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November 22, 2024:
    According to its changelog, Descript has made “overdub” become part of “regenerate”, its AI speech generation tool. You can now pay with Apple Pay and Google Pay. The text-to-speech tool now works snappier and better. You can now replace media on the fly.
November 20, 2024:
October 14, 2024:
October 11, 2024:
September 23, 2024:
    If your podcast hosting company doesn’t give you free transcripts, here’s a free tool. Audio editor Hindenburg also produces them, and so does Eddy by Headliner, Descript and Alitu.
September 20, 2024:
September 13, 2024:
    It totally hallucinates the difference between a download and a listen - but we like its description of a download being “people who RSVP to a party saying they’ll be there”, but a listen being “people who actually turn up”.
September 9, 2024:
    We’ve also changed our description of “value4value” to “streaming payments”. Value 4 Value is not just streaming sats, and the concept doesn’t require any technology stack.
September 3, 2024:
August 30, 2024:
    Ausha has published detail of how the Spotify algorithm works. It’s not just your titles and descriptions: it’s ensuring that users engage with your content, and that you use the right keywords for popular topics in your category.
August 13, 2024:
    New podcast The Daily Book Club is from Otis Gray: it’s a daily show from the creator of Sleepy, with a chapter of a classic story every day. The daily content of the podcast is made with his own cloned voice, using ElevenLabs: the use of AI isn’t mentioned in the audio, and is coyly described as a “voice recreation” in the show description. We asked Otis: he told Podnews that after running tests with listeners, “I told them it was AI, and asked if they had a problem with that. To my great surprise, none of them did. They did not feel duped. They just wanted more content, and they knew it was coming from me.“ He added, “if listeners think it's Otis they're hearing, then that's just fine.”
August 2, 2024:
    A new integrated remote recording tool will be added to Descript next month, according to the CEO, Andrew Mason. The company bought Squadcast a year ago this month. He was speaking to the Podnews Weekly Review - there’s a full-length interview in the Podnews Extra feed.
July 16, 2024:
    Adobe Podcast Studio (Beta) is now available for everyone to try. The tool, like Descript and Eddy, lets you record, edit and enhance audio right in your browser. It was in limited beta in March.
July 15, 2024:
July 11, 2024:
    ai|coustics has launched an API for its audio quality enhancement tool. Similar to Descript’s Sudio Sound and Adobe Podcasts’s “Enhance Speech” tool, it can remove all background noise - the API allows easier access and enhanced tools.
July 10, 2024:
July 4, 2024:
June 21, 2024:
    “AI video regenerate” has been announced by Descript - a service that will “generate your AI voice and sync your lips so you look and sound like you said it that way the first time”. If you want access, you need to join the waitlist. (Riverside’s competitor, Video Dub, is also not generally available yet).
June 20, 2024:
June 18, 2024:
    Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History was the third and final podcast recommendation from Elon Musk - but also "probably my top recommendation", he says. Hosted on Libsyn, "the podcast’s unique blend of high drama, masterful narration and Twilight Zone-style twists has entertained millions of listeners," says the description.
June 10, 2024:
June 7, 2024:
    In the Podnews Weekly Review this week, we hear from Laura of Descript about the company's new "season 6" release; and the background behind our "11am" scoop that wasn't (but still probably will be)
June 6, 2024:
May 30, 2024:
May 23, 2024:
    Libsyn Studio, the company’s online recording tool, has suddenly closed. An email to customers said it was a “difficult decision”. No alternative tool was offered; we’d recommend Podcastle, and other alternatives include Alitu, Riverside and Descript.
May 20, 2024:
May 14, 2024:
April 18, 2024:
April 11, 2024:
March 25, 2024:
March 18, 2024:
    Radiodays Europe held a podcasting summit yesterday. The opening speaker was Maria Lopenz-Bokelberg, CEO of podcast production company Pool Artists. “Podcasting is a once in a century opportunity. We are the first generation of a completely new medium. Let’s make it like we want it to be.” Other speakers included Descript’s Arielle Nissenblatt, City University’s Brett Spencer, and Podnews’s Editor, James Cridland.
