Search for ‘Amazon’

April 29, 2024:

Three US presidents are united on an episode of SmartLess available today. Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes were joined by Presidents Biden, Obama and Clinton in New York City. The episode was available early on Amazon Music and Wondery+. The show switches to SiriusXM later this year.

April 26, 2024:

Is RSS good for the environment? Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music are, according to Earth Notes, particularly bad at polling podcast RSS feeds very often, just in case someone’s published a new episode. (Our own RSS stats also show the size of the problem).

April 23, 2024:

Novel has a new CEO: Craig Strachan. He joins from Amazon Music, where he was Global Head of Podcast Industry.

April 19, 2024:

The obligatory picture of a billboard in Times Square comes from Podnews reader Stephanie, for Impact Theory. “Not the Amazon billboard,” she adds. Indeed.

April 11, 2024:

Data newly available from OP3, and published by our sister publication Podcast Business Journal, shows that “the big three” podcast apps (Apple, Amazon, Spotify) account for 74% of all downloads for the over 2,000 shows measured on the service. CastBox is the biggest independent podcast app at #4; the data is updated daily.

March 29, 2024:

review summary. The tool will summarize all your reviews into a short paragraph, just like Amazon does for all their products, making it easy for new visitors to understand the general sentiment of your listeners.

March 26, 2024:

review summary. The tool will summarize all your reviews into a short paragraph, just like Amazon does for all their products, making it easy for new visitors to understand the general sentiment of your listeners.

March 18, 2024:

Another place to find new podcasts? Wondery is adding some of its sports podcasts to Amazon Prime Video, starting today. Wondery Chief Content Officer Marshall Lewy said that “being on Prime Video will help them connect with even more sports fans”. The shows continue on YouTube, Wondery+, and open RSS.

March 12, 2024:

Amazon Music has made Megan Bradshaw the Head of Podcasts, Europe, Australia and New Zealand; and Ana Karina Quiroz is Head of Podcasts for North America, LATAM and Spain.

March 11, 2024:

Amazon Music has hired Shea Simpson to the new role of Head of Podcast Business. He will be overseeing all aspects of the podcast business globally for Amazon Music, including podcast programming, partnerships, and marketing. He moves from Wondery.

March 4, 2024:

Spotify for Podcasters increased its lead in February, being used as a podcast host by 31.2% of new episodes. Behind the scenes, Amazon Cloudfront hit a new record, serving 55.65% of all new episodes.

March 1, 2024:

CoHost, the podcast analytics and audience insights platform created by Quill podcast agency (and this month’s sponsor of Podnews), has launched a pro podcaster research survey. If you're a pro podcaster, participate in the survey and you'll be entered to win a $100 Amazon gift card. It looks as if it’ll take a few minutes - please support them and take part!

February 21, 2024:

In France, a charity event called Podcasthon is planned for next month. The idea is to make a special version of your show that highlights a cause or charity; and to co-ordinate its release at the end of March. Last year, 300 podcasts took part; this year, it has the support of Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and Spotify. 400 shows have already registered for this year - et vous? (Next year’s Podcasthon will be in English and other languages, too).

February 16, 2024:

Have your podcast featured on Amazon Music (Blubrry)

February 5, 2024:

The world’s #1 podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience has renewed with Spotify. The show will no longer be exclusive: and will ‘soon’ be made available on additional platforms like Apple, Amazon and YouTube.

February 2, 2024:

The Podnews Report Card would like to capture your thoughts on the big podcast platforms. It’s our third year of compiling this data, which we anonymise and feed back to Apple, YouTube, Spotify and Amazon - and we’re keen to know what’s changed. Please take part today; we’ll reveal the results at Evolutions by Podcast Movement in March.

January 30, 2024:

SiriusXM has signed a multi-year agreement with SmartLess. The deal is reportedly worth $100mn over the next three years. New episodes of SmartLess will not be exclusive, but will publish one week early on the platform, as in the previous deal with Amazon’s Wondery, who spent around $80mn in June 2021. The deal was, again, brokered by CAA.

January 26, 2024:

Amazon Music announced that it was adding transcripts to its app in November 2021. It was limited at the time to Wondery shows; Amazon told us that podcasters couldn’t edit or supply their own transcripts. We can’t find transcripts for any shows in the Amazon Music app today (we tried a number of Wondery shows and other large shows on the platform).

January 24, 2024:

Amazon was the number one spender on US podcast ads last month, according to Magellan AI. The company spent $8.1mn. Apple was #3. There’s a webinar tomorrow at 11am ET.

January 17, 2024:

Audible has laid off over 100 employees, around 5% of its workforce. The layoffs do not affect Audible’s content teams, a source told Variety.

January 12, 2024:

Twitch is to lay off 500 employees. Google might be laying off 1,000 employees.

January 9, 2024:

Triton Digital has announced an integration with Amazon Publisher Services for interactive audio ads on Amazon’s smart speakers. The service lets you ask your smart speaker for more information on the ad you’ve just heard, or even to add the product to your shopping cart.

January 8, 2024:

The only company that did recertify last month was SoundStack, which achieved v2.1 certification on Dec 31.

January 2, 2024:

Books are great places for ideas and tips. Profit from your Podcast is from the Podcast Hall of Fame’s Dave Jackson, and contains insights from more than 70 different podcasters on how to make money from your show.

January 1, 2024:

Amazon Music has awarded RedHanded its British Podcast of the Year for 2023. The three-time British Podcast Awards winner is published by Wondery.

December 18, 2023:

’Tis The Grinch Holiday Podcast is to be back next year, after Wondery greenlit a second season. The popular podcast currently holds the #1 rank within the Kids & Family category on Amazon Music. Wondery's Marshall Lewy said: "The Grinch told me that he found being a talk show host was a surprisingly satisfying experience! We look forward to bringing him back for more Grinchy snark next holiday season."

December 8, 2023:

Slate writes about “the casualties of the podcasting bloodbath”, joining a slew of articles this week highlighting that big podcasts aren’t necessarily successful podcasts. Another is from TechCrunch: Everything you know about the podcast industry is a lie, with a nice quote from Multitude’s Eric Silver: “Spotify is not all of podcasting, although they act as if they are, and make choices as if they’re the only one in the room. Podcasting is not dead.” This.

November 29, 2023:

The Sam & Billie Show is now with Wondery and Amazon Music for distribution and ad-sales. The announcement was made last week. The show's made by Crowd Network, stars UK TV personalities Sam and Billie Faiers, and it's available ad-free on Amazon Music (and everywhere else with ads).

November 20, 2023:

In Australia, spending on podcast advertising in Q3/23 grew by 88% year-on-year, according to new data from Magellan AI and ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia. The top 3 advertisers were Amazon, BetterHelp and "Takeaway.com", which is better known in Australia as Menulog (and in the US as Grubhub).

November 15, 2023:

From Airwave: TechCrunch Industry News helps you keep up to date about the latest in the tech world, with two episodes every weekday. Recent shows have focused on TikTok's feature to save songs you like directly to Spotify or Amazon Music; and the new Bose QuietComfort Ultra headphones.

November 14, 2023:

58% of Americans haven't listened to a single podcast in the last 30 days. The number is similar in other English-speaking countries, too. So, we welcome back our "Podcast promotion in the wild" section, which aims to share ads for podcasts that are in the real world, where those 58% might see them.

November 9, 2023:

Meanwhile, in Paris, Acast has brought a number of shows to the stage, working with brands like Maybelline and Amazon Music.

November 2, 2023:

Of note, Amazon Music downloads were down from 2.2mn in September to 1.1mn in October.

October 30, 2023:

Variety writes How Wondery Brought Studio-Style Scale to Podcasting.

October 24, 2023:

Wondery is turning its podcasts into three TV channels on Amazon Freevee. The Amazon-owned podcast publisher will be the first podcast video channels on Freevee, featuring over 20 Wondery series, centered around True Crime, Sports, and Entertainment & Pop Culture.

October 10, 2023:

Craig Strachan has been promoted to Global Head of Podcast Industry at Amazon Music. He was Head of Podcasts for Europe/ANZ, and has been with Amazon since 2016.

October 6, 2023:

Amazon has launched a self-service podcast advertising tool in the UK. This launch gives advertisers the ability to reach audiences based on demographics (age range and gender) across Amazon Music and Wondery shows, and third-party publishers, apps, and sites via Amazon Publisher Direct.

October 5, 2023:

Amazon has closed its streaming "radio" service Amp. The service launched in March last year; and reportedly fired half its staff twelve months ago.

October 3, 2023:

The number of episodes hosted on Amazon CloudFront hit a new record.

September 19, 2023:

PodReacher has unveiled a service that turns your podcast into a book, and can publish it on Amazon within eight weeks.

August 22, 2023:

Troy Farkas, a former producer for The Ringer and ESPN, has published his first book. Surrender: A Guide to Living Your Best Life in Your Twenties includes his own experiences and lessons learned from his time navigating the early stages of his career at both companies.

August 15, 2023:

Podcast spend in Australia for Q2/23 was up by 64% year-on-year, according to ARN's iHeartRadio Australia and Magellan AI. The top 3 advertisers were health insurance company NIB, McDonald's, and Amazon.

August 14, 2023:

Fiction podcasters highlighted their efforts to unionise outside Amazon's offices in New York, NY. The WGA Audio Alliance wants Amazon to enter into negotiations with podcast writers.

August 1, 2023:

Amazon is to require streaming video apps on its FireTV platform to share 30% of their ad revenue with the company, or to use the company's own ad sales program. Podcasts which contain advertising are not required to share ad revenue at this time - but we presume Amazon Music, Spotify and YouTube will all be watching this with interest.

July 24, 2023:

Even though 86% of Americans know what it is (compared to 83% for podcasting), Twitter is rebranding as X. (If you're still mentioning your Twitter name on your podcast, you're probably best stopping that).

July 21, 2023:

Trevor McNeal of Podcasts at Amazon Music, and Vice President, The Podglomerate Joni Deutsch.

July 20, 2023:

New from Wondery and AT WILL MEDIA today, Academy is a Young-Adult audio fiction drama telling the story of an elite boarding school with a powerful secret society - a playground for cutthroat competition, dangerous liaisons, and the zero-sum games of high school popularity and Ivy League admission letters. The star-studded podcast is available on Amazon Music and Wondery+.

