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Thank you to The $100 MBA for joining as our latest gold supporter. Hosted by Omar Zenhom, the podcast helps you start your own business, with guidance and the habits you need to follow through. The $100 MBA joins all our supporters funding news outside the paywall about our industry. You can join them here.
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Podcasts “are here to stay”, according to a report by BVDW on the German Podcast Landscape. “In addition to data on podcast usage, there is also an overview of standards, technologies, and guidelines for podcast advertising, as well as tips for media planning and campaign booking.” Du musst Deutsch sprechen, um es zu lesen, natürlich.
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The Podcasting 2.0 podcast this week goes into more detail about what they call the “walletpocalypse” - changes needed to future-proof streaming payments in podcasting apps. Oscar Merry from Fountain explains some of the reasons for the changes, and shared some demo code.
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Podtastic Audio covers 'The Dirty Secrets of Podcast Scams and How to Spot Them' this week, from fake “listener boost” services to phony sponsorships and sketchy guest booking offers.
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Hollywood's biggest night is also the most baffling - the film frequently hailed as the “Greatest Film of All Time” didn’t take home the Oscar; and two of the Top 100 American Films of All-Time were overlooked for nominations in the same year. OSCARS... What Were They Thinking?! is new today, with historical insights, engaging discussions, and never-before-heard stories
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Also at the asi conference, Triton Digital’s Darryl Battaglia spoke about the opportunities of sharing data to better see the rest of the podcast landscape and help with cross-publisher promos to grow the medium; meanwhile RAJAR’s John Carroll reminded the audience that podcasting in the UK is just a 6% share of all audio listening. “Many podcast publishers have a video-first strategy for their podcasts, but are only monetising their audio,” he observed.
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For a slightly different take on the US Presidential Election, The Rest Is Politics is running a live video stream from 3pm NY time, right through the night. Why watch mainstream media's coverage, when you can watch a former UK left-wing communications director, a former UK right-wing leadership contender, a left-leaning journalist, a historian who's political affiliation is unknown to this writer, and... whatever Anthony Scaramucci stands for these days. It's being broadcast from the Spotify Podcast Studios in NYC, and you'll also be able to catch-up on YouTube and Spotify.
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Podcast platform RSS
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Earlier this week, we highlighted Nielsen’s recent release of UK podcast consumption data. Adam Bowie takes a look, concluding that the 42% weekly reach figure is significantly higher than all other surveys. Another data point not in the press release: 71% say they normally stream episodes directly, against 26% who say they download episodes.
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In the Podnews Weekly Review, which will be published later today, we hear from Oscar Merry from Fountain about a new release of the podcast app; and a round-up of the week's news.
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The latest Triton Digital Australian Podcast Ranker was released. Listeners are up 15% year-on-year. Of note, many of the catch-up radio shows appear to be publishing full episodes as well as partial highlights in the same feed. A few examples: ARN’s Kyle & Jackie O published 86 episodes in September; Nine’s Ben Fordham posted 160 episodes; SCA’s The Rush Hour posted 128 new episodes. These episodes were all produced from 21 radio programs in September; the auto-download behaviour of most podcast apps meaning that all episodes - clips or the full show - are downloaded. All episodes contain programmatically-inserted advertising.
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In Good Companies returns for a new season today - looking at the latest trends in business and technology. From Cadence Bank, the show is focused on providing executives, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and decision-makers in mid-sized businesses with the tools they need to navigate an evolving landscape.
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MoneyWise interviews "high net worth" people about their personal finances - but the latest episode is the first time the podcast has interviewed an actual billionaire. He's called Oscar, and he's not just a billionaire - he's worth about $3bn. A Lower Street production, Andrew Namanny hosts the show (in for Sam Parr).
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Audacy has completed its financial restructuring. “The Company emerges as a healthy, scaled, multi-platform leader in the dynamic audio sector.” Its existing management team remain in place.
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Google’s NotebookLM - which (in part) lets you create a podcast-like experience from uploaded articles, like this, has added a built-in YouTube uploader, and better sharing tools. Since it’s a Google product, we assume it’ll be closed in three years; but it’s an impressive tool in the meantime.
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Cathrine McVeigh has been made Director of Production - Audible Studios APAC. Based in Singapore, she’s worked at SCA, the Australian ABC, and Amazon Prime Video; and is a founding board member of Women in Media.
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The Podnews Weekly Review this week talks to Steve Pratt, the author of the new book "Earn It: Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers", and discusses the importance of earning attention in the modern digital landscape. We also hear about Buzzsprout's new websites, and someone rings Sam's doorbell. (Full interviews in the Podnews Extra feed).
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Money Crimes with Nicole Lapin is new today from PAVE Studios' true-crime brand, Crime House. Hosted by Nicole Lapin, this captivating true crime series dives into the dark side of finance, uncovering the world’s wildest financial crimes– from cutthroat con artists to billion-dollar scams, and even murder.
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Adalyst Media has added Under the Influence with Jo Piazza to its slate. The show looks at the current landscape of social media influencers and how it particularly affects women — both the ones who create the content, and the ones who consume it every day.
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Crime Beat: Most Wanted is new today from Canada's Curiouscast - a limited-edition 15-episode series chronicles the stories of Canada’s most elusive fugitives who are still at-large, offering listeners unprecedented access to in-depth interviews, rare archival footage and more. It's inspired by the award-winning Crime Beat podcast.
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In Australia, podcast survey PodPoll is to return for 2024. The survey data will shed light on emerging trends and several untapped opportunities in the podcasting landscape.