March 15, 2024:
March 5, 2024:
March 4, 2024:
    Buzzsprout has released an app for iPhone, allowing Buzzsprout customers to manage their podcasts, wherever they are. The app enables everything from ad management to correcting typos in episode descriptions. An Android app is coming soon; the iOS app, which is free, is in the App Store now. (Buzzsprout sponsors the Podnews Weekly Review).
February 22, 2024:
January 17, 2024:
January 4, 2024:
December 1, 2023:
November 20, 2023:
November 16, 2023:
    Descript has added new AI tools for podcasters - a script generator ("Will it be perfect? Probably not. But it will give you something to work with"), a script rewriter ("to help you whittle down your early drafts"), and a blog post tool ("turn your script into a blog post to expose your content to a wider audience"). They're our title sponsor this month, but, as ever, don't have any say on this editorial.
October 27, 2023:
October 18, 2023:
    Descript has rebuilt its Overdub feature, allowing podcasters to generate AI voice clone to fix issues in production. The company says it's part of a set of new AI features to be added over the next few months.
October 12, 2023:
    A new premium "sleep" podcast app called Rest is charging users to listen to podcasts that are freely available on other podcast platforms. We're told that creators were unaware their shows were included in the app, and don't share in the $44.99 annual subscription. The app has also renamed some podcast episodes, and changed and removed descriptions. The app developer Evolve Global, who also make Podcast App, did not respond to a request for comment.
September 28, 2023:
September 25, 2023:
    Spotify appears to have dropped all support for unencrypted http:// links in episode descriptions. In our tests, only https:// links appear to be clickable in descriptions. We discovered this because some of our supporters, who are credited in most podcast players, have been supporters so long, they didn't have https:// websites in 2017…
August 24, 2023:
    At Podcast Movement, Spotify's Director of Podcast Product, Austin Lamon, announced a number of enhancements and features for podcasters, including show page customisation, creator controls for podcast previews, and a rollout of automated ads to more countries. There's a full description of the enhancements on Spotify's website
August 16, 2023:
    Editing tool Descript has purchased Squadcast, a remote recording service. Terms weren't given. The announcement says that the two services will continue separately for now, but Descript customers will get remote recording included immediately in their subscriptions for free; and SquadCast customers can choose to switch their subscription to Descript to get its editing capabilities at no additional cost.
August 10, 2023:
    Podcast editing tool Descript has launched a slew of new tools in beta. Regenerate uses AI to rebuild words or phrases; Eye Contact edits video to keep your eyes on the camera, even if you were looking somewhere else; Replace Selection lets you change a part of the audio or video you're working on without messing up the timings of everything else. The company's changelog also reveals a new web interface.
July 20, 2023:
July 3, 2023:
    Descript announced a set of new tools, including AI imagery, colour pickers, new captions, video flipping, visual layers, better font control, etc. The product's clear focus is on video these days.
June 2, 2023:
    In the Podnews Weekly Review this week, Sam Sethi and James Cridland talk with Alban Brooke from Buzzsprout and Maxime Piquet from Ausha about their use of AI in podcasting. The title and description is produced by AI, too.
May 26, 2023:
March 1, 2023:
February 13, 2023:
January 3, 2023:
    Exclusive: Spotify appears to have enhanced chapter support within the Spotify podcasts app. Nic Ivanov, founder of Vizzy, notes that there's a new Chapters section in an episode page, and chapter marks and titles within a new player which is rolling out to both iOS (above) and Android. However, Spotify isn't supporting either ID3 embedded chapters, nor chapters via the new podcast namespace: instead, Spotify uses timestamps in the episode description, much like YouTube. See these chapters in action on Spotify in the Decorating by the Book podcast, which Vizzy has helped build.
December 26, 2022:
    In Dec 2021, Adobe revealed Project Shasta, which we noticed in Oct 2022 had rebranded to Adobe Express Podcast. It's now branded Adobe Podcast beta, and offers a mix of Descript-like "Edit words, not waveforms", SquadCast-like "Remote recording", and Auphonic-like "AI-powered audio" - and there's a waitlist on the website. But how does it compare to the market leaders? From Castos, Matt Medeiros gives it a full review.
