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September 26, 2024:
September 18, 2024:
September 6, 2024:
    In the Podnews Weekly Review this week, we talk to Music Radio Creative’s Mike Russell about the role of AI in podcasting; Dustin Bluck about the Castro app; and Russell Harrower about the Podfund to help podcast app developers.
September 3, 2024:
August 7, 2024:
July 4, 2024:
    A new Castro release today for iOS includes some lockscreen widgets.
June 21, 2024:
    Podcast app Castro is now supporting WebSub, a mechanism for getting quicker updates for new episodes. The podcast app says that 25% of the most popular shows on its app have support already. (More on WebSub on Podnews).
June 10, 2024:
May 14, 2024:
April 8, 2024:
April 5, 2024:
    New feature: if your podcast app understands an OPML feed, this is for you. Every page with a list of podcasts, like The Ambies winners or Edison Podcast Metrics top 25 for the UK for example, now comes with an OPML feed so you can import all those shows straight into your podcast player. Find the OPML feed linked at the bottom of the page: they work with Pocket Casts, AntennaPod, Overcast, Podbean, Castro, GoodPods and more.
March 1, 2024:
    The new owner of Castro is making welcome changes: every podcast with a listener is now being updated much more frequently. Under its previous owner, you might have had to wait up to 45 days (!!) for new episodes to show; every show is now being updated at least once every two hours.
January 31, 2024:
    Exclusive: Popular iOS podcast app Castro has a new owner: Bluck Apps is an independent app studio and consulting agency based in Brooklyn NY. The company owns an Android podcast app called Aurelian, which will be “moved under the Castro umbrella”. In a blog post to be published on the Castro website today, owner Dustin Bluck says that Castro serves people who really love podcasts - those who have over 100 podcast subscriptions. The company is also responding to all support emails sent over the past few months. “Bluck Apps is very committed to the open podcasting ecosystem and taking over such a well-designed independent app is very cool for us.”
January 9, 2024:
January 8, 2024:
    The Castro podcast app is in trouble again: the app and website has been down since late Friday. In November, we reported it was to close: the company posted a denial, but said it was looking for new owners. We’ve asked for comment.
December 4, 2023:
    Podcast app Castro is “actively seeking a new home with new owners”. Last week, we reported that Mohit Mamoria, a former Castro employee who works for Tiny, Castro’s current owners, said it was to close; but “any communication or publication regarding the app's future is not official and does not represent Castro’s views” said the blog post. The blog post was the first for three years, and did not have a named author. (The app is now working again after an extended outage last week.)
November 30, 2023:
November 29, 2023:
    iOS podcast app Castro will be shut down over the next few months, according to a surprise post from Mohit Mamoria, a former senior Castro staff member and current partner of Tiny Capital, the investment company that bought Castro in November 2018. Meanwhile, the app itself has been down for a number of days with a database server issue. There's no way to export your library: the company warns a fix might take some time.
February 20, 2023:
    Now that Apple Podcasts is implementing the code to stop using "AppleCoreMedia" as its useragent in some circumstances, here are the other apps that need fixing, according to John Spurlock: Podbean, Castro, Fountain, Podcast Republic, Moonbeam, Playapod, Pods, Bullhorn, Luminary, Listen App, and Audible. That means all those apps appear smaller thank they should be in podcast analytics.
August 1, 2022:
July 21, 2022:
    Canción Exploder is the Spanish-language version of Song Exploder, and it's now available. It's co-executive produced by Martina Castro, and Executive Produced by Song Exploder creator Hrishikesh Hirway.
July 14, 2021:
March 9, 2021:
February 24, 2021:
October 14, 2020:
September 23, 2020:
    In The Feed, Libsyn's Rob Walch reports that Amazon Music's new podcasts app out-performed Downcast, TuneIn Radio, Castro and other apps for downloads on their launch day. "I cannot remember anyone on their first day having the numbers that Amazon Music had," he said.
September 10, 2020:
August 31, 2020:
    The next version of Overcast, the world's third biggest podcast app, will remove one way for podcasters to earn revenue, and highlight another as a concern. A new "privacy screen" in the app's latest beta release adds a brightly-coloured warning alert for any podcast that may earn revenue from dynamic advertising and geolocation. And for smaller podcasters, the "donate" button, launched in August 2018 by the app's developer, Marco Arment, will be removed "because nobody used it and it’s not worth today’s app-review risk", he writes - referring to Apple's notoriously strict app approval process. The donate button is also in apps from Breaker, RadioPublic, PodcastAddict, Castro, and our own podcast pages. (From Sounds Profitable, here's more about how geolocation works in podcasting).
July 20, 2020:
June 19, 2020:
June 5, 2020:
    Podcast apps Castro and Pocket Casts have both been pulled from Apple's App Store in China. Apple Podcasts remains available, but only offers a selection of podcasts to comply with Chinese government content rules. This time last year, they removed a number of shows for, um, some reason.