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Meanwhile, in Oct 2022, SCA’s LiSTNR announced that it was to represent Wondery shows. With the addition of New Heights to Wondery’s slate, SCA has added New Heights to LiSTNR and will represent that show in Australia.
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With Airwave: Tumble Science Podcast for Kids explores stories of science discovery - a science podcast created to be enjoyed by the entire family. Hosted & produced by Lindsay Patterson (science journalist) & Marshall Escamilla (teacher).
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Podcasts are more interesting to non-listeners than ever before, says new data. Sounds Profitable published The Podcast Landscape 2024, a look at podcast consumption in the US. It claims 53% of Americans ages 18+ listen to podcasts each month (6% higher than Edison Research’s claimed 47%). The data includes the top 20 “favorite podcasts” (13% of respondents say their favorite is Joe Rogan), and suggests that YouTube has extended its lead as the most popular place to discover new shows. The study interviewed more than 5,000 Americans in an online panel. Some of the data was previewed at Podcast Movement.
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Jessica Scarlett has been hired as Director of Financial Operations at Amplitude Media Partners (AMP). She joins from Libsyn Ads.
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An Apple Original podcast, Scamtown is new today. The series delves into the world of scams, ranging from the bizarre to the downright unbelievable. It's from Apple TV+, and subscribers get early access to the full series.
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108.9 The Hawk with Jason Gore and Geoff Garlock is back for a new season - it's the official podcast of Val Verde's favorite and officially #1 classic rock radio station, and today it's the launch of Extreme Heat Days, Val Verde's favorite outdoor festival that takes place in a mall parking lot. Guest Dave Holmes plays weatherman Greg Fresca. Tune it in, and rip the knob off.
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From Airwave: Good Job, Brain!’s Karen Chu says: "Airwave is the Samwise to our Frodo. We're all about maximizing our brain power, so having Airwave support our creative vision, guide us in this growing landscape, and handle ad coordination allows us to focus on what we do best: creating a darn good trivia podcast that we still have to burn onto CDs for our parents to play in their car."
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RedCircle’s OpenRAP now covers five times the amount of shows as it did in March, the company says. The service sells host-read ads at scale, and claims “industry-best CPMs”.
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In 2001, Robert Fisher killed his family, blew up their suburban home and vanished into a remote Arizona forest. Missing in Arizona features an AI cloned voice of the killer, telling his story. Did he die? Or did he escape? The podcast is new from iHeartPodcasts and Neon33.
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A new season of Secrets We Keep starts today - an exploration of Australia’s biggest corruption scandal when a trusted Australian company funnelled hundreds of millions of dollars to dictator Saddam Hussein in the lead-up to the Iraq War. The scandal, which unfolded in the early 2000s, revealed a complex web of corruption and deceit involving the United Nations' oil-for-food program in Iraq.
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Hacking Humans publishes its 300th episode today. In its 6+ years it has seen nearly 4.5mn downloads and says it is still the go-to for entertaining and educational discussion of social engineering, cons, scams and phishing schemes. It's from N2K Networks.
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From the BBC, Good Bad Billionaire returns for a new season today, looking at the super-rich. In the new season, the show looks at how Tiger Woods went from a child prodigy to the world’s highest paid athlete, how a communist mime artist became the boss of fashion house Prada, how hedge fund tycoon George Soros escaped Nazi occupation to become one of the most successful investors in history, and how an Indian multinational conglomerate boss built the biggest fortune in Asia.
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More keynote speakers at the upcoming Podcast Movement in August. Ira Glass is the iconic voice behind This American Life, and will join NPR’s Wild Card host Rachel Martin on stage. Additionally, a new edition of The Podcast Landscape will be shared on stage. Use code
PODNEWS
to save on passes.
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Hey History! is Australia's first history podcast for the classroom, and aligns with the Grade 4 - 6 Australian curriculum; the website has learning materials, syllabus guides and resources. You can expect stories, music and immersive soundscapes, visit 'the oldest classroom', the Victorian goldfields, and experience life as a convict kid.
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Exile returns for a new season today. The podcast tells the untold stories of Jewish lives under fascism and those who escaped it - in the form of letters, diaries, and interviews from the vast archive at the Leo Baeck Institute. Hosted by Mandy Patinkin, it's made by Antica Productions.
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The journalist Evan Ratliff is replicating himself - using an AI voice clone to talk to spammers and scammers, friends, family, and even his wife. Shell Game is the result - described as an "immersive, surprising, and laugh-out-loud bizarre exploration".
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Barometer and Audiohook have launched an enhanced brand suitability tool. It should result in less inventory being discarded.
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Clair Weaver has been appointed Head of Factual for LiSTNR.
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In Canada, Curiouscast’s hit true crime podcast Crime Beat has surpassed 1 million downloads/listens over the span of 30 days. Researched and hosted by crime reporter Nancy Hixt, each episode takes listeners on a bone-chilling journey through some of Canada’s most high-profile criminal cases. The podcast premiered its sixth season in February of this year.
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Yesterday, the BBC’s Newscast did what the BBC breathlessly called “an amazing experiment” - a six hour show broadcast “live”. It comes hot on the heels of another “amazing experiment” just 37,122 days ago, when, in 1922, the BBC also broadcast a radio show live. Congratulations to all involved, etc.
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Prisa’s spanish-language podcast platform Podium has suddenly removed a number of podcasts from its platform - and those podcasts aren’t saying why. “We are trying to clarify the situation,” says comedy podcast Aquí hay dragones; El Descampo says “there are problems that I hope will be resolved soon”, while Nuria Pérez from Gabinete de Curiosidades says that her podcast “has disappeared from all platforms, and that’s all I can say without crying”. A concern about use of copyright music has been mentioned by others, but Prisa isn’t saying anything.