July 19, 2023:

Ryan Redington has been promoted to GM of Amazon Music. Predecessor Steve Boom is now leading all Amazon's digital entertainment businesses.

July 18, 2023:

Amazon is to bring its Amp live radio app to Android. The company launched it on iOS 16 months ago; and reportedly fired half its staff last October.

July 10, 2023:

The BBC has reached agreement with Amazon to carry its podcasts on Amazon Music in the UK. The agreement was made two years and ten months after Amazon Music's podcast service launched.

July 4, 2023:

The Canada Podcast Ranker for May was released at the end of last week by Triton Digital. For sales networks, Amazon's Wondery Network overtook CBC/Radio-Canada to reach second place, behind the SiriusXM Podcast Network. It lists participating publishers only.

July 3, 2023:

Amazon Cloudfront saw its lowest market share in podcast delivery for over a year. Squarespace switched their traffic from Akamai to Fastly. Highwinds was the highest climber: it's used by Spotify's Megaphone and by Captivate, among others.

June 30, 2023:

A smart idea to get the most out of your podcast - turn the transcripts into a book. The History of Chinese Philosophy is produced from transcripts of The China History Podcast from Laszlo Montgomery.

June 29, 2023:

A study by the Observatorio Nebrija del Español at Nebrija University in Madrid examined 263 original podcasts published last year by Amazon Music, Audible, Cuonda, iVoox, Podimo, Podium Podcast, Sonora and Spotify. The study discovered that 68% of original podcasts from these companies were only available with a paid subscription. Sonora led Spanish podcast production in 2022, with 84 original podcasts.

June 26, 2023:

Oliver Newton has been hired by SCA as Executive Head - LiSTNR Commercial. He joins from Amazon, where he was AdTech Sales Director.

June 14, 2023:

LiveOne is to launch PodcastOne TV, a FAST channel, this summer. The channel could appear on services like Pluto, Amazon FreeVee, Roku, Samsung TV Plus and others.

May 29, 2023:

Bobby Lee, a comedian, is suing Amazon's Wondery over a cancelled podcast contract.

May 25, 2023:

Also at the show, Wondery and Amazon Music announced a distribution and ad-sales deal with UK comedian and actor Rob Brydon's Brydon & interview podcast. The podcast was previously with Spotify.

May 9, 2023:

Our Editor, James Cridland, will be the opening speaker at The Podcast Show 2023 in London. He will speak at 9.10am on Wednesday, in the 400-capacity Amplify Theatre, in association with Amazon Music / Wondery and IAB UK: focusing on the last year in the podcast industry and the years to come. His speech will be followed by Crime Junkie host Ashley Flowers. (You can still buy tickets for the event - the code PODNEWS will get you a discount)

May 8, 2023:

In the latest in the fight for podcast listening apps, Amazon Music is paying some Australian listeners AUD$5 (USD$3.39) in vouchers just for listening to a podcast on the platform. The offer is targeted, and we're not eligible. But if you are, a reminder that Podnews Daily is just five minutes long…

April 20, 2023:

Audioboom released the company's financial update for Q1/23. Q1 revenue was down more than 20% year-on-year, but excluding Morbid, a show that left Audioboom last year, revenue is static. The company posted a profit of $0.2mn.

April 4, 2023:

Further reading: Belt-tightening will be good for podcasting, argues Steven Goldstein … The Podcast Host publishes Why We Need To Protect Open Podcasting (& How You Can Help!) … and the Hollywood Reporter documents how Amazon Studios work out whether their (TV) shows are hits or not.

April 3, 2023:

Open podcast tracking tool OP3 grew its share of tracked episodes by 11.5% last month, and is now at #13. Podtrac remains #1. And, Amazon Cloudfront remains the most-used CDN.

March 20, 2023:

Bad Dates with Jameela Jamil is new today from Wondery - it's the first series to debut from the SmartLess Media slate and features a panel of hilarious guests, who each share tales of their worst/craziest dates ever, and then weigh in on everyone else's misfortune. It's available exclusively on Amazon Music today, but everywhere next week.

March 13, 2023:

Hernán López, the former CEO of Wondery, has been convicted of wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies while working for 21st Century Fox. Awaiting sentence, López faces up to 40 years in prison and millions of dollars in penalties. A lawyer for López said that they will appeal. López left Fox in 2016 before founding Wondery, which was sold to Amazon at the end of 2020. There's no suggestion that Fox, Wondery or Amazon were involved.

March 8, 2023:

You can watch the show in full here

February 23, 2023:

Few people listen to podcasts in Japan. Why is that - and what kind of shows could work well in the country? In the first of our deep-dives into different podcast markets across East and South East Asia, Guang Jin YEO looks at the Japanese market: where Twitter is popular, copyright laws differ, and Amazon Music is #3.

February 16, 2023:

Podcast advertising in Australia in Q4/22 increased by 36% y/y, according to new data from Magellan AI and ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia. Amazon, Maccas and Paramount+ were the top three advertisers.

February 13, 2023:

Further reading: Semafor is the latest with a take on How Spotify's podcast bet went wrong. (If coming from nowhere and being #1 in most countries in less than four years is "going wrong", then what does that mean for Amazon Music, Google Podcasts or Samsung Free?) … Bianca Bush from Acast writes about why the brand-safe nature of podcasting is perfect for trustworthy, unfiltered conversations

February 6, 2023:

Stolen Hearts is released today from Wondery. The show journeys back to 2006 to tell the barely believable true story of a highly respected police sergeant from rural Wales who falls for the wrong guy. This limited series, produced by Wondery and Novel, merges crime and romcom in a twisting, tail-spinning true-life story, told over the course of six-episodes. Episode one is everywhere; you can binge all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music.

February 3, 2023:

Companies like Spotify and Amazon are "ultimately bad for podcasting," according to "Chief TWiT" and longtime podcaster Leo Laporte. Speaking in today's Podnews Weekly Review, he says: "Their complete model is to get you to listen in their app so that they know everything about you. They know exactly what you listen to, when you listen to it, how many times you listen to it, and which ads are listened to, and they want to sell that information ... Advertisers foolishly, I think, want that information." You can hear his interview in full.

January 30, 2023:

That Harley/ user-agent you might see in your logfiles? It's from Amazon Music's desktop app. It's updated in OPAWG's user-agents-v2.

January 20, 2023:

In the Podnews Weekly Review this week - Bumper's Jonas Woost talks more about why Listen Time should be the universal measurement of podcasts; Lex Friedman talks about life after Amazon; and we hear more from Sam Sethi about Podfans.

January 19, 2023:

Amazon has begun cutting a potential 18,000 jobs. CNBC has shared internal memos; departments affected are "People Experience & Technology" (HR, tech support) and "Worldwide Amazon Stores" (a division formally known as Consumer). It's unclear how this might impact their podcasting operations.

January 5, 2023:

Amazon Music asked to reduce a potential $10m deal with Pushkin Industries, after the audio division was told to make savings, according to Bloomberg. The Great Podcasting Market Correction highlights recent employment freezes and layoffs in the industry, and a slowdown of acquisitions. Ad sales have increased though, says Magellan AI in the article.

December 26, 2022:

Lex Friedman is moving on from his role at Amazon and Wondery, and is to become a full-time consultant at Lex Friedman Consulting.

December 12, 2022:

Amazon Music has covered London and other European capitals with advertising for the company's Best of 2022 podcasts. In London, ads will be appearing for the next two weeks promoting ten of the top podcasters. The company also carried audio ads within the Wondery network for the chosen podcasts, and produced social media assets. See more examples of the projections in London and Paris below.

December 2, 2022:

In other data, Podtrac remains the largest prefix tracking service, having signed iHeart's Spreaker. Spotify's Chartable and Podsights are #2. Amazon still runs podcasting: Cloudfront delivered 49.4% of all episodes in November (including ours).

November 30, 2022:

Distorted has produced a marketing guide for new podcasters and indies to help get their show out there.

November 18, 2022:

Jacob Kensley joined Amazon Music last month as a Podcast Partner Specialist, and is the first dedicated hiring for podcast partnerships at Amazon Music in the EU. He joins from Acast and Apple.

November 4, 2022:

Amazon Music Prime users, and Amazon Music Unlimited, now has thousands of ad-free podcasts from Acast. Acast will share revenue from the agreement with creators. This news builds on Amazon's announcement earlier in the week that they would offer ad-free podcasts for Prime users.

November 2, 2022:

In a renewed fight against Spotify, Amazon has made big changes to Amazon Music Prime, including ad-free podcasts. Included with your Prime account, the service now offers 100 million songs (on shuffle) instead of the 2 million it had before; and "the largest catalogue of ad-free top podcasts", including Wondery's catalogue, Amazon Originals and Exclusives, and other publishers.

October 31, 2022:

Amazon has "fired half of its Amp live radio division", reports Business Insider. The app is US-only, and still not available on Android phones. This appears to affect 150 people, suggesting that the product has 300 staffers.

October 26, 2022:

Magellan AI says that BetterHelp remains the #1 podcast advertiser, spending $7.3m in September; Amazon and Hello Fresh are also in the top 3. Samsung is the advertiser that increased spending the most, spending $2.2m.

October 17, 2022:

Wondery's Suspect returns for a new season. Suspect: Vanished in the Snow looks at a disappearance in the Rocky Mountains. Hosted by former CNN reporter Ashley Fantz, it's an Amazon Music exclusive.

September 28, 2022:

True crime podcaster MrBallen has signed with Amazon Music. Unlike previous Amazon Music podcast deals like SmartLess, it appears to be an exclusive deal that will remove the show from other platforms.

September 22, 2022:

Twitch, a streaming video platform, is to change the money it pays out to larger creators. Subscription revenue had been split 70/30 in favour of premium content creators; but, those creators will get the standard 50/50 split next year after their first $100,000 of earnings. The company, which is owned by Amazon, claims it has high bandwidth costs.

September 19, 2022:

Amazon Music is celebrating two years since the launch of podcasts in the app. It currently has a 0.7% share globally, though is a top 3 app in Japan.

September 16, 2022:

Amazon's Amp, a "live radio app", has unveiled a creator fund.

September 12, 2022:

In the UK, the Audio Production Awards has announced a "Pay What You Can" scheme with Amazon Music and Wondery. Entrants and attendees who would otherwise be unable to enter can choose to pay what they can afford.