December 23, 2022:
December 2, 2022:
November 24, 2022:
November 22, 2022:
    Spotify's Anchor has added "audio enhancement" to its app. The company says "A single tap can automatically reduce background noise while leveling your voice and bringing it to the forefront." Alternatives are Auphonic, which is used by a number of podcast hosts, and Descript's "studio sound".
November 16, 2022:
October 13, 2022:
September 2, 2022:
August 11, 2022:
August 9, 2022:
    Blubrry has partnered with Descript to allow Descript users to publish their edited podcasts directly from the app. Blubrry joins Buzzsprout, Captivate, Castos, Hello audio, Podbean, Podcast·co and Transistor with this functionality. Blubrry publishing is also available directly from Hindenburg.
July 25, 2022:
    The July 19 dump of data from The Podcast Index now includes descriptions and categories. 369,000 shows have no description at all; most podcasts have about 22 characters; and only 44,000 have descriptions of more than a thousand characters. Apple doesn't search your podcast description field; but Spotify, Overcast, Google and most others do; so we'd recommend putting more in there if you want your podcast found.
July 18, 2022:
June 15, 2022:
May 30, 2022:
    Riverside has added more descriptive filenames, and has improved live video quality, bumping the default from 480p up to 720p.
April 6, 2022:
    Is the description "Deadhead" sometimes a bit too literal? From Tenderfoot and Double Elvis, Dead and Gone is returning for a new season. The show focuses on mysterious deaths of fans of the band Grateful Dead, and will look at three tragedies that have taken place over twenty years.
February 25, 2022:
January 27, 2022:
January 24, 2022:
    Castopod joins Spotify, Podchaser and Podnews in adding copious amounts of JSON_LD to podcast pages. Our schema includes RSS feed addresses, descriptions and the podcast:guid.
January 10, 2022:
December 27, 2021:
    Stephanie Fuccio writes about how podcast listeners meet a new podcast. Podcast descriptions are rarely good enough, she suggests, as she discovers two podcasts (one from Africa, and one multilingual podcast in Arabic, German and English.
December 20, 2021:
December 14, 2021:
    A Forbes blogger looks at Podcastle, which uses AI noise-reduction technology and offers a browser-based editing tool, including audio editing using text (much like Descript).
December 6, 2021:
    A Sky News investigation in the UK has discovered antisemitism, racism and white supremacist material in podcasts on Spotify. Spotify has removed 150 hours of content after the news channel's report. "In some cases, explicit slurs could be found in episode titles and descriptions while album artwork displayed imagery adopted by white supremacists," the story says. The podcasts are still available on Google Podcasts, it adds.
November 22, 2021:
    Our own podcast pages support the podcast:funding tag, and fall-back to searching through podcast descriptions for payment links.
November 4, 2021:
October 22, 2021:
October 13, 2021:
October 7, 2021:
    Podcast editing software Descript has annnounced 'season one' a number of updates: "studio sound" is graduating from beta, and now has an intensity dial to control the effect; their artificial voices feature is now improved; and they've added a number of audio processing effects, like compression, limiting, noise gates and ducking.
October 1, 2021:
September 27, 2021:
August 30, 2021:
    Podnews's Editor has kick-started a "best practices" website for podcast app developers, hosting companies and other parts of podcasting's infrastructure. It currently gives expected behaviour for user agents, descriptions, episode order and audio files. Intended to be an independent, pragmatic and minimalist website, more voices would be great.
August 9, 2021:
July 28, 2021:
July 14, 2021:
July 6, 2021:
    For the first time, all major podcast apps display episode notes in the same way. As Podnews testing now reveals, in the <description> field, all major podcast apps now support <a href links, <p> paragraphs, <ul><li> bullet points, and make URLs clickable automatically. You should keep episode notes below 4,000 characters, though, to ensure they display everywhere (Apple has a limit of 4,000, Google Podcasts has a limit of 5,000).