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Since 2020, more than a thousand people in New Hampshire have come forward to expose one of the biggest youth detention scandals in American history – and people are still coming forward. How did this happen? How did it finally come to light? And what is the real cost of justice? The Youth Development Center is new today - a rare look inside the black box of the juvenile justice system, where privacy laws meant to protect kids also hid abuse.
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Elsewhere - if you’re a podcast hosting company, to measure plays on Cloud Phone correctly, you need to use the
X-Forwarded-For
header, and (for PodLP) watch for PodLP/1.0
in the user-agent. If you’re not using the X-Forwarded-For
header as the originating IP address, you’ll likely discard a number of valid downloads.
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On LinkedIn, Triton Digital’s Simon Lee shares data from Singapore’s podcast landscape. 6% of shows are currently downloaded using Google Podcasts in the city state. They’re in for a surprise.
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While some of the podcast industry are in Cannes, Australia’s SCA has been in Cairns.
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Hosted by the award-winning team of Audrey Brown and Richard Kagoe, Focus on Africa celebrates its one-year anniversary today. From BBC News and the BBC World Service, the show delves into the political landscape, healthcare developments, social-political challenges, and vibrant cultures, all through the lens of leading African contributors and experts.
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Elephant seals! Penguins! And... complex geopolitics? South Pole is a new podcast from Pine Forest Media that takes an immersive journey into the heart of Antarctica, blending breathtaking landscapes with scientific exploration.
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Deadman’s Curse: Volcanic Gold returns today for a new season. A historical true crime podcast, produced by Great Pacific Media (GPM), Curiouscast and Corus Entertainment, tells the story of a prospector for a gold mine suddenly disappearing in British Columbia. The first season won three Signal Awards.
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Westwood One posts 8 New Findings About The Podcast Audience From Cumulus Media’s 2024 Audioscape. The median age of a podcast listener is a youthful 34; lower than radio and also television. Pierre Bouvard, who worked on the analysis, says: “TV is what’s playing in God’s waiting room.” Ouch!
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What should podcasting do in the age of AI? The media company WaitWhat has released a draft Listener Bill of Rights about AI, offering a set of guidelines for producers, and are asking for signatories. (It’s a welcome document; we think it needs further discussion).
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Edison Research released a new study, The Podcast Consumer 2024. The study contains benchmark data on US podcasting, ideal for advertisers to know about the podcast landscape - podcast listeners are more affluent and educated than the general population, the study says.
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The Triton Digital Podcast Ranker is out for Australia. ABC News Top Stories is new at #3 (like NPR News Now, it’s the bulletin that also appears if you ask a smart speaker for the latest news). Everyone is a winner: ARN/iHeart is #1 publisher by listeners; LiSTNR/SCA is #1 sales representative, though ARN is close on its heels, and the ABC is #1 for total downloads.
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In Australia, a proposed takeover of SCA by ARN has hit trouble, as partner Anchorage Capital got cold feet. ARN, which uses the iHeartPodcasts brand in Australia, has presented a new plan to the stock market.
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The Mi3 Audio Edition this week focuses on LiSTNR's tech stack - and features an interview with Kim Loasby, SCA Head of Digital Ad Product & Operations and Luke Minto, National Head of Audio Sales. LiSTNR is the radio, music and podcasts app from Australian broadcaster SCA.
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Alongside Podnews’s overview slides with podcast data for your presentations, you might want to use this slide deck from Sounds Profitable too: data that makes the point that podcast advertising is, in a risky landscape, the safest bet.
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RedCircle has seen a 38% growth in downloads since announcing OpenRAP, a scalable technology for host-read ads.
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Ariel Shapiro’s final Hot Pod was published. In an editorial, she paints a picture of a new industry landscape - where investments have dried up and every project needs to be profitable to survive; and suggests she “got to the party too late”.
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One of the two big Australian commercial podcast publishers, ARN, is bidding to buy the other, its competitor SCA. “If the proposal goes ahead, we expect ARN would close its iHeart app and shift to LiSTNR as a single audio streaming platform,” says an analyst from Morgan Stanley.
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Can you help a study for the University of Amsterdam? Chance Dorland is investigating how users perceive the features of different social audio platforms for an academic paper on how such features lead to distinct user experiences. He’s looking for an hour of your time.
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Scandal rewatch podcast Unpacking The Toolbox is back for a second season today, hosted by Katie Lowes and Guillermo Diaz. It's from Shondaland Audio, in partnership with iHeartPodcasts. We're promised a slew of special guests including Bellamy Young, Tony Goldwyn, Kate Burton, and Dan Bucatinsky.
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Podcast monitoring service Podscan has received funding: “a six-figure amount”, says founder Arvid Kahl.
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Innovation Minutes, a (normally) German-language podcast, interviews our Editor, James Cridland, today on the landscape of podcasts in Europe, the US and beyond. It was recorded a few weeks ago at Radiodays Europe in Munich - and yes, this episode is in English, because James ist zu faul Deutsch zu lernen.
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The Pete and Sebastian Show has signed with Studio71. It was with Audioboom. It stars two A-list comedians, Pete Correale and Sebastian Maniscalco, get together once a week to create a tight comedy radio show with stories and comedy bits.