September 9, 2022:

Amazon's AMP, a live radio-like experience, now has a web player which contains the ten most popular shows - available (in the US) without logging in or downloading any app.

September 8, 2022:

Radio France podcasts will be available on Amazon Music, after an agreement was signed between the two companies. Like other third-party platforms, Amazon Music gets daily shows from Radio France for 7 days, and weekly shows for 30 days, before they become exclusives in the Radio France app.

September 7, 2022:

What does the podcast industry look like in Japan? Otonal, a Japanese adtech company, published this study of Japanese podcast listening earlier this year. Spotify is the most-used platform; Apple Podcasts at #2, and Amazon Music at #3.

September 2, 2022:

The Apple HomePod mini is, apparently, the world's best-selling smart speaker, beating similar products from Amazon and Google. Look at the whole smart speaker range, though, and Amazon remains ahead with 28.2% of the market; Google at 17.2%.

August 25, 2022:

Amazon has launched a number of new programming strands for AMP, the company's US-based live radio service. Fast and Loose is a new Formula 1 show, which will also be released as a podcast with Wondery.

August 17, 2022:

Host using Amazon CloudFront? You can now turn on HTTP/3 support, which can deliver files faster. (Podnews's website and podcast is now HTTP/3 enabled.)

August 4, 2022:

Amazon and Wondery are to sponsor the International Women's Podcast Awards 2022, and have set up a fund to provide complimentary tickets for those who find the costs prohibitive. The awards have closed for entry; the event is on Sep 29 in London.

August 1, 2022:

Livewire has published its top ten podcast hosts (by new episodes) data: Megaphone has climbed above iVoox to reach #8. You can now buy daily access to the data. Livewire also reports that Amazon Cloudfront powers just over 50% of all podcast hosting; if AWS falls over, half of all podcasts will too. We'd report on it when that happens, but we use AWS too, so :shrug:

July 29, 2022:

Free book: Amazon is giving away David Hooper's book, 101 Podcast Episode Templates, free on Kindle today.

July 25, 2022:

Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com podcast this week: "Why none of my books are available on Audible", which he describes as "a short audiobook I produced to be distributed through Amazon’s ACX platform, explaining how that platform’s sloppy rights verification and mandatory DRM screws over writers."

July 21, 2022:

NYT best-selling author Heather McGhee is to host The Sum of Us, a new podcast on Spotify from Higher Ground. The show is a road trip from rural Maine to the California coast, looking at the real impact of inequality and racism on everyday Americans. It's one of the remaining shows on Spotify from the Obama's production company; they signed a deal with Amazon's Audible in June.

July 13, 2022:

Content creator? Audio producer? A consulting company is wanting you to take a short survey on your experiences of the podcast and audio production sector. The findings will be shared with all participants; you've got until Friday to take part, and you could win a $100 Amazon voucher.

July 12, 2022:

Hey, weirdos! Morbid, which recently switched from Audioboom to Wondery, has debuted at #2 in Podtrac's top 20 US podcasts chart for June, its first month with the network. Its old home, Audioboom, doesn't participate in Podtrac.

July 6, 2022:

Out of all podcast episodes published in June, Buzzsprout saw a decline of market share to 8.1%, according to Livewire. The company is still the #2 podcast host after Anchor. Amazon Cloudfront is still responsible for more than 50% of all podcast downloads; Spotify's Chartable and Podtrac both saw an increased amount of use as tracking tools.

June 22, 2022:

Michelle and Barack Obama's production company, Higher Ground has signed a multiyear deal with Audible. No details were shared. In February, we heard they were leaving Spotify. Audible's content is normally hidden behind a $7.95 paywall.

June 16, 2022:

Amazon is to turn QCODE's Last Known Position into a TV series. Gina Rodriguez, who starred in the podcast, is to star in the adaptation and be Executive Producer.

June 10, 2022:

This Is Small Business is new from Amazon, produced by JAR Audio. Hosted by Andrea Marquez, listeners will hear stories from small business owners about pivotal moments in starting, building, and scaling their business, and learn from real-world experiences shared by industry experts.

June 9, 2022:

David Hooper has published 101 Podcast Episode Templates - paperback $6.99, or on Kindle for less than $1.

June 2, 2022:

In May, Omny Studio overtook Podbean to become the #5 podcast hosting company, measured by new episodes. Anchor is still #1, with 24.3% of all new episodes - a figure that dropped by over 6%. Amazon Cloudfront is still the most popular podcast CDN (including us!); Cloudflare a distant second.

May 24, 2022:

A new original podcast from SALT and Amazon Music has launched. Become is a health and wellness podcast, designed to give listeners "a daily dose of relaxation and mindfulness that gets them energized to tackle whatever is next".

May 12, 2022:

Amazon Music has launched in Argentina. The service includes podcasts from leading media partners COPESA, RDF Media, Radio Cooperativa, National Geographic, Sonoro, and TED in Argentina; and original content will be launching in the coming months.

May 11, 2022:

Gemini XIII has invested in podcast and book publisher Diversion to launch a new premium podcast network, Diversion Audio. Diversion Audio’s podcasts will drive new audience communities and tell expert-driven stories that spring from Diversion’s book titles. (Scott Waxman, Diversion's Founder, spoke to Podland earlier this year.)

May 9, 2022:

"Alexa, are you going to sell this conversation to someone?" What you ask your Amazon smart speaker is sold to more than 40 advertisers, claims The Verge.

May 5, 2022:

Podtrac has published the top 20 podcasts for the US for April. There's no change in the top 5, but My Favorite Murder is brand new at #6. Amazon bought the rights in January; it's already a top ten podcast with Triton Digital’s Podcast Ranker and Edison Research’s Podcast Consumer Tracking Report. Podtrac's data is participating publishers, now including Exactly Right Media.

May 2, 2022:

Amazon Cloudfront has increased its share in podcasting, and was used by 51.9% of all new episodes last month. The second-highest, Cloudflare, was used by just 12.71% of episodes; most of that is likely to be Buzzsprout.

April 26, 2022:

New from Wondery and Amazon Music, Will Be Wild has been launched from Pineapple Street Studios. The show is a deep-dive into the Jan 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. Hosted by award-winning investigative journalists Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz, it's available on all podcast platforms, with Amazon Music getting new episodes first.

April 22, 2022:

We gave it a go - producing a 73MB video file in Quicktime and uploading it to Anchor. On Spotify's web player in Chrome, when signed in, the video plays - it's a .webm format video file, served in two chunks - one 34,988 bytes, one 1.5 MB, and served with security tokens by Amazon S3 via Akamai. You need to be signed-in to Spotify to see the video, otherwise you only hear the audio.

April 13, 2022:

The terms for Amazon Music for Podcasters have been updated. Here are all the changes: there doesn't appear to be any obvious change for us (though clarity that the service does not cache your podcast nor inject advertising).

April 11, 2022:

Libsyn appear to have switched from Highwinds to Amazon Cloudfront according to John Spurlock's analysis of podcast CDNs. Libsyn's switch has increased Amazon Cloudfront's market share from 45% to 51% of all podcast episodes published in March.

March 28, 2022:

Amazon Music and Wondery have closed a deal with Audacy's Pineapple Street Studios. The podcast production company will produce at least four new shows. It comes hot on the heels of 9/12 winning three awards, including Podcast of the Year, at The Ambies.

March 23, 2022:

The Ambies, the awards from The Podcast Academy that celebrate excellence in podcasting, took place last night. The winners are here: 9/12, from Amazon Music, Pineapple Studios and Wondery was the podcast of the year; the podcast's host Dan Taberski accepted the award in the award ceremony in Los Angeles CA, USA.

March 17, 2022:

Who was the first independent podcaster to turn a podcast into a TV show? We asked that question yesterday; Aaron Mahnke reminded us that his show Lore holds the title of the first TV show based directly on an indie podcast (Amazon Prime, first airing Oct 2017; we reported it in Aug 2017). Other indie-podcasts-turned-TV-shows include Limetown (Facebook Watch, Oct 2019), The Midnight Gospel, from the Duncan Trussell Family Hour (Netflix, Apr 2020), and Archive 81 (Netflix, Jan 2022). Podcasts from bigger networks, rather than indies, include The Ricky Gervais Show (HBO and Channel 4, Feb 2010) and Earwolf Media's Comedy Bang! Bang! (IFC, June 2012).

March 14, 2022:

The Lava app, and the iVoox app, are currently not sending any useragent for its RSS scraper. MTN's AudApp sends the generic axios/0.21.4 useragent for RSS and audio. AudioWave sends AmazonCloudfront as a useragent for RSS. We've requested all these companies help us by fixing their useragents.

March 10, 2022:

Related: an impressive use of Twitter, @paygapapp is retweeting any UK company who tweets about International Women's Day with their gender pay gap. Some companies: Amazon Web Services, the UK tax office, the Natural History Museum, magazine publisher Haymarket, Access Hollywood, or IBM.

March 9, 2022:

Amazon has released Amp, a "live radio app" seen as their version of Clubhouse or TwitterSpaces. It's available in the US for iOS users only in a waitlist; it'll enable you to DJ your own music show (with "tens of millions of licensed songs" they say), and you can take callers, too. Amp's website is live, and you can download the app to join the waitlist (although we're told one code that works is twitter but we suspect it won't work for long). You don't have to use music; you could use the tool for a Clubhouse-like experience too; the app will alert your followers to upcoming shows. Guy Raz is doing a show for it; so is Nicki Minaj.

March 2, 2022:

Are indie podcast apps gaining ground? Buzzsprout report Apple had 35.7% of all downloads in February (down from 37.2%); Spotify 27.9% (also down from 28%). Google Podcasts has grown to 2.5%; Amazon Music has grown to 0.8%; and Facebook is up slightly to 0.5%. In their official podcast, Buzzsprout also mentions "a big update soon".

March 1, 2022:

With ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia, Magellan AI has launched a new regular report showing the top podcast advertisers in Australia. You can subscribe here. The report for Q4/21 shows Amazon at #1, with the highest Australian brand - Binge, a video streaming service - at #4.

February 21, 2022:

Thank you to more than 600 new subscribers in February so far; including from people at Ausha, Netflix, Amazon, Claritas, Sybel, Apple, APM and Hessischer Rundfunk. If you're finding us useful, please tell your colleagues to subscribe too!

