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October 31, 2024:
    5 Random Questions returns for a new season today - where guests are asked five questions provided by a random question generator - leading to laughs, unpredictability, and honesty.
October 21, 2024:
September 26, 2024:
    Mathew Passy is to join Libsyn as LibsynPro Customer Care Specialist, replacing Dave Jackson. “Mathew will also be our lead to work with the Podcasting 2.0 folks,” said Libsyn’s Rob Walch. Passy has described Podcasting 2.0 as “more than just upgrades; it’s a transformation”.
September 10, 2024:
September 4, 2024:
    How To Do Everything is back from NPR, with the producers of Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me, Ian Chillag and Mike Danforth. For this season, they rely on listeners to spark interesting "how-to" conversations, some of which will answer their questions. And some of which will not. Expect memorisation tips from a soap opera legend, a mayor in Italy bringing sunlight to his town for the first time in centuries and something called The Nasal Ranger.
September 3, 2024:
    Podcast Day Asia took place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Speakers included Emily Kwong from NPR who explained the process behind Inheriting, our Editor James Cridland, who was part of a session about podcast consumption, and Emma Lawson from the ABC in Australia, who spoke about visualising podcasts, highlighting the video versions of If You’re Listening. Part of Radiodays Asia, the event had more than 300 attendees; the speaker schedule was programmed by Podnews.
September 2, 2024:
    Extremely American has returned for a second season, from NPR Network and Boise State Public Radio. Host Heath Druzin and reporter Jimmy Dawson talk with fundamentalists from around the country who want to build a Christian nation, as well as activists fighting against the rising tide of Christian nationalism.
August 30, 2024:
August 28, 2024:
    "The podcast production industry—especially the world of branded podcasting, where we work—has become very closed off in its thinking", says CitizenRacecar - and to combat that, (A Podcast About) Making Better Podcasts is brand new from the company. Hosted by their Founder & Principal David Hoffman, the show offers an immersive and unpredictable journey into the art and science of audio storytelling.
August 27, 2024:
    At Podcast Movement on the Monday, some of us were lucky enough to see none other than Lainey Wilson at an NPR Tiny Desk Concert. Here’s a link to the concert on YouTube - it premieres later today. See if you can hear our Editor’s politely restrained British clapping.
August 16, 2024:
    The Triton Digital US Rankers were released for July. Unlike the Australian versions, these measure a four-week period for better comparison (this time, Jul 1 - Jul 28): downloads were down by 0.6%. Participating publishers only - NPR’s News Now is #1 in the podcast list, iHeart Audience Network is #1 in the sales networks.
August 13, 2024:
    What makes a place truly wild? How Wild aims to answer this crucial question as climate change, increased visitation, and new technology are testing the definition of “wilderness." The first episode, out today, looks at the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico. It's from NPR and the Bay Area's KALW Public Media.
July 30, 2024:
    That’s still rather less than radio. Fox and Andy in the morning on Audacy’s WCBS-FM New York yesterday morning was 24.1% ads (29 minutes between 7am-9am). Even NPR’s Morning Edition, as aired on WBEZ Chicago, is 7.3% advertising/underwriting. And, in Sydney Australia, 2GB’s breakfast show is 27.1% advertising.
July 24, 2024:
July 15, 2024:
    A collaboration between NPR and CBC, Tested launches today, examining the 100-year history of sex testing in elite sports. Elite female runners have been told they can no longer race as women because of their biology. As the Olympics approach, they face hard choices: take drugs to lower their natural testosterone levels, give up their sport entirely, or fight.
June 26, 2024:
    Boise Public Radio and NPR have released a new season of Extremely American - "Onward Christian Soldiers" focuses on the rise of Christian nationalism, a conservative religious movement with a rapidly expanding epicenter in a surprising place: the college town of Moscow, Idaho.
June 13, 2024:
    The RE—CAP Show is back for a new season to dive deep into global soccer, from the Olympics to the NWSL Championship, with raw, no holds barred commentary on the thrilling, unpredictable world of women’s sports. It's hosted by soccer stars Christen Press and Tobin Heath.
May 30, 2024:
    It was the elections in South Africa yesterday - we'll begin to know the results during the day today. NPR's Throughline recently carried a look at Nelson Mandela. Thirty years since he was inaugurated into power, many in South Africa now see the ANC as corrupt and responsible for the country's problems.
May 27, 2024:
    Podcast Day Asia has been announced as taking place on Sep 3 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Programmed by Podnews, the day includes a keynote from NPR’s Emily Kwong, as well as experts from across the region. Tickets are just $99.
May 24, 2024:
    Proxy with Yowei Shaw is new this week from the former host of NPR's Invisibilia. She returns with an independent podcast, using Patreon - the first time Yowei gets to have total control and ownership of her podcasting work. Proxy connects a guest with the “proxies” they need - experts and strangers with shared experience; the first two episodes are out now.
May 17, 2024:
May 15, 2024:
May 10, 2024:
    Inheriting is new from NPR and launches on May 23. A journey through the lives of seven families reckoning with major moments in Asian American and Pacific Islander history, the podcast is from LAist Studios and hosted by Emily Kwong, who will keynote at Podcast Day Asia in Malaysia in September.
May 8, 2024:
    In the US, Libsyn Ads debuts at #3 publisher, while in podcasts, The Daily is #1 again, beating NPR News Now.
May 2, 2024:
April 26, 2024:
April 12, 2024:
    Hot Pod, one of the longest-running newsletters about podcasting, is to suspend publishing. Lead reporter Ariel Shapiro has announced that her last week with its owner, The Verge, will be next week; Deputy Editor Jake Kastrenakes adds: “We won’t have a new writer in place by next week, so we’re planning to put Hot Pod on hiatus while we figure out next steps.” The publication’s writers, Ariel Shapiro, Ashley Carman and Nick Quah, have been a vital part of the industry since 2014 and inspired Podnews to produce this daily newsletter in 2017. We hope the publication is back soon.
February 28, 2024:
    WAMU, the NPR member station in Washington DC, is to lay off 15 staffers. The company will close DCist, a local news site, but plans to invest more in audio.
February 19, 2024:
    NPR’s podcasting strategy SVP, Collin Campbell, is interviewed by Current. He suggests that Apple might consider recognition for nonprofits when it comes to taking 30% revenue from podcast subscriptions; and says that “the overlap between podcast and broadcast [audiences] is almost in single digits now”.
February 16, 2024:
February 6, 2024:
    Colloquiapedia is a new show that explains a popular word or phrase from the contemporary zeitgeist, and makes it comprehendible. inPress founder and podcast host, Jamie Gavin is joined this week by Assistant Managing Editor at Forbes, Ali Jackson-Jolley, who has a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion for the organisation - and will explain all things DEI.
January 29, 2024:
January 19, 2024:
January 9, 2024:
December 27, 2023:
December 14, 2023:
    Flagged in October 2019, NPR has closed the NPR One app to simplify its offerings in app stores, moving NPR One’s functionality to the main NPR app. The new NPR app offers podcasts, the NPR One personalised radio flow, curated stories and access to flagship news shows. You can listen to Podnews’s daily updates there too.
December 1, 2023:
November 10, 2023:
November 1, 2023:
October 20, 2023:
    Triton Digital released the September US Podcast Ranker. The release says that NPR is "temporarily excluded from the rankers this month due to a planned data collection migration".
October 12, 2023:
October 2, 2023:
September 19, 2023:
September 12, 2023:
September 8, 2023:
September 6, 2023:
    The Hot Docs Podcast Festival in Toronto released its full program. The first in-person Festival since 2019, the festival welcomes a slate of international and Canadian podcasts, including The New Yorker's Fiction Podcast, Articles of Interest, and Dinner SOS. It also hosts the Creators Forum on October 19 and 20, featuring top executives, producers and hosts from Acast, Bumper, Canadaland, CBC Podcasts, Condé Nast, HBO, Media Girlfriends, NPR, Pushkin Industries and more.
August 28, 2023:
    Launched Sept 2020 in Podnews, NPR ends localised versions of the Consider This podcast this week, which they claimed at the time was the "first localised daily news podcast". Localisation "did not prove sustainable", said a spokesperson; Current reports that the production process wasn't scalable; audiences didn't value it much anyway; and NPR is moving to Megaphone which means the use of different tools. Consider This continues, with national content (featuring anchors like Mary Louise Kelly, above)
August 8, 2023:
July 25, 2023:
June 22, 2023:
June 13, 2023:
June 1, 2023:
May 23, 2023:
    In his latest podcast, prominent podcaster and YouTuber Bandrew Scott explains why shows from companies like NPR and Slate are not doing well on YouTube. He suggests podcasters need to supply YouTube with video, and a specific re-edit, to make the most of the platform.
May 22, 2023:
    Want to know what's going on in the Chinese podcast scene? NPR Extra interviewed Yang Yi, the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of JustPod and a prominent figure in China's podcasting and digital audio industry.
May 19, 2023:
May 12, 2023:
    For anyone interested in pets that slither, hop, creep, fly or swim, from bunnies to iguanas, parrots to ferrets, snakes to tortoises, Exotic Pets™ is new, and hosted by Dr Doug Mader, a triple board-certified veterinary specialist, and Tracie Hotchner, host of NPR's Dog Talk. It's new from the Radio Pet Lady Network.
May 11, 2023:
May 5, 2023:
May 1, 2023:
    Ten Thousand Things with Shin Yu Pai returns today from KUOW, Seattle's NPR station. It's a vibrant, diverse, and bittersweet celebration of Asian America... and a challenge for all of us to reimagine stories of the past and future. Across the series, Shin Yu Pai explores a collection of objects and artifacts that tell us something about Asian American life – from a second-hand novel to a blue suit.
April 25, 2023:
April 21, 2023:
April 14, 2023:
April 13, 2023:
April 12, 2023:
April 7, 2023:
    Podtrac's ranker is out for March. iHeartPodcasts is still "#1 for podcasts", though total downloads are down 8.3% total downloads are up 8.3%. Wondery at #2 is up 8.1%; and NPR at #3 is up 9.3%. (March has 10% more days in it than February - three more weekdays this year).
April 4, 2023:
March 31, 2023:
March 27, 2023:
March 24, 2023:
March 21, 2023:
March 17, 2023:
March 9, 2023:
February 27, 2023:
    Earbuds looks at five podcasts containing "great writing for the ear". It's curated by Andrew Beck Grace, Chip Brantley, and Connor Towne O'Neill, writers and producers of NPR's White Lies.
February 23, 2023:
February 17, 2023:
February 9, 2023:
    Acclaimed storytelling organisation The Moth is putting out its first new podcast Grown, all about the awkward time between teen years and adulthood. Launched yesterday, it features Alfonso Lacayo (along with co-host Aleeza Kazmi) who first came to the organisation via the nonprofit’s Education program.
February 7, 2023:
February 6, 2023:
    BBC Sounds data in Q4/22 was published. 188mn plays (62mn per month) were to on-demand content (excluding music mixes). The corporation also saw 259mn podcast downloads (86mn per month) on third-party platforms. A total of 148mn global downloads and streams per month would make it #4 on Podtrac's publisher list, behind NPR, Wondery and iHeart; though this number includes some catch-up radio shows unavailable as RSS podcasts.
February 1, 2023:
January 31, 2023:
    “The problem was if an average person hears Chris Lydon doing an NPR-like thing, they’re not going to get the idea that they can do it.” Dave Winer, on the early days of podcasting, and why it took an "amateurish" show like Morning Coffee Notes to popularise the medium. (A new clip in our history page).
January 13, 2023:
January 9, 2023:
    In 4 Things For Your Podcast, the story behind why Avery Warner cancelled an episode, and said "My guest and I didn't have an alignment on certain views. What happened next I thought was very unprofessional. I can't support nor promote that kind of behavior." It's a learning for us all!
December 20, 2022:
December 14, 2022:
December 8, 2022:
    In further evidence that we live in unprecedented times, where nothing that we thought we knew remains constant, Podbean's Rob Greenlee is now running an Apple Mac. The impromptu appearance of the device caused The New Media Show co-host Todd Cochrane to temporarily lose all power of speech, before exclaiming: "Are you kidding me? Wow". Greenlee added "I can truly be ambidextrous: Windows on this hand, Mac on this hand".
December 2, 2022:
November 22, 2022:
    It's 59 years since JFK's assassination. The HISTORY Channel launches 24 Hours After: The JFK Assassination today, which takes listeners on a deep dive into the immediate aftermath of critical moments that reshaped the world - the show promises to unpack this unforgettable incident with unprecedented detail.
November 15, 2022:
November 10, 2022:
November 3, 2022:
    NPR has launched a paid podcast bundle called NPR+, giving some listeners access to bonus content, ad-free episodes and perks from nearly a dozen NPR podcasts. The bundle is, however, only available in the 34 locations where a member station is participating in the program. It's being powered by Supporting Cast.
October 28, 2022:
October 21, 2022:
October 14, 2022:
October 13, 2022:

Can you help us grow? So far in October, we've welcomed 293 new subscribers from companies like Spotify, NPR, Pandora, Nova Entertainment, the Washington Post, TED, the BBC and Veritone. At the time of writing, we're on 24,963 subscribers. We'd quite like to be 25,000 by the end of this week, because that's a nicer number. Can you help by mentioning us on your favourite social networking platform, or telling your colleagues? We'll be your friend for life.%%promo-end%%

October 12, 2022:
October 10, 2022:
    NPR's It’s Been a Minute has posted the first episode hosted by Brittany Luse. She interviews Stacey Abrams about the power and pitfalls of being an icon; how her win would shift the politics of the Deep South; and how she balances pragmatism and hope.
October 7, 2022:
    Amid the news of cancelled shows, two new hires at Spotify's Parcast and Gimlet. Nicole Beemsterboer is to become Managing Director of Gimlet; she joined Gimlet in March and was previously at NPR. Liliana Kim will "lead Parcast"; she moves from APM.
October 5, 2022:
September 27, 2022:
September 14, 2022:
September 13, 2022:
September 9, 2022:
September 1, 2022:
August 26, 2022:
August 25, 2022:
August 24, 2022:
August 18, 2022:
August 16, 2022:
    Corked is a new "true" crime comedy podcast from comedy podcast network Headgum. Miles Fletcher, an audio journalist for NPR-esque “Public Radio America”, is contacted one day by Jeffers Tatum Trench, an affable but troubled young man from rural Louisiana. The story? Lyle Le Monde, a famous, brash winemaker in Napa Valley, is living under a false identity, and Lyle’s girlfriend, Frances Meyer, who went missing several months prior, was murdered by him.
August 5, 2022:
July 28, 2022:
    Two CNN journalists and podcasters have been confirmed as the closing keynote for Podcast Movement 2022. Audie Cornish, a former NPR presenter and host of "a new podcast from CNN Audio", and Dr Sanjay Gupta, will be being hosted by Erica Mandy.
July 22, 2022:
July 20, 2022:
July 19, 2022:
July 12, 2022:
    Podio is a service based in Dubai that appears to download podcast audio and then plays a selection of them from its own servers in a radio-like stream. Shows streamed in this way include NPR's Planet Money, WSJ's The Journal, and Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. It also appears to stream excerpts of Joe Rogan, and is pulling our podcast into its service somewhere. While we're sure that site owner Uber Media has organised the right licenses, our email enquiry to them bounced.
July 8, 2022:
June 30, 2022:
June 22, 2022:
June 21, 2022:
June 17, 2022:
June 16, 2022:
June 10, 2022:
    First Person is new from The New York Times. Hosted by Lulu Garcia-Navarro, it talks with people living through the headlines to help us make sense of our complicated world. Lulu was previously at NPR's Weekend Edition.
May 25, 2022:
May 20, 2022:
    Triton Digital released its US Podcast Report for April. SXM Media is #1 for podcasts, with more than twice the unique weekly listeners for NPR podcasts at #2.
May 18, 2022:
May 16, 2022:
May 6, 2022:
    Podtrac's Top US Podcast Publishers ranker for April is out. iHeartMedia is still "#1 for podcasts" and pulled further ahead of NPR in the period. Every publisher in the top ten saw a drop in global streams and downloads though, and total downloads were down 5% month-on-month (though April has 3% fewer days than March and the Easter weekend). The ranker lists participating publishers only.
May 4, 2022:
April 26, 2022:
April 22, 2022:
    Triton Digital has released the US Podcast Report for March. SXM Media remains #1 for podcasts ahead of NPR who move up to #2. Total US downloads and users for the top five publishers dropped slightly. The ranker measures participating publishers only; iHeartMedia-owned Triton Digital doesn't measure iHeartMedia.
April 20, 2022:
    Ukraine Stories is a the first podcast from Fearless Media, with journalist and former NPR host David Greene taking us to a new story from Ukraine every day. It is told in first-person narratives, by the people living through this war. The team plan a Russian-language version of the show shortly too.
April 18, 2022:
April 14, 2022:
April 13, 2022:
April 12, 2022:
April 6, 2022:
April 1, 2022:
March 28, 2022:
March 21, 2022:
    Who are they? Webster didn't spell those out in his post, but here's the data, released last month. The four biggest, now reaching 50% of all weekly podcast listeners, are SXM Media, Spotify, iHeartRadio and NPR.
March 15, 2022:
March 10, 2022:
    Bryan Moffett is to become SVP of Network Growth for NPR, as well as retaining his role as COO of National Public Media, which handles corporate sponsorship sales for NPR and member stations. Moffett’s new team will focus on engaging “younger and more diverse audiences” through podcasts and other on-demand audio, reports Current.
March 9, 2022:
March 4, 2022:
    Podtrac has shared February's Top US podcast publishers. Audience was up 18% year-on-year. In February (which has 10% fewer days than January), NPR decreased downloads by 7.8% but iHeart increased by 1.8%. It lists participating publishers only.
March 3, 2022:
February 28, 2022:
February 25, 2022:
February 23, 2022:
    Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me! has launched a new show - Everyone & Their Mom. It's a short-form comedy show, launching today in the Wait Wait feed. It's hosted by Emma Eun-joo Choi, and offers the chance to spend more time with Wait Wait panelists and meet new comedians. Wait Wait host Peter Sagal said: "The only thing my career at NPR has lacked is a vicious backstabbing fight for dominance with a much younger, more talented rival." - read more
February 17, 2022:
February 11, 2022:
    Amazon Music and Wondery have signed How I Built This with Guy Raz. Wondery gets the exclusive ad sales and YouTube distribution rights for simulcasts; NPR keeps the radio distribution rights and the underwriting credits. Production of the show will double to two a week; and Amazon Music gets exclusive rights to air the podcast for a week.
February 7, 2022:
February 1, 2022:
    The BBC says it saw a total of 257m podcast downloads globally last quarter. That would make it the #3 podcast publisher in the world, possibly; NPR has 169m vs the BBC's 85m per month. The 257m doesn't include all plays though - a BBC spokesperson tells us: "If you listen via BBC Sounds as a stream (e.g. without downloading it) then they’re not included. If listening via BBC Sounds as a download then they would be."
January 28, 2022:
    Nicole Beemsterboer is to leave NPR and join Gimlet as Head of News and Knowledge, HotPod Insider reports.
January 20, 2022:
January 14, 2022:
January 11, 2022:
January 5, 2022:
    Podtrac published their Dec 2021 top US publishers list. iHeartRadio is still #1 for podcasting, with more than one-and-a-half times the US audience of the #2, NPR. Total global downloads were up 19% year-on-year. The Daily remained #1 podcast; Jordan Harbinger made a new entry at #20. Podtrac measures participating publishers only.
December 30, 2021:
December 17, 2021:
    Triton Digital's November US Podcast Report says that Stitcher is still #1 for podcasts. NPR News Now remained the #1 podcast itself. The ranker contains participating publishers only.
December 10, 2021:
December 6, 2021:
December 3, 2021:
December 1, 2021:
    Noel King has joined Vox's Today, Explained as Editorial Director and co-host. She was formerly with NPR's Morning Edition and Up First. The daily podcast will also air on local public radio stations nationwide, in partnership with New York's WNYC Studios.
November 24, 2021:
November 18, 2021:
    The Joe Rogan Experience is still #1. Call Her Daddy has climbed, even though it became a Spotify Exclusive in the last quarter; Serial has also climbed a place, in spite of not releasing an episode since 2018. NPR host 19 of the top 50; Megaphone 13; Simplecast 10. The highest new entry is True Crime Garage at #43. The top 10 is 50% hosted by women.