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How to be a (good) podcast guest (from Jack Bridger, who’s done 70+ guest appearances so far)
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RedCircle has launched OpenRAP, a scalable platform for host-read ads. Podcasters can now keep their existing (VAST-capable) hosting provider and have new fully-automated host-read ads inserted directly into their show by RedCircle's ad platform. RAP automatically manages ad insertion, measurement, reporting and payment.
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The host of the Detectives Don’t Sleep podcast and voiceover for Star Wars and Gremlins, Mark Dodson, has died. He was 64. “A voice can make or break a show, and in this case, Mark had the perfect voice,” said Noiser’s CEO Pascal Hughes.
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If the Oscars have got you all excited about the creative process and creators across all kinds of industries, then ICONS could be the podcast for you: the show offers insightful discussions and reflections on the creative minds behind some of the most influential works in cinema.
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Watching the Oscars yesterday? Did you see the ad for SiriusXM? It’s part of the company’s “closer” national brand campaign, which showcases how SiriusXM brings listeners closer to what moves them. The full video can be seen here.
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Dear Daughter has returned for a new series from the BBC, with 15 new inspirational and thought-provoking episodes, hosted by Namulanta Kombo and featuring letters of advice for daughters everywhere.
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New dynamic feed drop technology has been launched by PodRoll. The tool adds promotional episodes directly into podcasts as the second-most recent episode, and works on more than 30 different podcast networks in PodRoll’s ecosystem - allowing feed drops to be achieved at scale.
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The Bitch Bible is now with PodcastOne, joining from Dear Media. It's the 27th show added to PodcastOne's network this fiscal year. The show, hosted by Jackie Schimmel, will start to produce video elements and make additional shows.
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Story Mill Media has launched Anomalie, a role-playing meditation podcast. The goal of guided fantasy role-playing meditation is to help you cultivate a sense of wonder, curiosity, balance, and joy in your inner world - a form of escapism and relaxation, as well as a creative outlet for the imagination.
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The Maono PS22 USB interface is reviewed by The Podcast Host, and put up against the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2.
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Spotify’s podcasting business was close to breaking-even in Q4, Daniel Ek said in an earnings call. He also outlined the change of strategy: “While some of these exclusivity deals worked, generally it wasn't aligned with what the creator wanted. The creator wants to have a broader audience. With these new deals, we are in a position where we're better aligned with the creator. We can both deliver the growth rate and we are equally incentivized to drive our audience growth. And of course then also drive revenue growth because we both share in that upside. Today, Spotify is in many cases the number one podcasting player already. Exclusivity makes sense when you're the smaller playing, trying to gain scale: [but] when you're the bigger player, the additional value of the exclusivity is far smaller than it is about being aligned. From a values point of view, this is better aligned with who we are at Spotify too.”
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A successful bi-weekly segment on the CyberWire Daily podcast, Threat Vector by Unit 42 is now its own podcast on the N2K media network. The show unravels the complex and constantly evolving cyberthreat landscape through discussions, expert interviews, and insightful analysis.
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The Louis Theroux Podcast is back for a "star studded second series", including Hollywood icon Sharon Stone, visionary filmmaker Baz Luhrmann, fellow podcast maestro Adam Buxton, and breakout music sensation PinkPantheress, with more to be announced. Paul Mescal is the guest today. We have to tell you that "The Louis Theroux Podcast is a Spotify podcast, now available everywhere, with new episodes every Tuesday" apparently.
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Tomorrow, Nick Borenstein from The Webby Awards is chatting with Podcast Movement’s Dan Franks about “how AI can empower and transform the landscape of podcasting.” The event is free at 1pm EST; you can register here.
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The history book on the shelf is always repeating itself: fifty years ago, ABBA's Waterloo won the Eurovision Song Contest - and now you've got this ABBA song going round your head, and you couldn't escape if you wanted to. Like A Magic Spell is a brand new podcast unlocking the joy of ABBA, one song at a time with ABBA superfans and music journalists.
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Modern podcast app Podverse is so popular, some scammers have worked out how to get free access to the premium version and are selling it to unsuspecting users.
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Simon Willison writes about consistency and “escalating streaks”, looking at the ten-year career of British YouTuber Tom Scott, who has just retired from producing weekly videos.
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Fountain has published v1.0 of its podcast app, with a refreshed design, a new clip editor, home feed, and other improvements. It also has added a payment connection with the Strike app. Co-founder Oscar Merry is interviewed on the Podnews Weekly Review about the changes this week.
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PodEngine is a new podcast discovery platform in beta. It transcribes every new episode, analyses each one for your interests, and emails you timestamped clips once a week. The company is currently scaling up its infrastructure.
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Bryce Crosswell is to leave Acast and join SCA's LiSTNR as Head of Digital Sales in Melbourne.
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Starting today, Ghost - Scary Stories features Thanksghosting: a spine-chilling week-long podcast event where eerie ghost stories meet the warm, cozy vibes of Thanksgiving. Prepare to be haunted each day with tales that will make your turkey tremble and cranberry sauce curdle. (Podnews fact check: cranberry sauce can't curdle.)
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Johnny Jet, a travel blogger, is the latest victim of a scam aimed at podcasters. It was a Facebook hack, where someone promised to pay a guest fee of $3,000, and gained control of his Facebook page under the guise of setting up a live event. Here's someone else reporting the same thing; and Podnews knows of a very high-profile podcaster who fell for a similar scam in September (being promised $2,000 to remotely speak). He told us: "We should warn podcasters about this. They’re PHISHING, but targeting podcasters specifically. This pitch was tailored to me personally."