February 14, 2022:

Amazon and Spotify are both said to be considering buying Audioboom. The company, which monetises and publishes podcasts, has a market cap of more than US $370m.

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 9, 2022:

Our very own daily podcast, Podnews, is now achieving over 100,000 downloads a month, we're quite excited to note. Our latest data tells us that many of those listens are on smart speaker news briefings, and that Pocket Casts is doing excellently well, though some less well - Spotify (27 listens on Monday), Facebook (20 listens), and Amazon Music (um, 20 fewer than Facebook).

February 1, 2022:

How much did Amazon pay for My Favorite Murder? Bloomberg suggests the figure was $100m.. For that, Amazon got other Exactly Right Media Shows, too. Bloomberg's story also reports that SiriusXM's deal with Audiochuck was "worth nine figures".

January 31, 2022:

Spotify has had a bad few days. Neil Young removed his music from Spotify last week after criticising 'dangerous life-threatening COVID falsehoods found in Spotify programming'. The chief of The World Health Organisation criticised Spotify and thanked Neil Young for, in his words, 'standing up against misinformation and inaccuracies around COVID-19 vaccination'.

January 14, 2022:

The Missing has returned for season 3. You can listen to the whole thing on Amazon Music, or weekly episodes via RSS. Each episode in the 10-part series breaks down the case of a long-term missing person, and gives listeners the opportunity to join the conversation and offer new information to aid the search. It's produced by Podimo. - read more

January 12, 2022:

Amazon Music Podcasts has more than 200,000 podcasts, and "55 million customers", according to a podcast creator outreach document being shared by the company. It says that you'll be able to track your download numbers in their dashboard "soon".

January 11, 2022:

Disgraceland returns for a new season today, starting with a premiere episode focused on Taylor Swift’s stalkers, vanishing masters, love letters and more. The show is on Amazon Music, with selected shows also released via RSS, and claims it's the the number one most downloaded music podcast in the world. - read more

December 29, 2021:

9/12 made it to the top of the Best of the Best Podcasts Of The Year list, as compiled by Podyssey. An Amazon Original, it asks what happened on 9/12 to alter our memory and our perspective forever? - read the full list

December 27, 2021:

Voxalyze has published their Podcast Discovery & Consumption report. The company surveyed listeners across four countries (the US, UK, France and Germany) to see if there are any local differences. Podcast listeners use 1.9 platforms on average, and Amazon Music is surprisingly high in their results. Google Podcasts reaches up to 15% of all users, but only 4% in the UK (possibly because the BBC blocks their podcasts from it).

December 17, 2021:

Hey, big spender - BetterHelp remains #1 for podcast advertising in November, but SimpliSafe and Amazon increased their spend, according to Magellan AI. Among those who have significantly increased their spend, IKEA spent more than ten times more on podcast ads; and raise a glass to Total Wine and More, spending almost twenty times more.

December 16, 2021:

Amazon Music has a proprietary solution for transcripts, which are patchy and automated. There is no mechanism for publishers to supply their own transcripts.

December 13, 2021:

Podnews is rolling out direct links to listen to shows on Amazon Music in our podcast pages. An example is on Podland. Our pages will also highlight if you're missing from that directory; and you can search Amazon Music's podcasts from our search pages.

November 29, 2021:

Podcast apps may be buying ads for your podcast in Google Search without you knowing. Acast, The Podcast App and Amazon Music are all advertising against our own podcast title, and that of many other podcast titles, too. On an iPhone in the UK, an ad for Amazon Music appeared as the #1 search result for Podnews, seeming to suggest that access to our podcast costs £7.99/month, which is misleading (it's free on any platform). The Acast ad leads to a web player, but no method of subscribing; The Podcast App's ad led us to a web player with promotion for their own podcast app.

November 22, 2021:

Jessica Radburn has been hired by Wondery as Head of International Podcast Content. She was previously Senior Director of Global Content Programming at Audible - both companies are owned by Amazon. She's based in Berlin.

November 11, 2021:

ART19 are hiring.

November 5, 2021:

Magellan AI and ARN's iHeartPodcast Network have compiled the top 15 podcast advertisers in Australia for Q3/21. eBay, project planning software Monday, and Amazon are the top three; the top Australian brand is the Commonwealth Bank at number 5. We note with satisfaction that broadcaster Nine Entertainment is, rightfully, at number 9.

November 4, 2021:

We promised we'd report back on Amazon's new proprietary podcast transcripts. We've received confirmation that podcast publishers are currently unable to submit their own transcripts to Amazon Music. We've more details about transcripts and their importance.

November 3, 2021:

Amazon Music has announced a "synchronised podcast transcripts" feature. It's only available in the Amazon Music app, only in the US, and only for recent episodes of Amazon Original and Wondery shows. It's going to be opened to other selected shows shortly; as far as we can tell, it's a proprietary solution with no link to the existing open transcript standard from the new podcast namespace. We've asked how podcasters can submit transcripts.

November 1, 2021:

Per-word SRT files can help things like clipping tools. It's possible, but expensive, to do that with tools like Amazon Transcribe: our Editor went playing with their tools to work out how.

October 27, 2021:

Kai Chuk has been hired at YouTube, according to HotPod as Podcast Lead, to "manage the large volume of existing podcasts and relationships across the YouTube platform". He's been at YouTube for almost a decade.

October 26, 2021:

The Podcast Show 2022 has announced new partners, including Amazon Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Wondery, Adswizz and Triton Digital. The show will also include a week of live podcast events across London.

October 20, 2021:

John Spurlock has published podcast CDN share by episode for September 2021. He notes "if Amazon's AWS goes down, almost half of podcasts go down with it".

October 14, 2021:

Borrowed Future, a podcast from the Ramsey Network, is now available as a movie on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV and Google Play. The movie is free to teachers.

September 29, 2021:

Hot on the heels of Fireside comes Glow - in terms of name confusion, that is. Just as Mark Cuban's Fireside is nothing to do with Dan Benjamin's Fireside, so Amazon's Glow is nothing to do with Libsyn's Glow. Amazon's Glow, launched yesterday, is a device to help parents play with their kids remotely, while Libsyn's Glow is a podcast membership service. We're pleased to have cleared that one up.

September 28, 2021:

In Amsterdam, RecSys 21 is taking place - a conference on recommendation systems. As part of that, PodRecs was a workshop on Sunday focusing on podcast recommendations. Present were a number of people from Spotify, Pandora, Amazon, Apple and the BBC, among others.

September 22, 2021:

Badlands: Sportsland launches today, taking a deep dive into the most sensational true crime stories in the world of sports: Mike Tyson, Oscar Pistorious, Evel Knievel and OJ Simpson are just some of the athletes who'll be covered. It's hosted by Jake Brennan, and available to binge on Amazon Music.

September 7, 2021:

Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett's podcast SmartLess is a new entry at #9 in the Podtrac top US podcasts list for August. The show was bought by Amazon's Wondery at the end of June. Podtrac contains participating publishers only.

September 2, 2021:

Wondery is hiring a Head of EU, Podcast Content, based in London.

September 1, 2021:

Amazon is reportedly building a Clubhouse/TwitterSpaces/Greenroom clone, focusing on live music.

August 31, 2021:

Jon Stewart will return to television on September 30, with Apple TV+. A companion podcast, also called The Problem With Jon Stewart, has posted a trailer. The podcast is produced by Busboy Productions, and is hosted by Amazon's ART19.

August 17, 2021:

Why did Amazon get into podcasting? For a share of its growing ad revenue, according to an interview with Steve Boom, the head of Amazon Music, in Bloomberg Businessweek.

August 12, 2021:

The host of Missing Richard Simmons is working on a new show about how 9/11 changed the world. The show, called 9/12, will be exclusive to Amazon Music for a week from September 1, with a weekly release everywhere from September 8.

August 9, 2021:

Metallica has teamed up with Amazon for The Metallica Podcast, the band has announced. It focuses on The Black Album, which will be reissued on September 10th.

July 19, 2021:

Thank you to Amazon Music Podcasts for recently returning as a supporter of Podnews. Your support, and that of your peers, help us focus on this independent resource for podcasters. Here's how you can support us

July 14, 2021:

The trend for shorter content appears to have reached Amazon, which has launched Kindle Vella, a mobile-first serialized story experience.

June 30, 2021:

Amazon has bought the distribution and adsales rights for the SmartLess podcast for between $60-80 million. The show will not be exclusive, but will be published one week early on Amazon Music and Wondery+. The deal was through CAA.

June 25, 2021:

Amazon has bought enterprise podcast hosting and adsales company ART19, announcing the news on their podcasters portal. No details of the deal were given. ART19 already hosts Wondery podcasts: this gives Amazon access to podcast hosting technology and a monetisation platform for dynamically-inserted advertising across all apps. Kintan Brahmbhatt, GM of Amazon Podcasts says that the company is hiring. Podnews has been predicting the purchase since Amazon bought Wondery in December.

June 16, 2021:

Win or lose, sink or swim, one thing is certain, he'll never give in. Disgraceland is back for season 8, and focuses on ex-Beatle Paul McCartney, who might appear a nice chap, but has spent time in prison, famously broke up with John Lennon, and Paul is dead anyway. It's exclusive to Amazon Music.

June 4, 2021:

A tool to help marketers get the most out of their podcast content, Casted has added a number of new product features: audio search, videograms and audience insight. The CEO, Lindsay Tjepkema, was guest on the Podland podcast a few weeks ago.

May 28, 2021:

The British Podcast Awards, powered by Amazon Music, are about to reveal their nominees: 1pm UK time, 8am New York time, on their website. Hosting the stream are Hannah and Suruthi, the presenters of the popular true crime podcast Redhanded. They'll also be revealing the in-person location for this year's awards.

May 19, 2021:

The IAB Tech Lab has a number of new board members, including Amazon Advertising.

May 18, 2021:

Apple and Amazon have joined Spotify by announcing lossless audio for their music streaming services. We look at what's been announced and what it might mean for podcasting - and whether anyone will actually notice.

May 17, 2021:

In an award ceremony live from Los Angeles, California, The Ambies were announced last night, the first podcast awards from The Podcast Academy. The podcast of the year went to Wondery's Dying For Sex. The awards seemed to be a streaming success, too, with 25,000 people watching at peak. From the full list of winners, Amazon's Wondery was the winning studio of the night, with five awards announced; Crooked Media getting four, and QCODE with three. The podcast with the biggest award haul was Wind of Change, with three separate wins.