November 17, 2021:
    Ricky Mulvey has joined The Motley Fool as Podcast Producer. He was a podcast producer for Allworth Financial, and recently freelanced with NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money.
November 15, 2021:
November 12, 2021:
November 10, 2021:
November 9, 2021:
    PodFest China was held recently, and we've a full report, and pictures from the day in Shanghai. It was announced that NPR's Podcast Start Up Guide will be published in a Chinese version, and podcast host and app Ximalaya revealed that it hosts 23,300 podcasts, with more than 5,000 added so far this year.
November 8, 2021:
November 4, 2021:
November 3, 2021:
October 20, 2021:
October 11, 2021:
    The expiration of an old root certificate for Let's Encrypt continues to cause problems with some podcast platforms. NPR, RadioPublic and TuneIn are no longer updating any RSS feeds from Anchor or Feedpress, and others secured with Let's Encrypt. NPR, RadioPublic and TuneIn need to fix their servers to remove the old Let's Encrypt root cert: this fix helped us last week when we had a similar issue.
October 8, 2021:
October 7, 2021:
    Formerly a Luminary exclusive, Wisdom from the Top is now a podcast co-branded by NPR, and available across 'most' podcast platforms. Paid subscribers to Luminary (in their app or in Apple Podcasts) will hear the show a week early.
October 4, 2021:
    Ozy Media has announced it is to shut down, after a number of reports about the company's business practices. There were question marks over what the company had told investors, advertisers, employees and guests; and the impact could still affect other media companies. Carlos Watson, the co-founder and CEO of Ozy Media, has resigned from the NPR Board. The company had five podcasts, including co-productions with iHeartMedia and the BBC.
October 1, 2021:
September 29, 2021:
    NPR's weekly Car Talk program has been taken off the air, more than seven years after the death of one of the co-hosts. The show continues as a podcast, though: a new, twice-weekly podcast will rerun episodes from the show's early years.
September 17, 2021:
    Triton Digital has released the US Podcasting Report for August. Downloads are up 11% from July, as the Apple bugfix rolled out. Stitcher is #1 for podcasts, though NPR is just 70,000 downloads behind; it measures participating publishers only.
September 10, 2021:
August 27, 2021:
August 18, 2021:
    A variety of NPR podcasts are now on an optional paid-for podcast subscription platform. NPR Plus is powered by Supporting Cast. Shows can also be subscribed-to via Apple Podcasts (here's Code Switch) at the same price; NPR Plus works on most podcast apps, including Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts and Apple Podcasts.
August 10, 2021:
    In terms of hosts, Megaphone (14), NPR (8) and Omny Studio (8) host the most shows.
August 6, 2021:
August 2, 2021:
July 28, 2021:
July 23, 2021:
July 19, 2021:
    Analysis: Launched in January 2011, and especially keen on Android, Pocket Casts was bought in 2018 by a consortium of US public broadcasters; but was put up for sale in January 2021, after NPR's accounts said its 34.6% share had lost $812,000 (a figure PocketCasts denied). The app appears to have stalled in recent years, with a shrinking market share and no investment in new features. Podnews's Editor uses it every day - he hopes they invest in Podcasting 2.0 enhancements to differentiate it from the competition.
July 16, 2021:
    The June 2021 US Podcast Report is out from Triton Digital. Stitcher are #1 for a second month, beating NPR (though iH eartRadio isn't measured). Average weekly downloads for the top 10 publishers were up by 5% year-on-year, in spite of an Apple Podcasts auto-download bug and a shift to IAB v2.1. (One investment analyst recently used figures from the competing Podtrac ranker to claim podcasting was in negative growth).
July 9, 2021:
June 30, 2021:
June 29, 2021:
June 25, 2021:
    Stacey Goers is to leave NPR to join Acast. She has worked within NPR for the last five years, and is currently the Senior Product Manager for NPR Podcasts. Her LinkedIn post suggests her team will be "focused on products for audience development".
June 23, 2021:
June 21, 2021:
June 18, 2021:
    Stitcher Media is the new #1 podcast publisher in the US, according to the latest Triton Digital US Podcast Report for the four weeks ending May 30. The company, owned by SiriusXM, beat NPR for both average weekly downloads and listeners. NPR News Now is still the #1 podcast, though. It's the first to be compiled to v2.1 of the IAB Podcast Technical Guidelines: the result is a reduction in average weekly users by around 5% for the top 5 publishers. The ranker measures participating publishers only; iHeartRadio owns Triton Digital, but it is not included in the ranker.
June 16, 2021:
    NPR Training reports on how NPR makes their daily Short Wave podcast sustainable.
June 14, 2021:
June 4, 2021:
    Podtrac's US top 20 podcasts for May 2021 has an unchanged top ten, excepting Dan Bongino rising one place to 10. Bongino has taken the place of the late Rush Limbaugh on a number of stations. Of the US publisher list, iHeart remains #1, with almost a third more audience than NPR. It measures participating publishers only.
May 24, 2021:
May 21, 2021:
    Our technical review of the site shows that audio from companies like NPR, Vox Media and others appears to play from m3.podclips.com; we've asked the company - which doesn't give an address on their website - for clarification of their licensing agreements.
April 28, 2021:
April 22, 2021:
    Hires: New hires at CNN Audio: Robert Mathers, Podcast Business Operations Manager; Jon Dianora, Director of Podcast Revenue Partnerships; and Rafeena Ahmad, Product Manager, was previously at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Wait, What?, and NPR.
April 21, 2021:
    NPR will be a launch partner on Apple and Spotify's paid podcast subscription platforms, according to a staff email obtained by Podnews. The NPR Board has also approved development of NPR's own sponsorship-free public radio podcast subscription service, which member stations will also have access to. However, sponsor-supported shows will still be free: “NPR remains committed to making news and other content available to the public free of charge as part of its public service mission,” Podnews is told.
April 14, 2021:
    Business Wars is now a book. The Art of Business Wars, written by host David Brown, examines why some companies triumph while others crumble. (Affiliate link). Its newest season is called Vaccine Wars, following the drug industry's unprecedented race to deliver a vaccine for the pandemic.
March 30, 2021:
March 26, 2021:
    Samsung has launched Samsung Podcasts within the Samsung Free app in the US. The service offers instant access to "thousands of podcasts" from publishers like American Public Media, CNN Audio, Conde Nast, iHeartMedia, Kast Media, Motley Fool, NPR, PodcastOne, PRX, This American Life, Vox Media Podcast Network and Barstool Sports. Both Blubrry Podcasting and Libsyn have announced a launch partnership: both require you to specifically add your podcasts to the service. Samsung has a roughly 25% market share in the US; this is available now on Galaxy S21, Galaxy S20, Galaxy Note 20, Galaxy S10, and Galaxy Note 10 devices.
March 22, 2021:
March 19, 2021:
    Triton Digital released their new US Podcast Report for February. The #1 publisher is NPR; but Triton Digital, which is owned by iHeartRadio, does not measure iHeartRadio, the #1 publisher according to Podtrac. (Incomplete: participating publishers only)
March 15, 2021:

Welcome to almost 300 new subscribers followers over the past week, from companies like the ABC Australia, Europe 1, the Broadway Podcast Network, NPR, Spotify, Bayerischer Rundfunk and TWiT.

March 9, 2021:
March 5, 2021:
    According to our compiled data, NPR and Wondery both lead with 14 nominations; Gimlet has 13; and iHeart has 11.
February 25, 2021:
    DAX is reported to have been appointed exclusive sponsorship partner for NPR in Canada. DAX already represents Wondery in the country.
February 24, 2021:
February 12, 2021:
February 8, 2021:
    Andy Mills has resigned from the New York Times, almost two months after significant issues were discovered with Caliphate, a podcast for which Mills was a producer and co-host. While host Rukmini Callimachi was publicly censured and removed to a different reporting area, Mills - who accepted the Peabody Award on the paper's behalf for the podcast - had not, seemingly, been disciplined, and questions made of past behaviour. Mills has posted a full statement. Michael Barbaro has not yet addressed the fact that his coverage on the matter did not disclose that Caliphate's Executive Producer Lisa Tobin is his fiancée, which is in contravention of the NYT's Editorial Standards. He has, though, written to NPR stations, and publicly apologised for attempting to silence critics.
February 5, 2021:
February 4, 2021:
February 3, 2021:
    A MediaRadar study ($) says that ad-spend on podcasts was up 11% year-on-year in Q4 2020. "The top five podcast producers in terms of ad revenue last year were NPR, iHeartRadio, Barstool Sports, Wondery and The Daily Wire, which collectively captured 33% of all podcast ad revenue".
January 28, 2021:
    Triton Digital has released its latest US Podcast Report, covering December 2020. Total downloads for the top 10 publishers slumped by almost 10% during the holiday month; NPR remains at #1. An incomplete ranker, it measures participating publishers only (and notably, not iHeartRadio).
January 25, 2021:
January 15, 2021:
January 14, 2021:
    Houston's NPR radio station, KUHF, has dropped their broadcast of a radio version of The Daily. "Reports that The Daily host, Michael Barbaro, did not appropriately disclose material facts about his connection to the controversial Caliphate series during a recent broadcast are not consistent with Houston Public Media's commitment to transparency and journalistic standards." We noted last month that his coverage was also against the New York Times's own Editorial Standards.
January 13, 2021:
January 11, 2021:
    The Podcast Academy has announced that Donald Albright from Tenderfoot TV will be their Chairperson for 2021 (replacing Rob Greenlee); Spoke Media's Alia Tavakolian is Secretary (replacing Kerri Hoffman); Anya Grundmann from NPR is Treasurer, replacing Christy Mirabel from SonyMusic Entertainment who becomes Vice-Chairperson, Donald Albright's former position. We reported on three new board members on Friday.
January 7, 2021:
December 30, 2020:
    An amusing press release from Superhuman Public Radio, announcing a new logo, is the result of a request from NPR, we learn. The co-executive producers of SPR tell us: "NPR asked us to change our logo, which we did. We are just thrilled that after debuting just a month and a half ago we can count them among our listeners. We have nothing but admiration for NPR. Having their staff among our fans is a big win for us. Our exchanges with them have only confirmed our suspicion that we have something special on our hands."
December 18, 2020:
    Triton Digital has released the latest US Podcast Report. The data covers most of November; the top 5 remains unchanged, with NPR at #1. The total downloads from the top ten publishers dropped by more than 5%, in a period that included the US Presidential Election and Thanksgiving. An incomplete ranker, it measures participating publishers only - notably, not iHeartRadio.
December 16, 2020:
    Spotify has announced a global distribution agreement with NPR, meaning that many NPR shows are now available across the world on its platform. Podcasts from NPR were added to Spotify podcasts in May 2018, but only for US listeners. They've always been available on other podcast platforms.
December 15, 2020:
December 7, 2020:
    Podtrac published their top 20 US podcasts for November. No change in the top 4 (Up First at 3, NPR News Now at 2, and The Daily at 1), this incomplete ranker measures participating publishers only.
December 2, 2020:
November 30, 2020:
    Buzzsprout is now the world's largest paid-for podcast host. The company overtook Libsyn (including LibsynPro) according to data from ListenNotes over the past few days, which measures RSS hosting domains. Buzzsprout itself claimed it has 82,574 shows at the end of October; Libsyn claims just 62,000 podcasts on their main website but over 75,000 in their latest press release; Libsyn haven't responded to recent requests for comment. While both companies also offer custom RSS domains, Buzzsprout has a limited free plan.
November 24, 2020:
November 20, 2020:
    Triton Digital have released their latest US Podcast Report. Combined, the Top 100 Podcasts by Downloads and Top 100 Podcasts by Users are up 3.6% from the previous reporting period. NPR is the #1 publisher, with NPR News Now the #1 podcast. An incomplete ranker, it measures participating publishers only, and doesn't measure iHeartMedia.
November 18, 2020:
    Small Good Thing is a new full-service podcast production and consulting company in the US. It's being run by Steve Lickteig, who has previously worked at NBC News, Slate, NPR and SiriusXM.
October 22, 2020:
October 16, 2020:
    Triton Digital has published its latest podcast ranker for the US. NPR is at #1; total podcast downloads were up 1.8%. An incomplete ranker, it measures participating publishers only.
October 14, 2020:
    Three-quarters of Americans listen to the spoken word - the latest from The 2020 Spoken Word Audio Report, published yesterday by NPR and Edison Research. From all audio, the share of spoken word audio listening, including podcasts, has increased by 30% over the last six years and by 8% in just the last year. The research also found that almost a third of all listening is to podcasts from NPR and public radio.
October 9, 2020:
October 7, 2020:
    Podfront, a preview of new shows from seven of the US's largest podcast publishers, took place yesterday. A number of new shows were announced, and the event had high-profile guests including Hollywood actor Elle Fanning, comedian Sarah Silverman and NBA star JJ Redick, as well as podcast royalty like ABC News's Brad Mielke, NPR's Guy Raz, Wondery CEO Hernan Lopez, and Edison Research SVP Tom Webster.
October 5, 2020:
    US listeners are listening to 8% more spoken word than last year. That's the highlight from the upcoming Spoken Word Audio Report from NPR and Edison Research, which will be unveiled on October 13.
September 24, 2020:
    NPR has released The NPR Podcast Report, containing data and case studies about the broadcaster's podcasts. For Q2 2020, weekly podcast users are up 20% year-on-year, and downloads have risen 26%. Podcasts from NPR and public radio account for 32% of time spent listening to podcasts in the US, according to the report, which says sponsors see their brand awareness increase by 19%.
September 17, 2020:
September 16, 2020:
    70 Million is back for Season 3. For its season premiere, 70 Million takes you inside Chicago’s Cook County Jail during a rapid outbreak of COVID-19. Learn of the unprecedented steps officials took to control the outbreak, and how COVID-19 is directly confronting structures within the criminal justice system. Listen to Episode 1. (ad)
September 15, 2020:
September 14, 2020:
    70 Million is back for Season 3. For its season premiere, 70 Million takes you inside Chicago’s Cook County Jail during a rapid outbreak of COVID-19. Learn of the unprecedented steps officials took to control the outbreak, and how COVID-19 is directly confronting structures within the criminal justice system. Listen to Episode 1. (ad)
September 10, 2020:
    Working with member stations, NPR has made daily afternoon news podcast Consider This "the first localised daily news podcast", blending national stories and local reporting. The podcast uses Digital Content Insertion, the same tech as is used in localised advertising, to deliver a local version in ten different markets within the US. The rest of us will continue to hear the national version.
September 4, 2020:
September 3, 2020:
September 1, 2020:
August 31, 2020:
August 28, 2020:
August 26, 2020:
    Spotify has revealed the "Top podcasts of the summer", based on number of listeners from June 1 - August 15th, 2020. Even though it only launched on July 29, The Michelle Obama Podcast was the global #1 ("with millions of listeners"); the rest of the top 5 were: NPR News Now, The Daily, Call Her Daddy, and the TED Talks Daily.
August 18, 2020:
    If that 240m downloads number includes all podcast listening for the BBC (it's a little unclear if BBC Sounds's podcast plays are included), that would mean an equivalent of 80m downloads per month, and would place it behind iHeartRadio, NPR and the New York Times in the Podtrac rankings. The BBC blocks Google Podcasts.
August 17, 2020:
    Podcast host Libsyn has published a positive Q2 2020 financial report. While revenue from advertising and LibsynPro decreased during the worst months of the pandemic, total podcasting revenue was up by 10.6% in the second quarter. Laurie Sims has been promoted to COO, and a strategic review has recently concluded. The company now hosts 74,000 podcasts; and April was the second-highest month in the company's history for signups. Libsyn also owns Pair, an internet hosting company.
August 7, 2020:
    Podtrac has published its Top US Publishers list for July 2020. iHeartRadio is now #1 for US unique monthly audience as well as global downloads, beating NPR in both rankings. ABC is now measured alongside ESPN; it only measures participating publishers.
July 22, 2020:
July 21, 2020:
    After Podnews reported a bug, NPR has fixed their NPR One Android podcast app’s user-agent. The fix rolls out later this week, benefiting podcasters everywhere. Thank you! (Listen to Podnews in NPR One).
July 14, 2020:
July 13, 2020:
July 9, 2020:
July 7, 2020:
July 6, 2020:
    Podtrac has released its top US podcast publishers ranker for June 2020. NPR regains the #1 slot, followed by iHeartRadio and the New York Times. The ranker includes participating publishers only.
July 1, 2020:
June 26, 2020:
June 11, 2020:
June 9, 2020:
    If 50% of podcast listeners paid for ad-free shows, creators would make nearly 6x more than they are with ads: that's according to Pete Curley and Garret Heaton (above), the founders of Podhero which officially launches today. Instead of advertising, which the company claims is unpredictable and only good for larger podcasts, if listeners put $5.99 into Podhero every month, it gets divided and shared with the shows they support (including us).
June 8, 2020:
    NPR's history podcast Throughline this week focuses on the origins of American policing and how those origins put violent control of Black Americans at the heart of the system.
June 5, 2020:
May 28, 2020:
    The Podcast Academy have posted an updated Board of Governors. Rob Greenlee from Libsyn has been confirmed as the Chair; governors include Conal Byrne from iHeartMedia, Ben Cave from Apple, Anya Grundmann from NPR and Courtney Holt from Spotify. The Board also includes podcast producers, talent agents, and studios. Google is absent.
May 22, 2020:
    Exclusive: Podcast host Captivate will announce later today that they have achieved IAB Certification for their podcast analytics. The certification was achieved at an "unprecedented pace" according to CEO Mark Asquith, and podcasters will see no significant changes to their reported download numbers. The first UK company to undergo this work, Captivate joins another 10 retail hosts that are certified compliant. (Podnews's Editor is on Captivate's advisory board).
May 21, 2020:
    The duo responsible for Call Her Daddy are, according to Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports, "unprofessional, disloyal and greedy" according to a new podcast in their feed, reports The New York Times.
May 18, 2020:
    The BBC had 230m podcast downloads in Q1 2020, it says, excluding its own UK-only BBC Sounds app, which claimed a further 123m plays of on-demand radio and podcasts. That roughly translates to 117m downloads per month, making the British broadcaster bigger than the New York Times, but smaller than NPR or iHeartRadio. The number of podcast downloads in Q1 2020 was flat based on last quarter. The BBC is still blocking Google Podcasts.
May 12, 2020:
May 8, 2020:
    Podtrac have revealed their top publishers ranking for April 2020. Surprisingly, NPR falls to second place in terms of US audience: they're beaten by iHeartRadio, who have also added 18 new shows. The service only measures participating publishers.
May 5, 2020:
May 1, 2020:
    Edison Research and NPR have released their Smart Audio Report 2020 showing how smart speakers are being used; the full report is on NPR's site. Podcasts don't get mentioned in the report by name (they're typically not listened-to on smart speakers) though the data does show an increase in people who want "the news" from their smart speaker.
April 29, 2020:
April 24, 2020:
    Podjobs isn't new, but it is a fine (and free) place to post jobs in the podcast industry. Current jobs include some from Spotify, Gimlet, Apple and NPR.
April 23, 2020:
    Edison Research and NPR are releasing their Smart Audio Report, which looks at the usage of smart speakers, a little earlier this year, in a free webinar on Apr 30.
April 14, 2020:
April 1, 2020:
March 20, 2020:
March 12, 2020:
March 3, 2020:
February 28, 2020:
February 21, 2020:
    The news bulletins are taking over the rankers: Podtrac has published their top 20 podcasts for January. NPR News Now, a five-minute news bulletin mainly driven by smart speakers, is now at #2; Fox News Radio Newscast is a new entry at #20. Podnews reported on Feb 6 that Sky News's News Bulletin, which is not available as a podcast at all, is #2 in the Australian Podcast Ranker. (Podnews is also available in your daily news briefing settings).
February 18, 2020:
February 14, 2020:
    Podtrac have published the January top 10 podcast publishers for US audience. The list actually lists fifteen publishers, with Westwood One new at #11, and NPR is still #1. It doesn't list all publishers. Podtrac claim 1.3 billion downloads in January 2019 across all publishers, up 21% from December.
February 13, 2020:
February 12, 2020:

Thank you for helping us hit 12,000 subscribers, including 276 new subscribers in February so far from companies like Mamamia, CBC, NZME, Wondery, SCA, Fox News and NPR.

January 29, 2020:
    Shared by Podcast Movement, this piece from NPR about pronouncing foreign names on-air is worth a read. If you don't know how someone pronounces their name? Rewrite the script to remove it, it says.
January 17, 2020:
January 9, 2020:
December 20, 2019:
    Triton Digital is to produce a podcast ranker in the US, called Podcast Reports. Already signed up are NPR, Entercom (inc Cadence13, RADIO·COM and Pineapple Street Media), Stitcher and Cumulus Media (inc Westwood One). The company is already producing a ranker in Australia, the Netherlands and Latin America, and has been producing a ranker for online radio for some time; Triton Digital uses logfiles to produce IAB certified data.
December 17, 2019:
December 6, 2019:
    The Podtrac (US) podcast publishers list has been released for November. All publishers saw a decrease in unique audience, due to Thanksgiving. NPR, iHeart Radio and the New York Times are the top 3: the figures are opt-in and incomplete.
December 3, 2019:
November 27, 2019:
November 26, 2019:

Thank you, Anne, in the USA! She became our 11,000th email subscriber at 2.58am our time this morning. Welcome also to recent subscribers from Canada's Elmnt FM, NPR, Australia's Network Ten, Belgium's VRT, Warner Music and NBC Universal.

