From our daily newsletter, the latest from podnews.net
with Co-Host's advanced audience demographics.
Apple Podcasts shared the most popular podcasts of 2024.
There's more to the lists than just the US though.
We've compiled a list of the top shows
in most English speaking countries,
plus a way for you to view the top charts
for 33 different places.
You'll find that linked from our show notes
and our newsletter at podnews.net.
Podcast host Ausha has launched two new tools
as part of its podcast search optimization features.
The PSO Checker gives recommendations
to help optimize your titles, descriptions and tags.
And the PSO Live Search lets you compare your podcast
with your competitors.
Spotify playlists and podcasts are being abused
by spammers to link to pirate websites.
That's according to Digital Music News,
noting six second podcasts that actually serve
to link to websites.
This isn't entirely new.
Back in 2022, RSS.com's Alberto Batella shared details
of how that company deals with spam podcasts,
mostly promoting Dubai sex workers.
Journalists in Europe are being invited to take part
in the European Podcast Academy,
a five-day educational event dedicated
to advancing the art of podcasting.
The event is in Milan in Italy in mid-March.
The Australian Podcast Ranker was released for October.
Triton Digital is set to announce a new ranker capability
that will rank the podcast category by monthly listener
and integrate Triton demos plus data.
If you're a registered owner
of a Focusrite audio interface,
you get to claim a free set
of the iZotope Ozone 11 Elements Mastering plugin today.
More details in our show notes
and our newsletter at podnews.net.
Libsyn Ads have announced an exclusive ad partnership
with Envy Media's Humblebrag with Crystal and Cynthia.
And Libsyn also released the company's download statistics.
Apple Podcasts improved its download share in October,
up by 0.8%.
And yes, we know it's not a great number to measure,
but it's the only one we have.
In people news, Jim Ballas has been promoted
to General Manager of Measurement at Magellan AI.
Ballas will oversee the company's growing suite
of measurement solutions.
And congratulations to Jen Sargent, the CEO of Wondery,
and the former publisher of the Podcast Business Journal,
Streamline Media's Deborah Parenti,
for being among those honored
in the Gracie's Leadership Awards.
It's Wednesday, so it's time for an extra tech stuff
with RSS.com.
And if you're producing creator transcripts in RSS,
then the WebVTT format allows you to specify speaker names,
which appear in Apple Podcasts transcripts,
and work with web browsers too.
So if you're only going to support one format,
we'd recommend that one.
But while the WebVTT format
has no formal line length definition,
we'd recommend no more than 65 characters per line.
It'll help podcast apps display captions
and adds better timing information.
We've details of how to achieve that
if you're using Whisper in our show notes
and our newsletter at podnews.net.
An enhanced podcast location tag is coming to Podcasting 2.0,
which lets you associate shows and episodes with locations.
There's a JavaScript tag generator
and a specification discussion for you to have a look at.
And if you show podcast descriptions and episode notes,
as we've already mentioned, spammers are out
and they're targeting podcast directories
to hope that you link out to their naughty websites.
Our podcast pages mark all links from podcasts
as rel=ugc, which is Google's recommendation.
Essentially, it makes those links worthless to spammers,
and you might want to check that you're doing the same.
And in podcast news, we've covered the launch of "Roots",
the new show for British train company LNER.
A few weeks ago, we mentioned that the show
is even being promoted in station platform announcements.
Well, here's what that sounds like.
#AUDIO
- The next guest on the podcast is Candice Brathwaite.
"Table Read" has just hit 5 million downloads
and continue to keep a top 10 spot
on Apple's fiction chart for 74 consecutive weeks.
It's also among the first podcasts
to secure a SAG-AFTRA partnership,
setting a new benchmark in audio storytelling
and creator protections.
Each episode features a selection
of exceptional award-winning scripts performed live
by a talented cast of up to 20 working actors
in a world-class studio.
Also in podcast news today,
Pantsuit Politics has joined Lemonada Media.
"Stop blaming boomers,"
says the host of new podcast, "Grandparenthood".
Okay, boomer.
"Views on First" is new
from the Knight First Amendment Institute,
exploring the ways the US government uses the border
as a justification for censorship and surveillance.
The Bruce Lee podcast launched its eighth season today,
featuring six new episodes
with sports and entertainment luminaries
and a new comedy podcast launched last week
from Absolute Radio's Andy Bush
about the always hilarious subject of death.
"DeadPod" looks at famous deaths in TV soap operas,
villainous deaths in popular fiction, dead technology,
strange burial rituals in ancient civilizations,
incredibly weird historical deaths.
Bush and co-host Brian Murphy will cover it all.
And this podcast is sponsored by CoHost.
Get in-depth insights into who your podcast audience is,
including income, family members,
social media habits, age, and more
with CoHost's advanced audience demographics.
You can book a demo today.
You'll find the link in our show notes.
And that's the latest from our newsletter
to read all the stories and subscribe.
We're at podnews.net.