May 13, 2021:

Amazon's Wondery+ is to join Apple Podcasts Subscriptions.

April 30, 2021:

Audioboom is still searching for a buyer, with shareholder Nick Candy trying to get Amazon to notice the company.

April 15, 2021:

Amazon Podcasts launched yesterday in Italy, supported by some exclusive podcasts from Wondery: Dr Death and Bunga Bunga have been translated to Italian.

April 14, 2021:

Amazon Podcasts has just launched to more than 1.5bn potential listeners in France, Italy, Spain and India. Here's how to get listed.

April 7, 2021:

We've discovered an Amazon Music Podcasters portal has been quietly launched. It seems to be a way to add your podcast to Amazon and Audible, and has some promotional tools.

April 5, 2021:

Amazon's podcast producer Wondery is to double its number of staff this year, to more than 150. Here's a list of some of the new jobs, all based in California.

April 2, 2021:

Moving your podcast away from Libsyn? Be aware that they do not automatically set a 301 redirect for your Amazon Music feed. "This is a known bug that we are working to resolve moving forward," they say: you need to ask Libsyn to configure that manually.

March 9, 2021:

Other larger podcast apps have already changed: Spotify and Audible use "follow", Stitcher uses "+ follow", and Amazon Music uses "♡ follow". Meanwhile, Google Podcasts and Castbox use "+ Subscribe", and Overcast and Castro uses "Subscribe".

March 5, 2021:

Being open helps, seemingly - just four nominations were for Spotify exclusives; and one for Amazon Music's exclusive "The First One".

March 3, 2021:

Omny Studio's CEO, Sharon Taylor, has released her predictions for podcasting in 2021. The company, owned by Triton Digital, puts Amazon Music ahead of Google Podcasts for downloads in 2020.

February 22, 2021:

Audible appears to be listing third-party podcasts in the US. Amazon's page listing offers both Audible and Amazon Music options. (Oddly, the ASIN number is different for each).

February 17, 2021:

Amazon Music is looking for a Podcast Manager for Spain, and another in Italy.

February 11, 2021:

Amazon Music has signed an exclusive podcast. COLD, which was a Wondery show, is to stream season 2 exclusively on Amazon Music next month. COLD is currently in the top 100 in 40 countries; but podcasts from Amazon Music are currently available in just six of them, leaving many fans frozen out.

February 10, 2021:

How much is it to self-host your podcast on AWS? We do the maths: but our podcast isn't yours.

February 5, 2021:

How much does it cost to host your own podcast on Amazon AWS? - it costs us $15/month, but our podcast is not your podcast.

February 3, 2021:

Amazon Music has launched podcasts in Canada, eh. (Not in Amazon Music? Submit yours here, or through your host).

February 1, 2021:

A new book, The Spotify Play: How CEO and Founder Daniel Ek Beat Apple, Google, and Amazon in the Race for Audio Dominance, has been released. Our full review of the book says that you'll get "a renewed admiration for what the company has achieved, and the way in which it all happened".

January 15, 2021:

Business Movers is a new show from Wondery, which is shortly to join Amazon. Telling "the true stories of the brilliant but all-too-human leaders who risked it all", the first season of the show focuses on Walt Disney and Disneyworld.

January 8, 2021:

How much is it to listen to a free podcast on Amazon? Apparently $8.95 according to Charlie Harding, who tweeted a screenshot of the Amazon website yesterday. The Verge covered the story. Amazon have removed those prices but have not responded for comment; however, Nick Quah's Hot Pod Insider has been told it was a technical error. Podnews's podcast appears to be free again, as we go to press.

January 6, 2021:

After Amazon purchased Wondery at the end of last year, the company has been buying again - this time, buying eleven Boeing 767-300 aircraft for their own airline, Amazon Air. Had they bought them new, that purchase would have been $2.4bn, or "8 Wonderys".

January 5, 2021:

If you've been off for the last few weeks, here's our coverage of Amazon buying Wondery. Our full analysis on Dec 31 also made a prediction about what Amazon's next purchase might be: ART19 and Amazon both start with the same letter, but will that be the only thing connecting those two companies in the next few weeks?

January 1, 2021:

We reported yesterday that Hernan Lopez will leave Wondery after the Amazon deal goes through. Podnews has seen an all-staff email from Lopez to the Wondery team, part of which clarifies his next steps: "Once the transaction is complete, I will be transitioning out of the company to focus my attention on my recently announced Hernan Lopez Family Foundation, which is committed to addressing diversity in leadership both from the demand side as well as the supply side. The transaction will free up time and provide resources to make those goals possible, and I will be working with other organizations to make more meaningful progress. I will also be looking forward to what’s ahead on the professional side, but not before I take a break and have a blank slate ahead of me, which frankly, is quite exciting, especially after 30 years without one!"

December 31, 2020:

Adam Curry calls Amazon's purchase "clearing the decks for more independent and free voices". Austin Rief, a co-founder of newsletter Morning Brew, suggests in a thread that this is further evidence that media companies do not provide the scale and returns needed for VCs.

December 17, 2020:

"Alexa - play the Joe Rogan Experience from Spotify". Spotify podcasts are now available on Amazon Echo devices. You can also make it your default podcast provider.

December 15, 2020:

The world's biggest advertiser in 2020 overall was Amazon, spending $11bn. So far, Magellan AI has detected $11.6m-worth of podcast ads from the e-commerce company: up more than 55% year on year.

December 10, 2020:

Here's how to promote your podcast's availability on Amazon Music, including buttons and things, if you'd not seen it.

December 9, 2020:

Fox News podcasts are now on Amazon Music.

December 4, 2020:

The Podcast Host has released a book. Called Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast Audience, it's available as a paperback or on Kindle in the US, Canada, and the UK, and as a Kindle item only in Australia.

December 3, 2020:

Will Wondery's new owner be… Amazon? The Wall Street Journal, and Engadget, report that talks are going on, valuing Wondery at around $300m. We're cautioned that it might, all fall apart yet - both Apple and Sony looked into buying the company last month.

December 1, 2020:

Podcast advertising will be worth nearly $3.5 billion globally by 2025, according to a new study from Omdia. The technology research company says that global podcast advertising revenue is set to reach $1.4bn by the end of this year.

November 26, 2020:

A prolonged failure at Amazon AWS caused issues for some podcast hosts as well as many other services: Anchor had to remove its website altogether, while RSS Podcasting also had some issues, as did WNYC. Podcasts, however, remained available throughout; and all services appear now to be up and running.

November 20, 2020:

Volvo spent $2.1m on podcast advertising in October, according to new data from Magellan AI highlighting advertising increases: the auto maker was promoting a luxury SUV. The top podcast advertisers were Amazon (#3, $2.7m); ZipRecruiter (#2, $3m); and BetterHelp (#1, $3.7m), an online counselling service.

November 16, 2020:

Podcast host Fireside has added support to get podcasts into Amazon Music, and has added an option for a Breaker listen badge, too.

November 6, 2020:

Anchor, the largest podcast host in the world, has achieved IAB Certification for their podcast analytics. Here's their full certificate. We've updated our podcast hosts page. As a small warning: "some podcasters may notice a very slight decline in play counts as a result," the company says; though some that have contacted Podnews have seen significant drops.

November 2, 2020:

PowerPress 8.4.1 was released at the end of last week. It includes a submission tool to The Podcast Index and to Amazon Music.

October 30, 2020:

Amazon's net income tripled year-on-year.

October 28, 2020:

Audible has added "100,000 free podcasts" to their app, says The Verge. This seems a geographic rollout - we don't see them in the Audible app in Australia - yet, anyway. (Are we there? )

October 19, 2020:

Who else could do "shows with music"? It strikes us that there are only a few with the right music licensing: Deezer, Amazon, YouTube and... Apple.

October 16, 2020:

Amazon Music has released its first exclusive podcast. The First One is by DJ Khaled, a "mogul and superstar" with suspiciously neat facial hair.

October 13, 2020:

How much did Amazon pay for podcast.com? It was offered to one Podnews reader for over $2m, we're told...

October 12, 2020:

Amazon has bought two domain names: podcast.com and podcasting.com. They both forward to Audible, which doesn't have third-party podcasts on it. (Amazon Music does, in four countries).

October 6, 2020:

Congratulations to Blubrry CEO Todd Cochrane, for whom yesterday was the 16th anniversary of becoming a podcaster. "It all started in Waco, Texas in a Hampton Inn hotel room. Sounds like the start of a scary movie," he says. Cochrane wrote Podcasting: Do-It-Yourself Guide in early 2005, before podcasts had even made it to the Apple iPod. (There's currently one still available at Amazon - or Todd has six in a cupboard, according to a recent podcast).

September 25, 2020:

Amazon has released a new set of its Echo smart speakers. The release doesn't mention that you can use them to listen to podcasts on Amazon Music. Meanwhile, Amazon Music has now sent emails to podcasters who submitted their shows, saying their podcasts are now available on the service. Some podcasters outside of the UK, US, Germany and Japan have contacted Podnews, saying that they are unable to see their listings.

September 23, 2020:

In The Feed, Libsyn's Rob Walch reports that Amazon Music's new podcasts app out-performed Downcast, TuneIn Radio, Castro and other apps for downloads on their launch day. "I cannot remember anyone on their first day having the numbers that Amazon Music had," he said.

September 21, 2020:

After Podnews reported it as a bug, Amazon Music has correctly set their RSS user agent. It's Amazon Music Podcast. Thank you! Sounds Profitable has more on RSS user agents today.

September 18, 2020:

The Amazon Music podcast launch this week led James Burtt to wonder what might happen to podcast listening figures as a result. 22% of smart-speaker owners use them for podcasts, he discovers from some UK data.

September 17, 2020:

Amazon Music's podcast service goes live in the US, UK, Germany and Japan. We have all you need to know about podcasts in Amazon Music - how to get there, where it's available, and the useragents it uses.

September 16, 2020:

Amazon Music launched a podcast service in the US and the UK just after we went to press. We'll have more details tomorrow.

September 9, 2020:

According to Libsyn's The Feed, today is the last day to submit your podcast into Amazon Music/Audible to be there for the launch. Use your podcast host's distribution option, or this link if your podcast host doesn't have one. (If you wondered where Amazon makes its money, Benedict Evans has an illuminating piece today).