November 18, 2019:
    Podtrac have released their top 20 US podcasts ranker. The Daily is still #1; NPR have eight shows in the top 20. The ranker is opt-in and not complete.
November 13, 2019:
    Data: 24% of audio listening is to the spoken word, not to music. NPR and Edison Research's Spoken Word Audio Report has been released - the survey reveals that spoken word consumption (which includes podcasting as well as speech radio) has increased considerably in the past five years.
November 8, 2019:
    The share of time spent listening to spoken word audio has increased 20% since 2014, and this growth is cutting into time spent with music. So says the to-be-released Edison Research and NPR Spoken Word Audio Report: you can register for the free webinar here.
November 7, 2019:
October 30, 2019:
    NPR has two apps - one called NPR One, and one called simply NPR. In 2020, expect those to be merged into one new app: Current says there may be something to try in May; sounds like it's a political split, rather than a technological one. (You can listen to Podnews in NPR One).
October 22, 2019:
October 15, 2019:
October 1, 2019:
September 19, 2019:
    Maggie McGuire, the CEO of Pinna, an ad-free children's audio network, talks to Podcast Movement. They advertise themselves, though: "We’re running advertising across audio networks including Spotify, Pandora, and NPR, and across podcast networks like Megaphone and Midroll."
September 16, 2019:
    Podcasts will be bigger than radio next year in terms of NPR's revenue: according to Deborah Cowan, the organisation's CFO. She's expecting to earn $55m from podcasting next year. NPR is profitable, and overall revenue grew 10% year-on-year.
September 12, 2019:
    Podtrac have released their Top 10 Podcast Publishers data for August. The data is opt-in. NPR remains the #1 global podcaster, while iHeartRadio has achieved the #1 spot for US unique audience, with figures that increased 26% apparently due to the return of Ron Burgundy. The figure includes 258 active iHeart shows monitored by Podtrac.
September 9, 2019:
    NPR has a new CEO. John Lansing currently looks after Voice of America and other US-funded broadcasters, where he increased weekly audience by 25%.
August 28, 2019:
    The BBC is launching its own voice assistant. Dubbed "Beeb" - a popular nickname for the organisation - it gives the broadcaster more control over BBC consumption, "without someone else’s permission to build it in a certain way". It will cope with UK regional accents, and will be built-in to the BBC's website and apps. Tech journalist Dieter Bohn likes it - "Imagine if the BBC or NPR could make a voice interface for their respective content that worked as well as, say, a web page."
August 26, 2019:
August 12, 2019:
August 9, 2019:
    US broadcaster Entercom claimed in its investor call that its purchases this week of Pineapple Street and Cadence13 will give it more than 150 million monthly downloads; beating NPR's 141m figure and becoming the largest podcaster in the world.
August 5, 2019:
July 29, 2019:
    Fan of NPR One? Of course you are. Good news: Podnews is now there too. Download the app, search for us, and get a daily update.
July 25, 2019:
    Adswizz has announced that their new software release fully supports the RAD podcast measurement framework. Remote Audio Data (RAD), the output of NPR working with 30 companies, is a method for sharing listening metrics from podcast applications back to publishers.
July 12, 2019:
    "Are you highly curious?" So starts a producer job advert from NPR for a new daily science podcast that "tells listeners something they probably didn’t know in under ten minutes". It's attracted the attention of Cody Gough, the presenter of Curiosity Daily, an award-winning daily science podcast that "helps you get smarter about the world around you" "in less than 10 minutes". Hmm.
July 10, 2019:
July 8, 2019:
July 4, 2019:
July 1, 2019:
June 26, 2019:
    NPR and Edison Research have released their Smart Audio Report 2019. Their data suggests that 21% of American adults (53m people) own a smart speaker. Podcasts don't appear in the report, though 42% claim to use their speaker at least once a week to listen to the news.
June 25, 2019:
    The winners are on the NYF website. Congratulations also to Podnews supporter Lantigua Williams & Co.’s 70 Million, which was bronze winner in the category of Narrative/Documentary Podcasts; and to supporters NPR and Megaphone / Panoply for your winning entries too.
June 20, 2019:
    NPR and Edison Research are unveiling their new Smart Audio Report on June 25th at 2pm Eastern. You can register for the webinar here; it'll be presented by Tom Webster and Joel Sucherman.
June 13, 2019:
    Podcast Day 2019 is underway in London. The event is sold out, and includes speakers from NPR, the BBC's Brexitcast, Google, Podnews and many more.
June 10, 2019:

Thank you to almost 200 new subscribers so far this month, including folk from Spotify, Dave Ramsey, WhatPods, Emmis, ART19, Le Monde, Luminary, Acast, Megaphone, GFK, NPR and Poland's RMF. We'd appreciate your help in getting the word out - any chance of a Tweet or LinkedIn mention today about us?

June 7, 2019:
    Triton Digital have released February's Webcast Metrics, which measures streaming media across the world. Top three lists - US: Pandora, iHeart, NPR; LATAM: Prisa Radio, Grupo Axir, Grupo Radio Centro; EMEA: Talpa Radio, Prisa Radio, Karnaval. (No UK streamers seem to be measured).
May 31, 2019:
May 22, 2019:
    The new (still opaque) methodology from Podtrac has been applied to their (opt-in, self-selecting) April 2019 statistics. The effect appears to be a drop of around 20% for streams/downloads for the top 3 publishers, which remain #1 NPR, #2 iHeartRadio, #3 PRX.
May 21, 2019:

Welcome to almost 400 new subscribers in May so far, including people from Himalaya, PodcastOne Australia, Media Monitors, Cadence13, Vox Media, ESPN, Luminary, Acast, NRK, NPR, Spotify, PRX, ARN and Radio-Canada. Please, tell your colleagues (and tell your HR people about our free jobs board).

May 10, 2019:
    The podcast host ART19 is now IAB Certified, complying with IAB guidelines for measuring downloads. They join NPR and Blubrry.
May 1, 2019:
    "We’re incredibly sorry for the inconvenience," say NPR in a statement, after a configuration change messed up all the broadcaster's RSS feeds, adding hundreds of episodes and kicking off a large number of downloads of seemingly random shows for many. One correspondent tells us: "They managed to download 61 episodes of Planet Money for me overnight, a podcast I have never subscribed to." They've fixed the issue, and we're told: "we're already speaking to Podtrac as to how best address this."
April 24, 2019:
    Radio and podcasting winners from The Peabody Awards have been announced (and they're all podcasts): they are Believed from NPR; Buried Truths from WABE; Caliphate from the New York Times; and two episodes of Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX.
April 15, 2019:
    Podtrac's March figures are out. #5 Wondery, #4 New York Times, #3 PRX; #2 iHeart and #1 NPR. Of note - NPR is now, once again, the leader in both US and global charts; PRX has a nice increase caused by merging with PRI.
April 12, 2019:
    NPR's Jarl Mohn spoke at the NAB Show about podcasting: "We believe in podcasting and we invest a lot of money in podcasting."
April 5, 2019:
    A rejig of part of NPR's podcast hosting has resulted in many users not being able to download their podcasts if they run ad-blockers. NPR's Stacey Goers says that the company recently transitioned ad vendors, and that NPR is planning to make changes in the coming days that should solve the problem.
April 4, 2019:
March 26, 2019:
    StreamGuys have announced support for RAD across their platform. RAD is NPR's podcast analytics technology; Podnews itself already tags our podcasts with RAD tags.
March 25, 2019:

Welcome to over 300 new subscribers over the last two weeks, including from companies like ABC Australia, Scripps, Gimlet Media, Stitcher, NPR, SRF, Buzzsprout, Acast, Turner, Megaphone, iHeartMedia, Spotify, Deezer, Westwood One, Radioplayer Germany, Entercom, ACE Radio, and the BBC.

March 13, 2019:
    Podtrac have published their stats for February 2019. February included the much-hyped Ron Burgundy podcast, which released its trail on Feb 1 and launched on Feb 8; yet iHeartRadio's figures in total were virtually flat, at 5.28m downloads a day (rather than 5.22m the previous month). iHeart remains the global leader for downloads, while NPR remains the US #1 based on unique audience. (As ever: Podtrac only measures some US-based publishers and their methodology is proprietary and opaque. Here's more on podcast stats.)
March 6, 2019:
    Podtrac have restored total global download numbers to their industry rankings. They reveal that iHeartRadio is #1 global podcaster with 162,159,000 downloads in January, beating NPR's 157m downloads. NPR remain #1 when judged on US unique users.
February 26, 2019:
    The RAIN Podcast Business Summit is next Tuesday in New York NY, USA, focusing on Unlocking the podcast mainstream. There are great speakers, including Google's Zack Reneau-Wedeen, NPR's Joel Sucherman, and Edison Research's Tom Webster. We'll be there, and you can be too - this Podnews-exclusive link will give you 50% off the ticket price.
February 25, 2019:
    NPR's RAD podcast analytics specification was launched on 12 December; but our RAD tracking server remains unbothered by any actual listens to track. This might soon change: NPR drops heavy hints to Current that Apple are quite keen on it; and RadioPublic are the first non-NPR app to publicly commit to integrating the tracking "as an opt-in feature that listeners can enable or decline for each podcast".
February 22, 2019:
    Podtrac have released January 2019 figures for the top 10 US podcast publishers, and top 20 US podcasts, using their service. NPR remains at #1, with a yearly increase in US unique audience from 16.3m to 17.9m. iHeartMedia has seen significant increases year-on-year, but their figures now include the StuffMedia purchases, so aren't comparable.
February 14, 2019:
February 6, 2019:
    A preliminary schedule for the RAIN Podcast Business Summit, in New York NY next month, is highlighted in RAIN. (James Cridland, our editor, is moderating a panel on analytics.)
February 5, 2019:
    Thank you to the world's biggest podcaster NPR, and to Synth, a short-form podcasting platform "in 256-second increments", for your kind support. You helped us make our podcast technical analysis service more robust.
February 4, 2019:

Welcome to our new readers who've joined in the past week, including people from the BBC, the Sunday Times, KUOW, NPR, Turner, Himalaya, Entercom, the Washington Post, and from our new beneficent overlords, Spotify.