July 1, 2021:
    Apple Podcasts has reinstated HTML links in podcast descriptions. The server-side change appears to be live for Podnews, PodClock and for The Feed by Libsyn: it seems to be a recent change with the RSS parser used by the company. HTML links are important for podcasters to allow additional reading, affiliate links, sponsors or support: they broke with the rollout of the new Apple Podcasts infrastructure in late April.
June 24, 2021:
May 26, 2021:
    In Apple Podcasts for iOS 14.6, we've spotted that the app no longer refuses to display a <description> if there is an <itunes:summary> present. Instead it displays the summary as expected in the episode list; and the description in the episode page. We've updated our advice.
May 7, 2021:
    In Podland, economist Will Page discusses the economic future for podcasting after Apple and Spotify's recent announcements; and Sam Sethi talks to Descript.
May 3, 2021:
March 16, 2021:
    Buzzcast from Buzzsprout unveiled new "dynamic descriptions", and went into detail about how they made the special show about their DDOS attack.
February 19, 2021:
February 10, 2021:
January 13, 2021:
January 11, 2021:
    The podcast:location tag has undergone a small, breaking, revision before its adoption into phase 2 of the podcast namespace. For clarity, it now uses osm rather than osmid, has an optional link to the revision number within OpenStreetMap, and the humanly-readable description is now a node value rather than an attribute.
December 18, 2020:
December 15, 2020:
    The Podcast Taxonomy Consortium has posted its first white paper, proposing a standard for job descriptions in podcasting. The product of five months of work, it enables all of us to know the difference between a Technical Director and an Audio Engineer, for example. They welcome further participation, especially in translations to other languages.
November 16, 2020:
    Wanting to upgrade to Big Sur? Descript isn't compatible yet, but everything else appears to be though - unless you know better.
October 30, 2020:
October 22, 2020:
October 6, 2020:
September 10, 2020:
    Descript have unveiled some new "Overdub stock voices", allowing you to use synthetic voices in your podcast - including a movie voiceover. They've also added a keyboard-based service called Composer to speed up editing.
September 9, 2020:
July 31, 2020:
July 29, 2020:
    Descript, an "audio word processor", has added Overdub for Descript Pro users - a tool that synthesizes your own voice, allowing you to make small edits or even full podcasts without recording. The system, which lets you edit podcasts as if it was a Word document, has improved removal of, you know, like, kind of filler words, and a revised set of subscription plans. There's a free seven day trial.
July 15, 2020:
July 1, 2020:
June 1, 2020:
    Descript, a "edit podcast audio as if it was a word document" tool, has a number of new features in v3.6, including remote recording and an integration with Buzzsprout and Headliner.
May 8, 2020:
    Gracenote has launched a podcast database. Called Gracenote Audio On Demand, the company offers standardized podcast titles, descriptions and imagery across more than 900,000 podcast series, and additional data including celebrity links. The company already powers music, sports and TV data across the world.
April 6, 2020:
March 30, 2020:
    The most popular way of choosing a podcast is the show description, according to The Podcast Host who have published the results of their survey, Podcast Discovery in 2020. They discover that most people just use the search in their podcast app to find new stuff to listen to.
March 26, 2020:
    Disappointingly it doesn't display full <content-encoded> HTML show-notes: using the <description> field instead, and stripping out any HTML (following the standard).
February 21, 2020:
    Podcast descriptions are probably more important than you think. Our podcast pages already highlight short ones (and notes you should probably make them a little longer); Dan Misener from Pacific Content examines the art and science of podcast descriptions: how they look in different browsers, their average length, and what you ought to include.
February 3, 2020:

Audio descriptions: A bright idea from Ken Randall on Friday - that TV show soundtracks with audio descriptions would work quite well as podcasts - prompts Daniel Newman to tell us a trick to listen to Netflix with the screen off. I’ve done this while running, and it works great. Agreed that these would work surprisingly well as podcasts! Daniel also points us to this episode from Twenty Thousand Hertz, which he calls an "excellent introduction" to them.