February 6, 2020:
December 31, 2019:
December 6, 2019:
    What A Day, launched in October, is "a funny but incredibly informative news source", according to their publicist (and we're not going to argue). On Dec 3, the hosts, comedian Akilah Hughes and Gideon Resnick, interviewed presidential candidate Julian Castro. (Crooked Media / Megaphone)
November 20, 2019:
June 26, 2019:
June 24, 2019:
    84% of recently-released podcasts are MP3, says Castro; 16% of them were AAC. (Ours is AAC, by the way).
June 21, 2019:
    Podiant has introduced clip-sharing from their web player, joining Overcast and Castro. It produces videos for social media sharing, but also gives a URL for each clip (so you can link to it from wherever).
May 31, 2019:
April 4, 2019:
March 7, 2019:
    Castro, the iOS podcast app, has announced a new update today. The company says it has upgraded the Discovery experience, dramatically improved Search, and simplified some of the language in the app. "From the start, we’ve designed Castro to be a powerful upgrade over the playback and management experiences offered by other podcast apps. These updates are designed to help make the power of Castro available to more people," Padraig O'Cinneide told us.
January 16, 2019:
    FastCompany write about how podcast apps are making money, focusing on Castro and also encompassing many others. The app, owned by Candian investors Tiny, declined to share usage figures.
January 14, 2019:
January 10, 2019:
    Werk It: The Podcast was published yesterday: a full audio version of the women's podcast event in November. In it, "Write your own rules: lead like a woman" features three women who launched their own podcast companies: Juleyka Lantigua-Williams of Lantigua Williams & Co, Adonde Media’s Martina Castro, and Side Hustle Pro’s Nicaila Matthews Okome. Transcript and direct audio link
November 28, 2018:
    Castro, the well-received iOS podcast app, is now part of Tiny, owners and investors in a range of companies including Dribbble and Flow. Oisín and Pádraig post that "for the first time in five years of work on Castro, we’ll have the resources to focus exclusively on it as product designers and developers." Congratulations to them.
October 2, 2018:
    Apple Podcasts last week suggested that podcasters use AAC rather than MP3. The makers of the Castro podcast app crunched the numbers: only 11.8% of all episodes released in the past ten days are AAC; 86.5% were MP3. (We would recommend sticking with MP3.)
September 5, 2018:
August 17, 2018:
    Anchor's Listener Support (Aug 10) is now natively supported in podcast apps, the company has just announced. "Support on Anchor" buttons are now visible in versions of Breaker and RadioPublic, with support from Castro and Podcast Addict promised shortly. Podnews also already supports Anchor's Listener Support links - here's an example. Anchor is also marking up these links using the rel="payment" pattern so they'll be visible in a future release of Overcast.
August 9, 2018:
    Podcast app Castro has added a new feature - audio side-loading. "If you’ve got a random MP3 or M4A file that you want to listen to as a part of your podcast playlist, you can add it to Castro by placing it in the Castro folder inside iCloud Drive. Castro spots audio files placed in that folder and automatically adds them."
July 25, 2018:
    Is Anchor a threat to existing podcast hosts, or growing the market? Padraig from Castro has analysed the data. Separately, Anchor has announced a revamp of their mobile editing tools.
May 29, 2018:
    Castro 3 was released last week. This week, the team blog about their decisions - why it has an optional paid subscription, particularly. Of note: they tweeted: "Castro 3 has been downloaded more times in 3 days than Castro 2 was in 2 years".
May 23, 2018:
    Overcast developer Marco Arment tweets about Castro's new release (which includes silence detection), saying "I actually want and need Castro and other podcast players to succeed. My goal of keeping podcasting open requires diversity among player apps: so many apps, all built on open podcasting, that producers can’t ignore or control them all."
May 22, 2018:
    Podcast app Castro has been given a new update - a review of Castro 3 says "Castro 3 is everything Castro already was, but better. It's the app that Castro fans have always wanted."
April 6, 2018:
February 14, 2018:
December 19, 2017:
    iOS podcast app Castro v2.6 is released. The big feature is an automated backup into a user's own iCloud: the backup occurs every 24 hours, and ensures that user settings and progress are maintained. (Pocket Casts, for iOS and Android, also syncs).
November 2, 2017:
July 10, 2017:
    The Castro podcast player app is currently half price, according to TapSmart. Interesting UX - it deliberately eschews the download model, and instead you pick and choose which episodes you want to listen to based on the show notes.
May 30, 2017:
    Castro, a podcast app for iOS from Supertop which lets you choose episodes rather than blindly subscribe to everything, releases a new update. It adds "enhanced audio" (a dynamic compressor/limiter), and a continuous play function. #15 trending news app recently. $4.99; produced in Canada and Eastern Europe.

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