February 1, 2019:
January 29, 2019:

Welcome to the nearly 300 people who've subscribed over the past week, including folks from Acast, Bengo Media, the BBC, Edison Research, Entercom, NPR, Slate, USA Today, Condé Nast, Spotify, iHeartMedia and Himalaya. If you like Podnews, please let others know, and consider supporting us.

January 22, 2019:
January 18, 2019:
January 11, 2019:
    Notwithstanding this, listener reaction is predictably fierce. Responses include "the arrogance of the BBC is breathtaking", and that the decision is "bonkers - not good bonkers, bad bonkers". The app has also been poorly-reviewed. As a side note: the BBC monetises its podcast listens outside the UK with Acast, so exclusivity also removes revenue for the corporation. Podnews estimates the BBC is the world's second-largest podcaster, after NPR.
January 8, 2019:
    The total number of smart-speakers has increased by 78% in the past year: and 21% of people in the US now have one. New data from NPR and Edison Research, from a survey conducted after the Dec 2018 holidays, shows a marked increase in ownership of smart speakers.
January 7, 2019:
January 4, 2019:

Welcome to our recent new subscribers, including folk from Spotify, Havas Edge, Audioboom, Vox Media, Gimlet Media, and broadcasters BR, NPR, SRF, ITN and NPO. Tell your colleagues!

January 3, 2019:
    IAB Certification update: Whooshkaa lets us know that they, too, are in the process of attaining IAB Certification. They join Simplecast, Voxnest/Spreaker, Megaphone, Libsyn, Omny Studio, and ART19. Blubrry and NPR are already there.
January 2, 2019:
January 1, 2019:
December 31, 2018:
    Simplecast is in the process of attaining IAB Certification. They join Voxnest/Spreaker, Megaphone, Libsyn, Omny Studio, and ART19. With Blubrry and NPR having already achieved it, that's over a quarter of a million dollars that the IAB has earnt so far from certification. Cough
December 20, 2018:
    Is Marco Arment correct to claim that NPR's RAD podcast analytics is "a privacy violation and a GDPR liability"? In a special article, we looked into podcast apps, privacy and GDPR. In short: no. There's nothing to suggest that RAD is more of a privacy violation and GDPR liability than using a podcast app already is.
December 19, 2018:
    Columbia Journalism Review reports on NPR's RAD podcast consumption analytics specification, claiming that it raises privacy issues.
December 18, 2018:
December 14, 2018:
    Want to mess about with NPR's consumption analytics spec, RAD? We added a test audio file with lots of RAD tags in it the other day. Here is the 'tail' of our RAD tracking server logs, so you can see what we get the other end. Depending on how quick you are, you'll notice at least one enterprising tester is using it as a chat board.
December 13, 2018:
    Exclusive: NPR's RAD open podcast analytics standard (which we reported yesterday) will be supported by Hindenburg, the audio editor built for audio journalists. Chris Mottes, their CEO, tells Podnews that both Hindenburg Journalist PRO and Hindenburg Broadcaster will include a feature to add RAD tags and the related metadata: and that the release will be made this Friday afternoon. (Hindenburg regularly advertise with Podnews, promoting a 90-day free trial and discounted price, which we feel is probably relevant here even if this is an editorial news story.)
December 12, 2018:
    NPR's RAD, a method of measuring consumption data for podcasts, has launched. A blog post describes the companies NPR have worked with to get to this point. There is also a tech spec website, including a simple introduction. NPR say they will soon release a web-based tool to help create RAD-compliant podcasts. The NPR One app for Android works with RAD today.
December 7, 2018:
    Google is trialling a news radio station - kind of - on your smart speaker. The company is planning an equivalent to NPR One, which lets you flick between individual news stories. It's unclear what this means for short-form podcasts currently available on Google's News Briefing; and may be where the 60dB team ended up.
December 5, 2018:
    The President and CEO of NPR, Jarl Mohn, is to step down next June. NPR is the world's largest podcaster.
November 21, 2018:
    Job: Latino USA is looking for a Senior Editor. "The Senior Editor is the editorial head of NPR’s Latino USA, an award-winning weekly public radio program and podcast that focuses on Latinos and the Latino experience. The Senior Editor supervises the editorial and production process of the show, edits individual stories, and is responsible for overseeing the tone and content of the program, adhering to rigorous journalistic standards as well as consistently bringing cutting-edge storytelling to the show."
November 19, 2018:
    NPR has announced their Student Podcast Challenge. Students and teachers participating in NPR's Student Podcast Challenge can take a topic, a lesson, or a unit they're learning about, and turn it into a podcast between three and 12 minutes long. Winning podcasts will be featured on NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
November 15, 2018:
November 14, 2018:
    iHeartRadio's podcast awards already have a winner: NPR is to be honoured with the Podcast Pioneer Award. The largest podcast publisher in the world, NPR has been officially podcasting since August 2005. (And talking of podcasting history: no, Adam Curry wasn't first. Here's some alternative podcasting history from the RadioSurvivor website).
November 9, 2018:
    Their Own Devices looks at our kids' use of new tech. Smartphones give our kids unprecedented educational, creative, and social value. But they also trigger waves of social and psychological maladies faster than we can combat them: anxiety, depression, addiction, loneliness, fear of missing out, privacy invasion, and risky behaviour. Are tech companies happy to exploit our kids’ natural weaknesses? (Podglomerate / Simplecast)
November 8, 2018:
November 1, 2018:
October 24, 2018:
    James Purnell, boss of BBC Radio (among other things), shares plenty of stats about BBC podcasts. The broadcaster had 63m global downloads in September: probably a global #2 after NPR, who report 143m.
October 23, 2018:
October 16, 2018:
October 11, 2018:
October 9, 2018:
    Your Museum Needs a Podcast is a book from Hannah Hethmon that claims it's "A Step-By-Step Guide to Podcasting on a Budget for Museums, History Organizations, and Cultural Nonprofits". At the time of writing, the book is free on Kindle.
October 5, 2018:

Thank you to this week's new subscribers, including excellent folk from Southern Cross Austereo, Ted, NPR, Deezer, Anchor, Bauer Media Sweden, 3FM in the Netherlands, the BBC, Axel Springer and the Huffington Post.

September 26, 2018:
    Serial saw over 1.4 million global downloads in the first fourteen hours of release, according to Podtrac. Nick Quah describes it as "a juggernaut". By way of comparison, NPR's Morning Edition radio show gets 14.2m listeners a week, in the US alone.
September 18, 2018:
    We hear that, yes, Spotify is testing passthrough. According to someone with knowledge of the matter, NPR were the driving force who requested that Spotify no longer cache their podcasts; they're now beta-testing with a number of podcasters "who are big enough", and more are in the queue.
September 12, 2018:
September 11, 2018:
    At the end of the IAB Podcast Upfront was a chat with Bob Pittman, CEO and Chairman of iHeartMedia, and Jarl Mohn, CEO of National Public Radio. Here it is in print form. Question from the moderator: "How do you ensure that podcasts don't cannibalize terrestrial live radio?"
September 7, 2018:
September 5, 2018:
    The Washington Post has hired Madhulika Sikka (NPR News, Morning Edition) as Executive Producer of the paper's new daily podcast, which launches later this year.
August 30, 2018:
August 24, 2018:

Welcome to some excellent new subscribers at SpliceCast, Podcast One, Voxnest, Squadcast, Slate, Fugitive Media, NPR, Gimlet Media, Blinkist, the BBC, SRF, Radio Works, StreamGuys and the Washington Post.

August 22, 2018:
    Caution: The data, in many places, confuses "top RSS feed hosting platforms" with the audio hosting platform. As an example: the RSS feed for NPR's Up First is hosted by npr·org, but as we note on that page, the audio is hosted by Triton Digital; npr·org is not the "podcast host". Chartable say they are re-running the dataset and will post updated numbers in the next twenty-four hours. Expect Libsyn and Blubrry, who host audio and also offer tools for third-party RSS feed generation, to appear higher in the revised figures.
August 16, 2018:
    Google Podcasts also has a donate button for some non-profits including NPR and Radiotopia; but it's currently a hard-coded pilot.
August 15, 2018:
August 6, 2018:
    The Corporation for Public Broadcasting covers a recent public radio presentation about podcasting. "Just 1 percent of the half-million podcasts in the Apple iTunes store generate enough audience to attract sponsorship" - but "the top three podcast publishers in the U.S. are NPR, WNYC and PRX".
August 3, 2018:

Welcome to our recent new subscribers, including folk from iHeart Media, the Australian ABC, the American ABC, Mamamia, IMG, Audioburst, Wireless Group, Communicorp, Benztown, Westwood One, Panoply, the EBU, RTÉ, Spotify, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Rawlco, the BBC, Germany's HR, Prisa Media, Turner and Scripps.

