Audio-Technica moves to USB-C

• Bad news: the US$100 Audio-Technica ATR-2100 microphone, much beloved of podcasters, has been discontinued. Good news: that’s because it’s been replaced by the ATR-2100x. The main difference is a nice modern USB-C connection. And a slightly different switch.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 21 2023

• Spotify is rolling out a new look on iOS.

• Deaf and hard-of-hearing people are helping to fix the podcast accessibility problem, reports Joshua Dudley in Forbes.

• If you bought a RØDEcaster Pro between Nov 1 and 29 Feb, you can claim a free accessory pack from the company. There’s a US$20 shipping/handling fee, but it includes a set of cables and a power pack so you can use it without access to a mains plug. Terms apply; you’ve got until the end of this month to claim.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 21 2023

• Pocket Casts had “remove the intro” for many years; it’s just added another setting, in beta, to “remove the outtro” as well.

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• A free event in Manchester, England, on Mar 10 - Podcasting for Business: An Introduction, with Kate Cocker, a presenter coach and founder of Pods Up North.

• The UK financial newspaper City AM asks has the City undervalued the podcasting craze? arguing that Audioboom, which is seeking a buyer, is undervalued.

• Do you use Amazon Cloudfront to serve your RSS feeds? Want to save 80% of your bandwidth bill? AWS Cloudfront is brilliant, and automatically uses gzip to save you (and your listeners) bandwidth. Their documentation promises it will automatically compress application/xml+rss for us. Except: it doesn’t compress the correct content-type, which is application/rss+xml. If you’re a corporate AWS customer, please talk to support and ask them to correct this: the podcast community would love you (as will your CFO).

  
  Aug 21 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

Podcast News

The Podcast Academy’s Hernan Lopez was the guest of The New Media Show over the weekend, and was grilled by Todd Cochrane and Rob Greenlee.

“It’s good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that.” Talking Sopranos is a new podcast from two actors on the show, launching next month that focuses on the show, episode by episode. (Simplecast)

Here’s a tweet you’ll like: Songbirding, a birdsong podcast, which returns for a new season today. It was recorded last summer in southern Ontario, Canada. (Pinecast)

The Obsessed with podcast series is growing: Obsessed with: Abducted in Plain Sight features more stories from the Netflix show. It promises four episodes delivered as a box set; and is released today. (Audioboom)

Small Town Dicks is back for season six. The podcast has had over 12m downloads so far, and kicks off with The Grudge, featuring the podcast’s own Detective Dan recounting the case of a house burglary unraveled into a darker crime. It’s hosted by voice artist Yeardley Smith. (Audioboom)