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What happens when a failed sitcom superstar is forced out of Hollywood and starts work stacking shelves? Supermarket is the result - a new podcast from 911 Podcasts featuring an ensemble cast. The comedy fiction podcast is 911 Podcasts' third release, after Cascadia and ICE-CREAM.
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Libsyn's AdvertiseCast has signed an ad partnership deal with Big IP Media to cover four popular reality-TV podcasts ... PodcastOne signed multiyear extensions for On Display with Melissa Gorga, Gals on the Go and LADYGANG (which it renewed in March) ... ARN's iHeart Podcast Network Australia announced a multi-year sales partnership with 7NEWS, Australia’s most-watched television network for news and public affairs. ARN has launched a takeover bid for its rival SCA/LiSTNR.
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Variety writes How Wondery Brought Studio-Style Scale to Podcasting.
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Podcast hosting company Libsyn made a number of people redundant on Friday: among them, software developer Nick Michaels, Product Manager Yvette Jenny Menase, Web developers Gary Hlusko, Michael Scarlett, and Software Engineer Jeremiah Voltz. At Pair, Customer Service Rhonda Webb, Apps Security Jaime Eberley, and another five roles have been removed from Libsyn-owned Pair since June.
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Missing Pages returns today from The Podglomerate. This season investigates the biggest “hot button” topics in the book world – from the rise of Colleen Hoover, to the idea of who owns what in fan fiction, as well as the impact of literary scams and frauds, and the fallout from the 2022 DOJ trial against the PRH/S&S merger.
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The Wedding Scammer is new from The Ringer, and is the Spotify-owned company's first ever true crime podcast. Justin Sayles tracks a mysterious figure who once wronged him. A man with a lot of aliases, a lot of failed businesses, and a trail of victims. Justin follows him through a sham media company, a series of ruined weddings, and beyond, trying to find answers.
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In Australia, the owner of iHeartPodcast Network Australia ARN Media has made a hostile bid to take over its competitor, SCA (which owns LiSTNR). The radio market is worth AUD $1.7bn (US $1.1bn): ARN and SCA are the two largest companies. If successful, the broadcast radio business would be split into two companies for regulatory reasons; however, the podcast businesses aren't subject to the same ownership regulation.
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From the creators of Radio Rental and Tenderfoot TV, Rattled & Shook is a variety show for all things creepy-adjacent and horror-lite where each week, hosts Aprile and Meredith share new scary stories — reacting in real time — play horror-themed games, and feature special guests.
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Further reading/viewing: "Don't make podcasts radio," said Oxford Road CEO Dan Granger in a speech made at Podcast Movement which was made available this week on the company's YouTube channel … Acast's Megan Davies has posted about what she calls a revolutionary female podcast landscape in Saudi Arabia … NPR left Twitter six months ago; but the broadcaster says traffic to its websites has dropped by only one percentage point … and The Verge covers more about redundancies and cancellations at WNYC.
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Through October until the scariest night of the year, Ghost: Scary Stories Daily is bringing you bone-chilling ghost stories that will have your heart racing and your spine tingling. They're doing 31 stories in 31 days, so there are already six to choose from. Get ready to face your deepest fears and join them on a haunting journey leading up to Halloween.
Ashley Flowers, Founder & CCO, Audiochuck and Host, William "Donwill" Freeman, Rapper, DJ, Producer & Host, Neil Cowling, Founder, Fresh Air Production, Laci Mosley, Actress, Comedian & Host of Scam Goddess, Adam Sachs, SVP Comedy Entertainment Radio & Podcasts, SiriusXM, and Malvina Goldfeld, Chief Product Officer, Podimo.
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British podcast network Noiser has achieved over 13 million monthly downloads for the first time since launching in 2020. It's doubled in size in the last 18 months: in part due to the success of Real Survival Stories and the company’s recent partnership with BBC Sounds. The company is a self-funded indie, run by Pascal Hughes.
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Kym Treasure from Audacia Audio writes in ExchangeWire about the significance of digital audio advertising in today's dynamic marketing landscape.
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Burger Murders is a true-crime series for 2023. From soggy buns, barely melted cheese and frozen beef, the podcast delves into the most serious UK burger crimes, featuring real-life accounts, about what happens when fast food goes scarily wrong. It's hosted by Joel Morris and Sara Barron, and is sponsored by - who else - Wendy's, which returned to the UK in 2021.
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A new Australian Podcast Ranker has been released for August. SCA's LiSTNR now has over 8mn monthly listeners. ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia is celebrating being the #1 podcast publisher for 40 consecutive rankers.
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Exposed: Cover-Up at Columbia University is a a new investigative podcast, reported and hosted by award-winning health reporter Laura Beil. Centering on the scandal around Dr. Robert Hadden, an OB-GYN at Columbia University who abused his patients for more than 20 years, the show shares the stories of numerous survivors and their decade-long battle to bring Hadden to justice and hold institutions accountable. It's produced by Wondery.
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Part of the Airwave Podcast Network: The Movies That Made Me features filmmakers and entertainers, discussing the movies that inspired them. Recorded live in Hollywood, it's hosted by Oscar nominated screenwriter Josh Olson and director Joe Dante.
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"Criminal gangs behind a rise in bombings and shootings in Sweden in recent years are using fake Spotify streams to launder money", is the unusual claim in Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. The article, reported in The Guardian, suggests that Swedish gangster rap is actually funding Swedish gangsters. Spotify says it has not found “any data or hard evidence that indicates that the platform is being used at scale in the fashion described”.