December 10, 2019:
    We've updated our how episode notes display article, adding support of content:encoded vs description to the full results and re-testing the top podcast apps. Only Stitcher is failing to follow the specification; though Spotify does not support HTML episode notes.
December 9, 2019:
    Don't put HTML in your description tag. That's the result of Podnews research on every popular podcast app out there, to help you to get beautiful HTML episode notes into podcast apps. In short: put HTML into the content:encoded tag. Podcast apps that support HTML episode notes always use it. Apps which don't support HTML, like Spotify, always fall back to the description tag instead.
November 12, 2019:
October 7, 2019:
    Artemis is a steamy retelling of the classic Greek myth of Artemis, the Goddess of the hunt. The first five episodes of thrilling adventures, complete with love, loss, and turmoil, are everywhere - and the description tells you how you can listen to all 16 on Himalaya+. (Megaphone)
September 19, 2019:
    Descript has also launched Overdub, a way for you to "correct your voice recordings by typing", using artificial intelligence to reconstruct your voice. It's worth giving the demo a go. It's a carefully-designed tool that only works on your own voice, not other people's - so you can't use it for deepfakes of the US President saying ludicrous things, for example.
September 3, 2019:
May 7, 2019:
March 25, 2019:
March 12, 2019:
    Job: Podcast Executive Producer for the New York Post. How important is podcasting to the newspaper? It's a part time role, and lasts just six months.
February 27, 2019:
    How to be less awkward, a podcast from Laura Merli and a guest, generally a fellow comedian, revealing their most awkward encounters, is back for a new series. The description tells us it's "cringeworthy, heartwarming, and hilarious". (Libsyn)
January 30, 2019:
    Launching today, Let's Get Civical is "made up of equal parts civics class and comedy show". The podcast description promises: "This stuff is confusing and we’ve made it our mission to break it down so we all understand what the FDR is going on. It’s like being in American Government class with your BFFs! But no exams. We promise!" (More Banana Productions / Libsyn)
January 24, 2019:
    Too Late To Die Young claims it's one of the first podcasts to be aimed at an over 60 audience: hosted by Nina Miskow, each episode interviews a high-profile guest who is at that time of life when they are closer to the end than the beginning. 'If you want to know about living your best life, learn from those who have lived theirs', says the description. (Audioboom)
December 5, 2018:
December 4, 2018:
    Becoming a parent can be the greatest and the hardest thing you’ll experience, says the description of Navigating Parenthood, a new podcast from Australian health insurance company HCF, hosted by broadcaster Gretchen Miller. (Hardie Grant Media / Nearly / Omny Studio)
November 12, 2018:
September 11, 2018:

Our podcast pages now include prominent Google Podcasts and Apple Podcasts buttons. (Here's an example). We're also parsing descriptions for Patreon links, to help you support the podcasts you like.

August 30, 2018:
June 13, 2018:
    Anchor highlight how to market podcasts. Interesting: "Using the word “podcast” or your show’s title in the description could prevent it from being promoted on third party distribution platforms."
February 9, 2018:
    English musician George Ezra now has a podcast of his own - not much there yet, excepting a long and very personal description. His first guest is Ed Sheeran.
January 23, 2018:
    Apple are hiring! The job is opaquely called Digital Supply Chain, Technical Producer and the description says: "The Apple Podcast and Siri Audio News team seeks a Content Producer to be responsible for the health of the podcast and audio news catalogs and act as our front-line point of provider support". You'd be working in the Santa Clara Valley in California, USA for exactly "40.00" hours a week.
January 19, 2018:
December 13, 2017:
    On the heels of Sonix and the BBC's Discourse tool, Descript: a(nother) "wordprocessor for audio". The man behind this, Andrew Mason, is formerly of GroupOn. Takeaway: raw editing of speech is no longer a skill.
October 12, 2017:
    One of the reason why Reddit is so popular - one redditor writes a list of his top 100 podcasts. "Meticulously ranked, with links and descriptions." Another, in the comments, links to the subreddits for each podcast mentioned.
August 23, 2017:
    A great tip on Facebook - how not to start your podcast episode description. So obvious you'll kick yourself.

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