Condé Nast podcast management criticised

• Eleven former Condé Nast podcast producers have criticised their experience while making shows for the US magazine publisher, claiming they were chronically understaffed and then terminated without notice. The Verge has more. We’ve asked Condé Nast for comment.

• The issues around the New York Times’ Caliphate podcast continue to rumble on; more than twenty public radio stations have condemned the newspaper and host Michael Barbaro for their reporting. It should be noted that NPR, like the Washington Post which broke this story, are competitors to the NYT.

• Spotify has removed a show from Pete Evans, an Australian conspiracy theorist. Evolve is hosted by Acast, and continues to be available on other platforms; Evans was removed from Facebook last year.

• Editing software company Descript has raised $30m in a funding round.

• LAist Studios has secured a $500,000 grant from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. It’s the podcast development and production division of Southern California Public Radio.

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• Podchaser now supports Spotify Exclusives - reviews, credits and more.

  
  Aug 31 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• In a long read, Bloomberg covers Spotify’s investments in podcasting, which is claimed will lead the company to profitability.

• Speaking on the latest episode of Libsyn’s The Feed, Rob Walch highlights Apple’s privacy information in the app store, which we covered December 14: “For those that are tracking podcast listeners, do you really think the only thing in iOS14 that Apple will allow privacy violations to continue with… is your product? And for those running newsletters and sites on this space that just don’t think tracking with no opt-in is okay but actually promotes privacy violations, the world is changing, and privacy is going to matter more and more. Opt-in is the only ethical way to track the listener, and sans that ability, it should not be done, period.”

  • On the Podcast Index, in the same episode (43 minutes in), Walch also clarified: “Any Libsyn user from day 1 can add those tags to the RSS feed. The support’s already there. We just haven’t added it to the UI”. Rob Greenlee and Walch then set out to clarify Libsyn’s view of the project.

• The Tula microphone looks nice: a portable recorder microphone from Barcelona, Spain.

• LiveXLive’s PodcastOne has signed Latin-American musician Anitta to an exclusive podcast deal. (She sang this).

• AdLarge Media has signed with Canada’s TPX - TPX will sell ads within the company’s Cabana podcasts.

• GBH and PRX’s The World is to collaborate with The Economist, a UK weekly newspaper.

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• The Traits The Best Podcast Hosts Share

• In case you missed it: when Apple Podcasts gave us a list of the best podcasts in 2020, they told us how the Apple Podcast charts are compiled:

The Apple Podcast charts encompass a mix of new subscriptions, playback activity and completion rate; ratings and reviews aren’t factored into these charts.

So, now we know.