September 4, 2020:

This is a 100% truthful review about our Amazon Alexa News Briefing. (Feel free to add one).

August 25, 2020:

Audible has unveiled new pricing for a new subscription podcast service. Audible Plus will offer access to exclusive Audible podcasts for US$7.95/month. (Luminary charges $4.99/month for their subscription service). Audible's Rachel Ghiazza apparently clarifies to The Verge that the platform is developing podcast content, but isn’t pulling them in from third-party RSS feeds. Confusingly, Podnews reported that Audible, and Amazon Music, have emailed podcasters to get them to submit their RSS feeds for a forthcoming service.

August 14, 2020:

More fun from Amazon's terms and conditions for podcasters, section 7.11.7: "Ads for incontinence products ... must be frequency-capped at 3 times per 24 hours (3x24)". "How could a podcast, with baked-in advertising, keep track of the number of impressions per listener?" asks Mike from Sips, Suds, & Smokes who adds "that's a pretty shitty deal" - we see what he did there.

August 13, 2020:

After Podnews reported it on July 23, Amazon has apparently dropped the condition that, in order to be on Amazon Music/Audible’s upcoming podcast service you agreed you would not criticise Amazon in any way. According to The Desk, that portion of Amazon’s terms has now been quietly removed. However, we took a look: and what's it's been replaced with appears to be much more restrictive.

August 11, 2020:

Other outlets are now reporting on Amazon's podcasting plans, pointing out the clause that says you can't say anything bad about them on your podcast that we reported on July 23. GeekWire reports it as "a PR mess". (For the record, we submitted Podnews's podcast last week and agreed to the licence terms, since the worst that can happen is we get thrown off for stories like this, which would be excellent publicity).

August 10, 2020:

Here's how to get your podcast into Amazon Music/Audible: the company has emailed a large number of podcasters over the last few days, inviting them to use this link to submit their shows to an upcoming service from the company. However, you are highly recommended to submit via your own podcast host if they offer the service, especially if you're with Libsyn, since you'll get additional control and statistics via your own podcast host's dashboard. Amazon haven't responded to our requests for comment.

August 7, 2020:

A number of additional podcast hosts are now allowing you to submit your podcasts to the yet-to-be-launched "Amazon Music/Audible" podcast service (some people are giving a backstage link that works for anyone on any host).

July 23, 2020:

We published Amazon Music/Audible's content license agreement for their upcoming podcast service yesterday. Kristofor Lawson points out that one clause says you can't say anything mean about Amazon in your podcast if you want to be on their platform. We've added this to our list of unusual terms and conditions from podcast hosts.

July 22, 2020:

Podcasts are coming to "Amazon Music / Audible"; Libsyn has quietly rolled out a distribution option for this service. "Amazon is not announcing a launch schedule at this time," the announcement says.

July 14, 2020:

We'd expect the announcement of a new CEO for Pocket Casts shortly: it's likely to be John W Gibbons. Based in LA, he's a strategic advisor to Podchaser, and worked at IMDb and Amazon for 14 years.

June 9, 2020:

Blubrry has made its Professional Podcast Hosting product available via AWS Marketplace. This allows companies with a billing relationship with Amazon Web Services to easily add Blubrry podcast hosting. CEO Todd Cochrane tells Podnews that the company has plans for further integration to help developers.

June 4, 2020:

The highest new entry at #7 is Últimas noticias de CNN en Español (from WarnerMedia), which is also on smart speaker news briefings. Us too: we're on Alexa and on Google Assistant.

May 28, 2020:

Amazon may be investing in local sports podcasts, according to Axios, as part of their push into podcasting. The company they've sniffed around, apparently, is Blue Wire, which we first wrote about in February.

May 25, 2020:

Amazon will be delivering podcasts soon, according to Bloomberg - the article claims they'll be put into Amazon Music; we'd assume they'd also replace TuneIn as the default podcast experience for Alexa speakers. Meanwhile at Amazon's Audible, they're said to be looking at a different price-point to allow access to Audible Originals shows but not to books.

May 7, 2020:

David Hooper's marketing book for podcasters, Big Podcast, is currently free on Amazon for Kindle. Grab your copy for free today or tomorrow.

April 21, 2020:

Used by many podcasters for revenue, Amazon is cutting affiliate commission by more than 50% for some categories.

April 2, 2020:

Marketing Jam, a popular Canadian podcast, is now streaming on Amazon Prime with a special video version in the US and the UK.

March 17, 2020:

Chartable had two short outages yesterday, thanks to tech provider Heroku (details), which impacted podcasts using their analytics prefix for a total of around twenty minutes. They plan to harden their systems, and move away from Heroku altogether to Amazon's API Gateway.

March 2, 2020:

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

February 27, 2020:

Nominations have been announced for the 2019 Scripps Howard Awards. The "Radio/Podcast" category has Uprooted, an episode from APM's APM Reports podcast; Amazon: Behind The Smiles, an episode from The Center for Investigative Reporting's Reveal; and a series of radio reports from The Public’s Radio (Rhode Island) – A 911 Emergency.

February 20, 2020:

Data: globally, we bought 44.7% more smart speakers in Q4 2019 than we did in Q8 2018. Amazon had a global market share of 28.3%; Google 24.9%; Apple just 4.7%.

December 30, 2019:

My mate bought a toaster looks through someone's Amazon purchase history to find out more about them. The co-hosts, Tom Price and Samantha Baines, are currently discovering more about their own buying habits. (Great Big Owl / Acast)

December 20, 2019:

ChromeOS now lets you control audio, including podcasts, from your lock screen. Chromebooks are regularly the most-sold laptops on Amazon.

December 16, 2019:

You can now play podcasts from Apple and Spotify on Amazon Alexa-powered speakers. Apple emailed all podcasters on Friday. Spotify followed with a blog post announcing their integration.

December 4, 2019:

Amazon's Alexa voice assistant now has the capability to sound excited and disappointed, the company's announced. Here, have a listen.

November 21, 2019:

You can add Podnews to News Briefings on Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa speakers, and wake up with us every morning.

November 4, 2019:

TuneIn has lost a major court case in the UK. Brought by two large record companies, the ruling given was that TuneIn is unlawfully linking to international radio stations that do not have UK music licences. Under copyright law, music licences are required in each country where content is consumed. TuneIn is currently the default podcast service for Amazon Alexa smart speakers, and the default radio service for both Amazon and Google.

November 1, 2019:

Pod Life is a brand new book about podcasters - why they podcast, how they got started, what keeps them motivated, and what they've learned along the way.

October 24, 2019:

Chris Krimitsos (Podfest) has released a book. Start Ugly is "a timeless tale about innovation and change", told through the parable of Gregory Sharp, a lumber business owner. "People who bought this book also bought an ATR2100 dynamic microphone", Amazon tells us.

October 9, 2019:

Perplexingly, the BBC has announced that the BBC iPlayer, their TV catchup service, is being revamped to include... podcasts. BBC Radio has not been in iPlayer for over twelve months in the UK.

October 4, 2019:

Steven Goldstein reviews the Amazon Echo Auto. "I was able to resume the podcast from where I left off on my home Echo device later", he writes - a feature Google has had for the past year - and adds: "It is exciting and empowering to be able to call upon any podcast especially if you did not place it in the queue of your smartphone ahead of your ride."

October 3, 2019:

General Motors is to bring Amazon Alexa to its cars next year. Any 2018 Cadillac, GMC or Chevrolet vehicle will get the upgrade, according to the manufacturer, which should add podcasts and more audio services to millions of cars.

October 1, 2019:

One Voice, One Mic is a new short documentary about podcasting from Ben Gummery, and was released yesterday. It's available on Amazon Prime Video - USA, UK, global - and coming soon to Vimeo. "It takes an upbeat yet honest look at the rise of podcasting as well as examining the state of the medium; considering whether podcasts are becoming over-saturated and demystifying how the monetisation of podcasts actually works in practice; with a particular focus on the UK podcasting scene."

September 26, 2019:

Amazon has announced new podcast integration for their Alexa smart speaker service. US users will now be able to ask for podcasts on Spotify - "Hey Alexa, play My Favorite Murder on Spotify" - as well as adding a preferred podcast setting so that you can pick your default podcast provider. If you listen to content through Spotify, SiriusXM or iHeartRadio, Alexa will sync progress between individual speakers, too. (Here's how to set up Spotify on Alexa).

September 18, 2019:

Amazon has announced Amazon Music HD, which, for $5 extra per month, will offer HD songs in lossless FLAC format at "16 bits 44.1kHz sampling", and "million" of songs in ultra HD ("24 bits at up to 192kHz sampling"). The Verge points out that most phones have a maximum of 24-bit 44.1kHz sound chips anyway, and you're unlikely to hear the difference using Bluetooth headphones.

September 13, 2019:

Spreaker Studio is now fully compatible with Chromebooks, the best-selling laptops on Amazon, and the most-bought for education. Spreaker Studio requires a Chromebook with Android support (which is most, but not all of them).

September 12, 2019:

Amazon is trying to produce more Spanish-language podcasts. Prisa Group, a large Spanish media company, has rejected a deal with the company, which would have put a daily podcast into Audible.

August 27, 2019:

New figures for smart speaker sales have been released. Amazon appears to be the leader; Baidu is the #2 most popular smart speaker, despite only being available in China. Google is #3. (The figures include separate smart speakers only, rather than Google Assistant-enabled devices).

August 7, 2019:

PRX have confirmed Charlotte Cooper as their new Director of Audience Growth. She joins from New York Public Radio. PRX have also confirmed Jason Saldanha (WBEZ, Amazon, The Chicago Humanities Festival) as Content Director.

July 31, 2019:

How much does it cost to host a podcast on Amazon AWS? We work out the numbers so you don't have to. Mostly - it can be very expensive indeed, and you lose so many features it's not worth it. Unless...

July 29, 2019:

Amazon Prime has cancelled Lore after two seasons.

July 23, 2019:

Land of the Giants launched today - all about the five giants of the internet, going by the not sinister name of FAANG. The first season focuses on the rise of Amazon. (Recode / Vox Media / Megaphone)

July 15, 2019:

Fireside is changing its stats to better align with the IAB standards, it's told its customers in a newsletter. The company tells us it's currently considering IAB certification.

