We believe the podcast industry’s workforce should reflect society at large, in all its diversity. The Stitcher Breakthrough Fellowship program is designed to help recruit diverse talent and promote inclusivity in podcasting.” You have until Sunday to apply.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 12 2023

• Cadence13 has launched C13Originals, a new division focused on original storytelling. Their first podcast is called Gangster Capitalism, an in-depth look at white collar corruption in America.

Podcasts

Podcasting Essentials has Steve Pratt from Pacific Content. “To stand out, don’t do what everyone else is doing. Quality production and a narrative form of storytelling helps build engagement from the get-go,” he says. (BE Media Production / Omny Studio)

Adrift, with Geoff Lloyd and Annabel Port is putting on their first ever live show, in “idyllic” Hebden Bridge, in West Yorkshire, England.
• Mark Zuckerburg has launched a podcast. It’s, strangely, only on Spotify at the moment. Earlier this year, Apple shut down many of Facebook’s internal apps, citing security concerns.