At CES, voice and iHeartMedia gets added to everything

• At CES, iHeartMedia announces lots of integrations for iHeartRadio - including cars, Facebook Messenger, TV sticks and robots. iHeartRadio is a music, live radio and podcasting service, and carries third-party podcasts; many podcast hosts have direct integration to get yours listed.

• Also at CES, lots of activity around Google Assistant, which also allows podcast listening. Android Auto will finally get proper Google Assistant support “starting this week in the US”; Google Home devices with screens from LG, Sony, JBL and Lenovo; more Android TVs with Google Assistant; more headphones (as we mentioned yesterday); and lots of smart speakers from all kinds of good names.

• And at CES, media server Plex apparently plans to add podcasts to its service.

• James Clement, Claire Tonti and Nick Mason make it to Australian Media Week’s 'top 25 media people in 2017' list: they’re the founders of Planet Broadcasting, a podcast network.

• BBC Radio 5 Live, a UK news and sport network, announce some new podcast-only programmes - programming including arts, sports interviews, and health/fitness.

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• New numbers: Spotify has 70 million global subscribers according to a release by the company. Apple Music has 30 million. Spotify have added 10 million since July.

• In St Paul MI, USA, American Public Media announces The Summer Podcast Institute, a two-week “learning experience” for high-school students.

• Dave Winer, who invented the RSS enclosure standard, shares how difficult it can be to find an RSS feed for a podcast or website. (Here’s ours, Dave.)

• Corey Layton from Whooshkaa, an Australian podcast company, writes that 2018 is the year branded podcasts will finally go global.

• Yesterday we linked to an article suggesting that churches shouldn’t podcast. Here’s a response from a religion and spirituality website, using words like “ignorant”, “baffling”, “simply not true”, and “full-throated Luddism”.

• Doing research is difficult - just ask these plant scientists, who’ve made a podcast saying so in St Louis MO, USA.

• Something we’re subscribing to: Darknet Diaries, 'true stories from the dark side of the internet’.

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