July 12, 2019:

Sword & Scale's Mike Boudet has been widely accused by others of being behind these paid-for one-star ratings. We've no evidence of that, but have reached out to him multiple times for comment. (His email address? He's mailed us before.).

July 8, 2019:

Audible has posted 145 jobs in the past month, Karen J tips us off. There are roles in many countries; and as this job makes clear: "In an effort to push the boundaries of spoken-word entertainment, Audible is now developing, commissioning and producing a wide range of high-quality, original, audio programs." It's 11 months since the Amazon-owned company eliminated almost all their roles from podcast-style programming.

June 28, 2019:

For the record, we reported the story in March, quoting a number of different views. A month later, in April, during a self-imposed social media exile, Boudet sent us this charming message via email, which is worth sharing. He seems nice.

June 20, 2019:

One Voice, One Mic is a new film documentary about the rise of podcasting. It'll be released on Amazon Prime on International Podcast Day, September 30th; and is screening at festivals before then. Here's a trailer.

May 28, 2019:

How important is it to get the loudness of your podcast or news briefing correct for smart speakers? Read the reviews for the BBC's news briefing on the Amazon Echo.

May 20, 2019:

The Podcast Host are running a gear survey to find out the kit and tools podcasters are using to create their content in 2019. There's a prize draw for all entrants, first prize will be a Rode Procaster or Podcaster mic (their choice), or $200 kit budget on Amazon.

May 10, 2019:

RAJAR have released their MIDAS study for Q1 2019. It contains consumption trends for UK radio and podcasting, and says that 14% of Brits 15+ listen to podcasts every week. (Not entirely comparable, but: Canada 23% (18+), Australia 15% (12+); US 22% (12+)).

May 1, 2019:

We bet you wondered: ignoring weekends, that's 963.4 terabytes of bandwidth a month. If they hosted on Amazon S3 like we do, that would cost $48,970 in monthly bandwidth transfer charges.

April 30, 2019:

Whooshkaa, a podcast host, has announced availability of integration with Amazon Alexa smart speakers. They claim they are "the first global podcast hosting platform to enable podcasters to deploy their own Alexa skill for their podcast".

April 12, 2019:

Amazon's Alexa speakers have unveiled a new "news" experience: it will now play continuous streams of news (including things like a live CNN stream, or additional news stories from NPR. Details are scant, and it isn't clear whether this is only in the US for now.

March 25, 2019:

Listening to podcasts on Amazon Alexa isn't always a great experience. GearBrain writes up better ways to do it on your smart speaker.

March 21, 2019:

By default, our voice-activated servants Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Siri are all female voices. Q wants to change that, and have developed what they call the world's first genderless voice.

March 19, 2019:

Podnews is also available as a daily news briefing on Amazon Alexa and on Google Home. Find us wherever you control what news briefings you want to listen to - ours is usually less than 2 minutes long.

March 7, 2019:

Infinite Dial 2019 also reports on an increase for smart speaker owners. 23% of US adults (65 million people) claim to own a smart speaker, with Amazon Echo being the leading brand, and Apple Homepod doing very poorly. VentureBeat reports that Apple is hiring an analyst to explain Siri complaints to executives, which doesn't sound like a good thing. (Editor's note: careful when comparing products - like Google Home - with services - like Google Assistant, which is in many more devices).

February 28, 2019:

Pocket Casts now has a skill for the Amazon Alexa smart speaker. The company is particularly proud of "Alexa, ask Pocket Casts to play my Up Next", which plays what you were last playing in the app, and your list of upcoming podcasts.

February 6, 2019:

Preserve This Podcast has released a cautious look at the results of a survey into podcast audio archiving, claiming that in 50 years, the golden age of podcasting could turn into a dark age. While only 7% of podcasters don't keep any backups at all, many don't store full backups of original material. 18% only keep backups of their final edited episodes. The full survey results are here (pdf).

January 23, 2019:

TuneIn, a radio stream and podcast aggregator, claims total listening hours were up 31% in 2018. They're the default for Amazon Alexa's podcast experience; and the default for both Amazon and Google speakers for live radio. Not on Tunein? Add your podcast here.

January 18, 2019:

Amazon Alexa has unveiled "a professional newscaster voice", which they plan to use for news briefings and other similar pieces of work. The post includes excerpts of the voice, which contains all the right cadences for news broadcasts.

January 16, 2019:

Google is discontinuing its Chromecast Audio product, a method of adding connected audio to decent hifi speakers. (The Podnews office has two in daily use.) While the Amazon Echo Dot has a 3.5mm jack that could replace it, the Google Home Mini does not. Meanwhile, over a million people (in the US) have pre-ordered an Amazon Alexa Auto: Google Assistant is already in all cars with Android Auto.

January 14, 2019:

"Here's what else you need to know today". The New York Times has launched a 3-min weekday flash news briefing hosted by Michael Barbaro for Amazon Alexa devices, as well as a weekly interactive news quiz from the producers of The Daily, and other services. None of these services work on Google speakers - the briefing, which is a nice change from a radio bulletin, is sadly unavailable in Google's news briefing service. It's sponsored by Audi.

January 9, 2019:

CES #4: Amazon is moving into the car. Illustrated with a creepy picture of Jeff Bezos fondling a tree, TechCrunch reports that Alexa will be part of Telenav, a connected car services provider. They announced Echo Auto in September, and also announced some form of chip with Qualcomm.

January 8, 2019:

Yesterday, we reported that Amazon have sold 100m "Alexa devices". By way of comparison, Google Assistant claims "nearly 1bn installs", and that active users have quadrupled (though they won't tell how many active users they have).

January 7, 2019:

CES is on in Las Vegas NV, USA. Expect plenty of noise from Google about the Google Assistant. Meanwhile, Amazon has not-so-quietly revealed that they've sold 100 million Alexa devices. (Google Assistant, however, is installed in many more.)

January 2, 2019:

Podnews self-hosts our podcast (and website). We've discovered Amazon Athena, a service which allows fancy SQL queries on server logfiles. We plan an article on using these for podcast statistics, and we'd be keen to hear from any developers who've used this already (and sharing notes).

December 28, 2018:

The Amazon Alexa smart-speaker service struggled to cope with new registrations on Christmas Day. According to AppAnnie, the two smart-speaker apps, required to set Alexa or Google devices up, appeared high in the charts throughout the day, though:

December 17, 2018:

Podcoin is an app that rewards you for listening to podcasts. 10 minutes listening earns one "podcoin". To earn $2 to spend on Amazon, assuming you could listen to podcasts for three hours a day, you'd be listening for over three months. Listen to three hours of podcasts every day for 18 years, and you could afford a set of Bose headphones. The app uses the ListenNotes API, and has no visible method of earning revenue.

December 14, 2018:

Amazon Alexa has changed the audio clip limit in skills from 90 seconds to 240 seconds (that's four minutes), and increased the allowable sample rate. If you're publishing cross-platform, however, Google Assistant's still stuck at 120 seconds.

December 3, 2018:

Apple Music is now available on Amazon Echo smart speakers.

November 26, 2018:

Podnews has a podcast. It's this, every day, in audio form. Find it in your news briefing settings for the Amazon Echo or Google Assistant, too.

November 20, 2018:

Got a family account with Spotify? Live in the US? Claim a free Google Home Mini smart speaker. Meanwhile, Microsoft's given up on Cortana, and is now selling Amazon Echo speakers in-store.

November 19, 2018:

Daily updates in your ears: find Podnews in your Amazon Alexa's news briefing section (Alexa app > menu > settings > flash briefing), or in Google's news services (Google Home app > profile > settings > services > news). Or, in your podcast app.

November 5, 2018:

As spotted in Podnews in August, Amazon is caching daily news briefing updates. We've spotted a specific useragent, AmazonNewsContentService, in a few lines in our podcast logfiles. Amazon does ask for very high bitrate files (320k MP3!) for their news briefings, and it could be to reduce transcoding artifacts.

October 29, 2018:

The Amazon Echo smart speaker family is now available in Italy and Spain. (It gets its podcasts, by default, from TuneIn). Meanwhile, the Google Home Hub, launched last week, makes podcasts look quite nice, we discover.

October 26, 2018:

Bitplatter have posted analysis of discussions about major retail brands in podcasts. Amazon is the clear #1; the rest are bricks and mortar stores.

October 24, 2018:

Audioburst want you to stump their audio search engine. Their #AskNewsFeed challenge is open now, and you can win a US$100 Amazon gift card for testing out their voice search.

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 2, 2018:

PANIC: Amazon has started making its own mattresses.

September 25, 2018:

Thank you to Trebble, "all you need to get your shortcast heard on Google Home & Amazon Alexa", for becoming a silver supporter.

August 23, 2018:

The latest episode of Unstructured has a thoughtful interview with Podcasting Hall of Fame's Dave Jackson - touching on the effects of New & Noteworthy and the problems with podcasting's brand being tainted by "Three guys, one brain". Other "podcasts about podcasts" worth listening to include Radio Survivor, which reflects on Podcast Movement 2018; and, cough, ours, which is now available as daily briefings on Google Home and Amazon Alexa smart speakers.

August 22, 2018:

Got an Amazon Echo? We've not forgotten you. Set us up in your Daily Briefing on the Alexa app, or "Alexa, ask anypod to play Podnews."

August 20, 2018:

Amazon Alexa has (at least) one downside. Just ask anyone called Alexa.

August 17, 2018:

Amazon is now seemingly caching files for the Amazon Alexa "Flash briefing" feature in the US. This appears to have enabled more consistent loudness levels, since Amazon appears to be applying some form of loudness correction.

August 3, 2018:

Lego, Danish manufacturers of sharp plastic bricks that really hurt when you stand on them, is using audio content on Amazon Alexa skills to market itself.

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:

Auphonic have integrated two additional speech recognition engines to their transcript service, and have introduced a transcript editor tool to assist with producing transcripts.

July 11, 2018:

Amazon is also experimenting, for their third-party sellers, with "podcasting as a method to deliver updates, selling tips, and interviews with Sellers, Amazon partners, and Amazon employees", according to an email received by one Amazon Marketplace seller.

June 29, 2018:

Marketplace have launched their first Amazon Echo smart-speaker skill. Make me smart from Marketplace "helps make users smart on the economy, pop culture, tech and current events with exclusive on-demand voice content".

June 22, 2018:

TuneIn, the radio and podcast aggregator that is used by Amazon Echo (as the default live radio and podcast provider) and by Google Home (as the default live radio provider) is seeking a buyer.