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Nielsen released a new Podcasting Today report, with data from Edison Research and Nielsen Scarborough Podcast Buying Power. The total US podcast audience has grown 68% in the last five years, with the number of Hispanic listeners almost doubling. Comedy is the most popular genre.
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Launched Sept 2020 in Podnews, NPR ends localised versions of the Consider This podcast this week, which they claimed at the time was the "first localised daily news podcast". Localisation "did not prove sustainable", said a spokesperson; Current reports that the production process wasn't scalable; audiences didn't value it much anyway; and NPR is moving to Megaphone which means the use of different tools. Consider This continues, with national content (featuring anchors like Mary Louise Kelly, above)
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Part of the Airwave podcast network: What is the history of the potato? The Enigma machine? Constantinople? Houdini? History of Everything takes deep dives into history every week, whether you're into war battles or Presidential sex scandals.
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Part of the Airwave podcast network: Tumble Science Podcast for Kids explores stories of science discovery - for the whole family. Join Lindsay Patterson and Marshall Escamilla as they ask questions, uncover mysteries, and share what science is all about.
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Two years ago, the US pulled out of Afghanistan, and a desperate sea of humanity rushed to Kabul airport to escape with them. More than 80,000 refugees made their way to America - but what happened to those families, arriving in the middle of a pandemic with a lack of affordable housing? Stranger Becomes Neighbor is a new six-part series from KSL Podcasts.
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It's two years since El Salvador said Bitcoin was legal tender. The Spanish-language Plan Cuscatlán: de las Pandillas al Bitcoin investigates how Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador and self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator”, took the world by surprise when he announced the Bitcoin Law that would make his country the first in the world to adopt crypto. Almost all voices in the show are Salvadoran; it's made by Argentinian production studio Mantel.
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From Better Homes & Gardens, The Better Buy returns for a new season, to delve into the full home buying process, from house hunting and moving to interior design and landscaping. Each episode will progress through this homeownership journey, with host Mélanie Berliet talking to both experts and celebrities who will share their stories, practical tips, and advice.
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The Automated Daily is produced every day, automatically, by AI. "Our intelligent algorithms scour the news landscape to sift through the noise, ensuring that you receive only the most relevant and significant stories." (Hmm, we use a human for that...)
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German podcast hosting company LetsCast
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Free plugin, anyone? If you want your podcast to sound as if it's been recorded on a TASCAM cassette deck, today is your lucky day - and no requirement for a bit of sellotape over the recording hole. You've until the end of August to grab a free plugin from TASCAM and IK Multimedia, and add a bit of 1⅞ ips sound to your next show.
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Libsyn's AdvertiseCast has signed a new exclusive ad partnership with podcast producer Big IP Media … iHeart has signed a strategic partnership with LinkedIn and the LinkedIn Podcast Network … meanwhile, in France, Audion has signed Engle and Slate France to use Audion360, the company's podcast distribution and monetisation tool.
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Seekr and Oxford Road have launched what they call the first-ever "civility score" for podcasts. Using AI, the tool scans podcast episodes in their entirety, enabling it to spot instances of ad hominem attacks that occur at any point in a program, so brands can avoid getting caught in the crossfire. "Now, we can reward the most responsible voices, rather than those that are simply the loudest", says Oxford Road CEO Dan Granger.
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One of the oldest podcast apps, Stitcher is to close on Aug 29. An internal memo, seen by Podnews, says that the "scale and reach of our widely-distributed podcasts has been and remains a crucial accelerant for our advertising sales business". In January, Stitcher was the sixth-biggest podcast app in the US, according to Podtrac - though it had lost a quarter of its users in two years, and had only 1.3% of the market.
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Oliver Newton has been hired by SCA as Executive Head - LiSTNR Commercial. He joins from Amazon, where he was AdTech Sales Director.
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Kim Loasby has been announced as SCA's Head of Digital Ad Product & Operations. In her new remit, Loasby will oversee the creation and development of all digital advertising products across the LiSTNR platform.
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The owner of the iHeartPodcast Network Australia, ARN Media has bought a 14.7% share of its competitor SCA, which owns LiSTNR. Media ownership laws mean it can't own more than 15%.
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The Set is new from Audacy this week, looking at the biggest corruption scandal in NYPD history. The show is able to binge listen on the Audacy app today, but will release on other platforms each week. It's is written, directed, and narrated by Zak Levitt.
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The Australian Podcast Ranker for May was released. Both ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia and SCA's LiSTNR claim various #1 slots. The #1 publisher in the country is the ABC, but they are still not participating in the ranker; they announced their participation in March (and in Oct 2019).
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Separately, The Athletic appear to be scaling back on its slate of soccer podcasts in the UK, according to tweets from David Cameron Walker, The Phil Hay Show, and The Square Ball.
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It's the latest acquisition from the PodX Group, who now own companies in Scandinavia, Argentina, France and the UK. To learn more about PodX Group, read this interview with CEO Staffan Rosell in the Podcast Business Journal.
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Indian Podcasting Revolution is a new show looking at the podcast industry in India. The show, hosted by Roshni Baronia and Rohit Kokane, gives a shoutout to noteworthy Indian podcasts, interviews successful independent podcasters and gets insights from global experts to shape up the Indian podcasting landscape.
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The Podnews Weekly Review this week includes interviews with Mark Asquith of Captivate on the company's new monetisation tools, Oscar Merry of Fountain on the new version of the app, and Martin Mouritzen on the new version of Podfriend.
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A star of West Wing and Scandal, Joshua Malina, is to join the Jewish podcast Unorthodox, it was announced. His first show is on May 25. The show itself has been airing weekly since 2015.