August 2, 2018:
    How NPR's Podcasts Win Engagement for Brands is an video interview with Bryan Moffett, COO of National Public Media, taped at Podcast Movement. "Find the audience first, then you look for a podcast that speaks to that audience, and then you figure out how to tailor your message to speak authentically to that audience in the context of that show."
July 27, 2018:
July 24, 2018:
July 20, 2018:
    The Smart Audio Report from NPR and Edison Research has been released, highlighting the behaviour of the 43m Americans who own a smart speaker, according to the study. There is lots of data in the full slide deck. 39% of smart-speaker owners say they listen to podcasts at least once a week; 28% use their smart speaker to do so. Edison Research reveals more data at Podcast Movement.
July 17, 2018:
July 13, 2018:

Thank you to the 124 new subscribers we've had this week, including fine folk from Simplecast, Amazon, StreamGuys, NPR, Repod, Klara, AdResults Media, Rhodes University, the Canadian Podcast Network, Scripps, SBS and Luminary.

July 12, 2018:
June 26, 2018:
June 22, 2018:
    Podtrac have published their top (US) podcast publishers for May. Total global downloads are up 88% year-on-year. #1 continues to be NPR.
June 14, 2018:
    NPR's Rough Translation - a look at how things being talked about in the US are being discussed somewhere else in the world - considers apologies in Japan, early childhood education in Ghana, and Jane Austen in Pakistan.
June 8, 2018:
June 4, 2018:
    BE Media have posted a branded podcast case study for Loop11, a UX company. "True North is a fortnightly narrative podcast, highly edited and curated, like an ABC or NPR audio documentary. Ben spends up to 40 to 60 hours preparing, recording, editing and assembling each episode."
May 30, 2018:
    Sleepover, a CBC podcast with Sook-Yin Lee, returns for a new season. Sook-Yin invites three strangers to spend a night together to talk; she spends a night in an indigenous care community in Toronto. A previous season was described by NPR as something that "will restore your faith in humans".
May 11, 2018:
May 9, 2018:
    Pocket Casts have written a new blog post to allay concerns about its acquisition by a consortium of US public radio companies (and its new CEO). Meanwhile, it's the subject of HotPod 162 this week - Nick interviews NPR's chief digital officer Thomas Hjelm on the purchase. (He also interviews the BBC on its plans).
May 4, 2018:
    Pocket Casts, which is an iOS, Android and desktop podcast app, has been purchased by a combined public radio group of WNYC, NPR, WBEZ and This American Life. The team announced on their blog that they're all joining the new venture, and the ethos behind it will not change. Here's the full press release. Congratulations to Russell (who's a very nice man) and the rest of the team; of note: Owen Grover (ex iHeartRadio) will serve as CEO.
May 3, 2018:
April 27, 2018:

Thank you to our new subscribers this week, including fine folk from Hindenburg Systems, FBI Radio, Castbox, Panoply, Wondery, Spotify, NPR, VOX Media, Storiyoh, ABC Australia, SBS Australia, Engle, the BBC, the Belgian Standaard and MTG Radio. You're very welcome!

April 20, 2018:

Welcome/Bienvenue to new subscribers this week including Veritone, Slate, Panoply, 7digital, NPR, NOVA Entertainment, Radio Canada, Bauer Media and Radio France. Merci! Thanks!

April 18, 2018:
    Carl Kasell, familiar to podcast listeners as the voice of Wait Wait, has died.
April 10, 2018:
    NPR Training posts How to hook your podcast audience. "A typical podcast episode loses 20-35 percent of the listening audience in the first five minutes. A mediocre episode with a good introduction will almost always perform better than a great episode with a poor intro."
April 4, 2018:
    HotPod 157 is out. Nick discusses decent figures from NPR, and an exec shuffle at Gimlet.
April 3, 2018:
    "First Person Immersive" uses binaural sound for an enhanced feeling of reality, and new project Calais 2037 is an FPI audio drama with, as the press release says, an unprecedented cast for podcast drama in the UK, including Tanya Fear and Jenny Agutter.
March 22, 2018:
March 14, 2018:
March 12, 2018:
February 26, 2018:
February 22, 2018:
    Triton Digital release their new webcast metrics ranker for December 2017. It measures streaming audio; Pandora and Spotify are at the top of the list, with NPR at #4.
February 21, 2018:
February 20, 2018:
    The producer of the Embedded podcast, Chris Benderev, is featured by NPR. Contains an excellent photograph of fan mail on his office noticeboard (right-click and open-in-new-tab to read them, particularly the NPR Accuracy Checklist).
February 5, 2018:
January 24, 2018:
    On 11 Jan we reported the launch of the NPR and Edison Research Smart Audio Report and noted that it didn't contain details about podcast use. We asked: and they've told us:
January 12, 2018:
    Steven Goldstein looks through the numbers from NPR and Edison Research's Smart Speaker study, unveiled yesterday.
January 11, 2018:
    US data from NPR and Edison Research was announced at CES today: The Smart Audio Report says lots of positive things about smart speakers (two-thirds are Amazon Echo, by the way). The word "podcasting" doesn't appear in the report, although it notices a high degree of use for news bulletins.
December 26, 2017:
December 22, 2017:
December 11, 2017:
    If interviews with podcast hosts are your thing, you might also like this interview with Terry Gross. "I don’t want a world of just podcasts. I don’t want a world where everything is boutique-y and fragmented. I want a world where there’s an All Things Considered and a Morning Edition — the kind of things you can only do with the kind of model that NPR has."
December 4, 2017:
November 30, 2017:
    The Houston Press lays into the Apple Podcasts app. "Somewhere in a nice office there are people paid to make an iOS podcast app, and I’m convinced said people have never actually listened to a podcast in their life. It’s the only thing that would make the baffling decisions they’ve made for how the app handles podcasts make any sense."
November 7, 2017:
    NPR reaches 99m (US) people monthly, according to new figures. "NPR’s monthly podcast audience continues to reach new heights with 15.5 million unique users and 82 million downloads."
October 27, 2017:
October 18, 2017:
October 17, 2017:
October 12, 2017:
    Rejoice! The US Government is now trying podcasting as a method to communicate, as NPR reports.
October 9, 2017:
September 26, 2017:
September 19, 2017:
    A good piece about monetising podcasts, and the challenges in the 30-second ads that you might typically hear. With stats showing, apparently, that NPR is making $1.4m per month from podcasting (average revenue per listener per month is 3.8 cents). By way of comparison, UK radio earns 3.6 cents per listener per HOUR; but then, those 12 minutes of ads probably help.
August 8, 2017:
August 2, 2017:
    HotPod 130 is published. Reading time 15 minutes, 56 seconds. Focuses on NPR's science podcast for kids, ABC Australia's Kellie Riordan, and politics podcasts.
July 27, 2017:
July 19, 2017:
    Testing on Google Assistant on a Pixel, "Play ABC News" appears to play the latest national bulletin. "Play the news from Sky News" links to a 90-minute podcast from the Australian news channel. "Play the news from The Australian" links to a two-day-old read news bulletin. "Play the news from NPR" does what you'd expect. "Play BBC News" gives the BBC Minute, a special bulletin for younger audiences. I can't work out how to get the normal BBC World News bulletin.
July 18, 2017:
    A Hawaii-based blogger notices local advertising in the national (NPR) podcasts he listens to for the first time.
July 11, 2017:
      NPR (97.1m downloads/streams)
June 29, 2017:
June 26, 2017:
June 22, 2017:
    On The Media's Bob Garfield has launched a podcast - exclusive on Audible Channels. Here's a review, but also some detail about how the Audible Channels experience works. Amazon's speed? "Kind of glacial." And that's from a man who works at NPR.
June 5, 2017:
    "How NPR is pushing the podcast industry forward" - a lot of stuff in here about NPR pushing for better measurement and targeted advertising within podcasts. Subscriber Will Jackson points out this quote: "we’re working on a technology called Remote Audio Data (RAD) that [can measure if] somebody actually listened to a podcast."
May 31, 2017:
    HotPod 121 looks at NYT's The Daily versus NPR's Up First. Quah prefers The Daily, but points out it's more vulnerable since it's heavily invested in one presenter. "Don’t believe in the king, NPR’s gambit seems to say, believe in the kingdom."

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