June 14, 2018:

The Amazon Echo has arrived in France - "finally", says French tech site Numerama.

May 25, 2018:

Google Home is now outselling Amazon Echo devices, reports Gizmodo. Of course, Google Assistant is also present in many Android phones and even headphones. In Libsyn's The Feed this week, Rob Walch mentions that the Google Assistant iPhone app is a good way to check whether Google's properly indexed your podcast; and here's how to get your podcast onto Google Home. (Oh, and "OK, Google, ask podnews for the latest" is a good thing to try, too).

May 10, 2018:

Radio station LOVE SPORT has added ten fan podcasts to Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa speakers. The initiative is a partnership with XAPPmedia.

May 7, 2018:

Amazon announced their new "In-Skill purchasing" system, to allow skills authors to make revenue with smart speakers.

May 3, 2018:

Children's radio station Fun Kids is a launch partner for Amazon Alexa skills for kids in the UK. Here's more about Kid Skills.

April 17, 2018:

Smart speaker use for short podcasts reminds us: we're on Amazon Alexa's Daily Briefing; "Alexa, ask anypod to play podnews"; or "OK, Google, ask podnews for the latest". Our podcast is also in many other places.

April 13, 2018:

Not in the list, but if helpful - when on the road, podnews uses Auphonic's app on a Google Pixel XL phone. The app records, and includes rudimentary editing; Auphonic then processes the audio and uploads it direct to Amazon S3 for us. It sounds like this, instead of the sound of the home studio.

April 9, 2018:

We're on your Amazon Alexa in the 'daily briefing' section. We're also now in AnyPod - after enabling the skill, "Alexa, ask AnyPod to play Podnews".

April 2, 2018:

TuneIn adds a new subscription service just for Amazon Alexa devices: $2.99 for Amazon Prime members, and $3.99 for non-Amazon Prime members. It offers a variety of output including news, talk and sports.

March 29, 2018:

Amazon Alexa's "Daily Briefing" feature delivers good traffic, if you're a suitable podcast; above is a sample breakdown of devices consuming the podnews podcast. Apple's ecosystem delivers about half, but our appearance in Amazon Alexa's Daily Briefing is responsible for almost a quarter.

March 22, 2018:

Got a smart speaker? Find us in the Daily Briefing section of the Amazon Alexa app; or "OK Google, ask podnews for the latest"

March 16, 2018:

Omny Studio release a loudness normalisation tool which will allow their customers to set the loudness of their podcast to standard values. (As a short reminder: Amazon Alexa wants -14, Google Assistant wants -16, the BBC reckons -18 is right, and our own research shows LUFS values being as loud as -8 and as quiet as -28.) The Omny tool also produces output which is compliant in dbTP and a specified LU loudness range.

March 8, 2018:

Martech describes how hardware is driving [podcast] listening to new heights. "Smart home devises such as Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s recently released HomePod, are creating a new genre of podcasts which are listened to in a group setting," claims the article.

March 5, 2018:

Spotted over the weekend from Effct: a service to make your own Amazon Flash Briefing.

March 2, 2018:

Gimlet Media is producing a podcast especially for the Amazon Alexa platform. It's called Chompers and is designed for kids to help them brush their teeth: sponsored by a toothbrush and toothpaste brand. Except: "Mr. Lieber said that Amazon’s rules prevented Gimlet Media from disclosing Oral B’s and Crest Kids sponsorship during the show, which it otherwise would have done."

February 21, 2018:

ICYMI: Podnews is available as a daily briefing on Amazon Alexa devices (set it up in your app), and on Google Home and Assistant devices ("Hey, Google, ask podnews for the latest").

February 16, 2018:

Will robots take over the podcasting world? That's the question from book2pod.com, who are using Amazon Polly to produce automated podcasts for authors.

February 12, 2018:

US radio content provider Westwood One, who provide Olympics coverage to radio stations in the States, are also broadcasting live via the Amazon Alexa. Their skill appears to be geo-locked to the US.

February 2, 2018:

For noting: Amazon wants all podcasts for the Amazon Echo to be -14 LUFS. The BBC is making all its podcast audio at -18 LUFS. There are many and consistent complaints about audio level in the reviews for the BBC News Amazon skill.

January 31, 2018:

Radioplayer, the UK radio industry funded online content service, has launched a new version of their popular 'skill' for the Amazon Echo smart speaker: you can now access podcasts and catch-up programmes from partner UK radio stations. Irish Radioplayer has also launched an Amazon Echo skill, coinciding with the availability of the Echo in the republic; and in Belgium, the Radioplayer platform is to include Flemish-speaking broadcasters as well as those from French-speaking areas.

January 24, 2018:

Apple have finally launched their HomePod speaker. Online orders will start in the US, UK and Australia on Friday. It's US$349 - competing products from Google and Amazon start at less than a third of that price. It's assumed that Apple Podcast integration is built-in.

January 23, 2018:

The BBC announce they're making all their podcasts -18 LUFS - LKFS if you speak American. (If you're keeping tabs: Google wants -16 LUFS, Amazon want -14 LUFS (as do Spotify), YouTube normalise to -13 LUFS, and the AES want anywhere between -16 and -20 LUFS. I try hard to keep personal opinion out of podnews, so won't pass comment as to how crazy this situation is.

January 19, 2018:

Here's a profile of a new Audible-only podcast, West Cork. Audible Channels is free for those with Amazon Prime.

January 18, 2018:

Amazon has just announced that their Amazon Echo smart speakers will be launched in Australia on 1 February. You can pre-order now - the Echo Dot is AUD $49, significantly under-cutting the Google Home Mini's AUD $79 price. (As a reminder: podcasts on these devices are powered by TuneIn).

January 11, 2018:

Podcast use on "Voice activated speakers" (the Amazon Echo or Google Home) is virtually zero.

January 8, 2018:

Headphones by Google and Bose already have the Google Assistant built-in (and it's in Google's watches and phones); but Amazon wants to get Alexa in headphones too. They released a new developer kit to do that - apparently Bose and Jabra are evaluating it.

January 4, 2018:

Audible, Amazon's audio production arm, is working with theatres as a way of producing audio drama, reports The Pacific Standard. The move is seen as a significant win for accessibility of theatre productions.

December 28, 2017:

The Amazon Alexa and the Google Home have "topped the charts" this holiday period, implying that smart speakers were popular gifts.

December 14, 2017:

Yesterday, we noted that Google recommends -16 LUFS for audio intended for Google Home. Amazon recommend -14 LUFS. YouTube will alter audio to meet -13 LUFS. The AES recommend -16 to -20 LUFS. Standards? We don't need no stinkin' standards!

December 7, 2017:

An antidote to the smart-speaker frenzy, The Week publishes a story called The looming end of the smart speaker. It links to this research, with some data on how US users used smart speakers in Q1 2017.

December 5, 2017:

Podcasting on Amazon Web Services - a presentation from Amazon and Australian podcast company Whooshkaa, at the recent Amazon re:Invent conference in Las Vegas NV USA.

November 23, 2017:

A quite savage piece about Apple's non-appearing HomePod speakers. It transpires that they won't be available for developers to access, unlike the competing Amazon Echo and Google Home. It will, however, play Apple Podcasts flawlessly.

November 22, 2017:

A produced news podcast, The Daily Debrief, is published by UK national broadcaster LBC. The podcast is ten minutes long and "will drop every afternoon". To listen on an Amazon Echo, the broadcaster helpfully adds: "Alexa, play the Daily Debrief by LBC". LBC has over 2m listeners.

November 20, 2017:

Miranda Sawyer of The Guardian listens to the Haunted podcast, and also to the BBC's Inspection Chamber - an interactive drama on the Amazon Echo. She likes the Haunted podcast.

November 15, 2017:

My Beauty Chat, a twice-daily show on the Amazon Alexa, is new from Hearst, a large US magazine publisher: a "voice-first" brand. L'Oreal sponsors a segment within it. Because it's worth it.

October 19, 2017:

Spreaker announces that their podcasts are now available as an Amazon Alexa "skill", the term given to third-party apps on the platform. This blog post contains instructions for your listeners.

October 5, 2017:

Not to be out-done, Sonos have released a new smart-speaker with Amazon's Alexa built-in. Alexa is also available to existing Sonos units as an upgrade. Initial feedback on Twitter isn't amazingly positive, though.

September 27, 2017:

Joe Biden launches a podcast. This article is excited about the bespoke 'skill' for the Amazon Echo. It's called Biden's Briefing.

September 13, 2017:

Die Zeit, the highbrow national German weekly newspaper, launches a podcast: What now? A new episode is published weekdays. Interestingly, they also launched an Amazon Echo "skill" and it's also available on Google Home. The paper acknowledges they're late to the party, but promises lots more podcasts this year.

August 30, 2017:

Here's a trailer for Lore, as it moves from podcast to TV. It's out October 13th on Amazon Prime Video. (Signup: US, UK, elsewhere.)

August 28, 2017:

Re-linked today in a Facebook group: how to get inexpensive feedback on your podcast from real people by using Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

August 22, 2017:

The Google Home smart speaker is apparently going to have a little sister, like the Amazon Echo Dot. Also, Google released a new version of Android today, 8.0, though you can only get it on Pixel devices for now. (Upgrades are staged, but you can apparently force it by enrolling for beta, which actually gets you the final public build. We did that and it works). No additional podcasting functionality, but apparently much better Bluetooth.

July 19, 2017:

Google's "Google Home" smart speaker is launched tomorrow in Australia, joining the US and UK with the device. Stores selling it are JB Hi-fi, Harvey Norman, Telstra, and a few more places, at AU$199 (US$157, £120). (The price includes tax, and the Aussie dollar is currently unusually strong). It's the first smart speaker to make it into the Australian market: Amazon are expected to launch later this year.

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 19, 2017:

Amazon changes their advertising policy for the Amazon Echo: and the first ad network for Alexa skills shuts down as a result. "We understand why Amazon did this, and [...] we made the decision that the market was not ready."

June 16, 2017:

If you use Cloudflare on your website, and host your podcasting from it, be aware of the pitfalls. (podnews uses Amazon Cloudfront; sister site media.info uses Cloudflare).

May 30, 2017:

Australian company Whooshkaa launches automated podcast service, produced by Amazon's Polly text-to-speech algorithm.