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Seb Rennie, who was hired by SCA in February as Executive Head, LiSTNR Commercial, is to be the company's new Chief Commercial Officer.
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Among the other announcements at the IAB Podcast Upfronts in New York NY, USA: Sony Music Entertainment announced a growing slate including the addition of Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness to its network (from Earwolf/SiriusXM) … and Wondery and Bloomberg announced a mini-series focusing on the FTX crypto scandal, and Sam Bankman-Fried's part in it. (Available "on Wondery+ and the Bloomberg Terminal" from May 22).
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Supermix is a new "AI scaling platform" for podcast creators.
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Barometer and Audiohook have partnered to offer media buyers brand suitability and contextual targeting at scale.
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Data: Cumulus Media shares 7 New Findings About The Podcast Audience, from the Share of Ear study conducted by Edison Research.
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SCA, the owner of the LiSTNR app in Australia, has announced a new CEO: John Kelly, the company's current COO. The current CEO, Grant Blackley, will step down on Jun 30.
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WNYC and Gothamist have launched a new podcast, NYC NOW. Updated three times a day, it contains the latest WNYC newscasts. In a letter posted on Gothamist, Editor in Chief Audrey Cooper suggests the new podcast is an accompaniment to WNYC and Gothamist's longer-form material.
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Data: 45% of podcast agencies are struggling with their resourcing, says a new survey. CoHost has released The State of Podcast Agencies 2023, promising insights into the podcast agency landscape including the biggest constraints and opportunities facing them today.
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Spotify believes that podcast advertising could be easier and more efficient for ad buyers. In an interview to be published later today for the Podcast Business Journal, Nina Harvey says the Spotify Audience Network is "able to bring to an advertiser a single buying point to supply an efficient way to access audiences at scale." You can subscribe to the Podcast Business Journal here.
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In Australia, SCA's LiSTNR is to add audio content from public service broadcaster SBS, including 40 "premium podcasts" and six radio stations.
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talkSPORT, a UK sports broadcaster, has launched a football podcast network. The network includes many fan-led soccer shows, and the network will enable advertisers to target football supporters at scale.
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty has joined the iHeartPodcast Network. "As the podcast has scaled globally it made perfect sense to join together with the number one podcast publisher - iHeartMedia", said Shetty.
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Podcast Brunch Club - like book club, but for podcasts - published its April playlist focusing on scams.
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Podshape has launched SleepScape, a premium subscription podcast that gives you two hours of sounds from places across Australia. "The world's first ambient sound sleep aid podcast", it is recorded in 360-degree audio, and is available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.
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Brand-safety firm DoubleVerify claims that ad fraud has come to audio, suggesting one company has made a tool to produce fake listeners for podcasts, so the ads within the shows are never listened-to. The article from Morning Brew suggests the problem is not to any significant scale, though.
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Popular YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips has been hacked: the channel's 15.3mn subscribers got to see promotion for crypto scams instead. The videos now appear to have been restored.
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LiSTNR's Just the Gist has hit ten million downloads. The show tells stories about famous scandals, true crimes, celeb drama, conspiracy theories, politics, and amazing people throughout history.
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The Australian Podcast Ranker for February has been released, containing shows from Shameless Media and Squiz Media for the first time. The ABC's figures could be in next month. Kyle & Jackie O, from iHeart, is the new #1 podcast. SCA's LiSTNR claims it now reaches more than 6.5m monthly listeners.
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Podcast Movement Evolutions is about to start in Las Vegas NV, USA. A multi-track podcasting event, it's designed to help people keep up with the evolving landscape of audio and podcasting.
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Veritone released the company's 2022 financial results. The company saw a revenue increase of 30% y/y.
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Apple Podcasts is running a number of free virtual sessions for podcasters about the platform. "Classes include What’s New at Apple Podcasts, Setting Up Your Subscription, and Apple Podcasts Marketing Tools and Resources."
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The owner of LiSTNR, SCA also released its annual report. It claims 3.4mn monthly podcast listeners, and 889,000 registered users on LiSTNR. Digital revenue was AU$20.7mn (US $14mn), up 35% y/y: 5.2% of total audio revenue (the group also owns television licences).
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Stuck with Damon Young returns with more off-the-cuff conversations inspired by today’s most culturally relevant headlines and round ups of Damon-approved listener-submitted questions. In the first episode of season 2, “Girls Trip” and “Scary Movie 5” director and filmmaker Malcolm D. Lee joins Damon to recount Super Bowl weekend. It's a Spotify exclusive from Gimlet.
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The Australian Podcast Ranker for January was released. SCA's LiSTNR claims number one, while ARN's iHeartPodnews Network Australia also claims number one. SiriusXM (represented by LiSTNR) reached #2 in the publisher list, despite making no shows in the country.
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Former late night host Craig Ferguson is to do a podcast with iHeartMedia.
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Plastic is everywhere - it's advanced our world, but damaged our environment, and our health. Discarded is new from Lemonada Media this week, focusing on society’s relationship with plastic, as told through the personal story of Sharon Lavigne, who became an accidental activist in this space. It's hosted by Gloria Riviera.
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Amelia Chappelow from Earwolf and Stitcher came back to Brisbane, Australia for the first time in three and a half years and the sheila defo liked back home, hey.
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False Profits: Hillsong is new today from Storyglass and iHeartPodcasts, looking at Hillsong, the global megachurch favoured by the former Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison, among many others. The podcast focuses on the rise and fall of the church's founder, the many scandals of the church, and stories of submission, exploitation, and discrimination.
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Further reading: Key takeaways from Podfest Expo from Christopher H Loo says that artificial intelligence was hard to escape … and The Irish Times focuses on the country's young podcasters.
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Former CNN anchor and journalist Carol Costello is working with Evergreen Podcasts for Carol Costello Presents: Blind Rage - focusing this season on the attack of Phyllis Cottle, who was blinded by her assailant. Costello says: “Her story is tragic, but that's not her full story. Her life in her words, ‘had a purpose’ after she escaped her attacker.”
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Launching today from Colorado Public Radio, Terra Firma is a new short-form podcast pairing reflections on nature with soundscapes gathered in wild places.
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The Australian Podcast Ranker for December was released by Triton Digital. SCA's Hamish & Andy lost their top spot - but then, they didn't release a single show in December; the #1 is now Casefile True Crime, produced by Audioboom and represented by ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia, which remains the top publisher; while SCA's LiSTNR remains the top sales house (just). Both claim they're #1 in press releases.
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Australia's Shameless has launched a subscription channel on Apple Podcasts, called Shamemore. "Shameless is known for unpacking celebrity controversies, including scandals that have rocked the public, shaken up popular culture, and changed the way we think such as as the Jen, Brad and Angelina love triangle. Now Shamemore subscribers will receive ad-free listening across all episodes, early binge drops for the SCANDAL series, and monthly bonus episodes."
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Magellan AI has updated the Podscape, the overview of all the companies involved in the podcast industry.
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The Statue is new from WHYY today: a podcast looking at a monument to the most famous Philadelphian who never lived: “Rocky Balboa” of the Oscar Award-winning film Rocky (1976). The show sheds light on the stories of real-life Philly boxers and explores the neighborhoods around the city that run parallel to the statue.
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Texture and Artefact is a new project from James Errington, combining personal monologues, field recordings, interviews with friends and family, clips from old cassettes, occasional drama and original music, all knitted together into narrative soundscapes. From the person who gave us Centuries of Sound, it's a beautiful piece of sound design. One episode a month, the first is out today.
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The Google Podcasts app itself got no new feature updates in 2022. A press release announcing a Google-branded podcast forgot the platform existed in February. A YouTube document suggested it might merge into that product; but progress seems to have stalled. The third biggest podcast app, it was responsible for 2.6% of all podcast plays from Buzzsprout in December.
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The BBC says that the most listened-to podcast on BBC Sounds over the festive period (Dec 20-Jan 2) was Newscast; and that the service saw 9% more listens over the holidays this year (57.7m, including live/catch-up radio).
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At a loose end this holiday time? Want to escape from the family and do something to help podcasting? Why not write a page for the new podcastnamespace - the website's open for anyone to edit.
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The host of Sword and Scale, Mike Boudet has posted a racially unpleasant poll on Twitter. Boudet was sacked by Wondery in 2019 after similar Twitter comments, and was widely accused of orchestrating one-star reviews against a competitor. He has denied that he left one star reviews; and is also the subject of a YouTube documentary. We've again asked for comment.
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From iHeartMedia, Table for Two is hosted by celebrity restauranteur Bruce Bozzi. He's joined by some of his customers - Hollywood's biggest stars. The first episode features Scarlett Johansson. It's co-produced by AirMail.
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As the popular show finishes up, My Dad Wrote A... releases a bonus episode today, where the team hear from their fans. One listener used the podcast to scare away a bear, we learn, while another proposes to his boyfriend live on the episode. Listen to find out if he said yes.
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Podimo has launched Entre el cielo y las nubes, a podcast from the influencer Laura Escanes.
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PSA: Applied for a job with JAR Audio only to find they want money? It's not them: it's just a phishing scam. Tell your friends.
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The Podnews Weekly Review is like Podnews, but longer - a review of the week's podcasting news with Sam Sethi (formerly an executive with Netscape and TechCrunch EMEA) and James Cridland, the editor of Podnews and the man who is currently typing this. This week, Nic Ivanov from Vizzy talks about his tool for enriching podcasts.
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SCA and Veritonic measured brand sonic logos in Australia, including those in podcasts. Bunnings Warehouse scored highest (there's a clip in our podcast today).
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Podcast hosting company Libsyn - the first in the world - turns 18 tomorrow. Founded by Dave Mansueto, Matt Hoopes, Marty Mulligan, and Dave Chekan on Nov 5, 2004, here's the back story and, rescued from the web, Libsyn's first video ad. Libsyn's CEO Brad Tirpak told Podnews: “We’re proud of our growth and transformation. Our innovation and investments are paying off — with the scaling of our advertising business, international expansion, and enhancements to our industry-leading tools.” Under US law, now it's 18, Libsyn will be legally able to get a tattoo, vote, use a meat slicer, and adopt a child.
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From CBC Podcasts - #18 is: Buffy For 60 years Buffy Sainte-Marie’s music has reverberated throughout pop culture, providing a touchstone for Indigenous resistance. Mohawk and Tuscarora writer Falen Johnson explores how Buffy’s life is essential to understanding Indigenous resilience.
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Natalie Hauptman, a former marketer for Manscaped, has launched Podscale, a podcast advertising agency. "We found that the vast majority of agencies that offer podcast advertising do not specialize in it, and only offer it because their clients demanded it," she writes.
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Case 63 launched today on Spotify. The series features the voices of Academy and Emmy Award-winning actor Julianne Moore and Golden Globe-winning actor Oscar Isaac. It follows a New York psychiatrist who begins treating a patient registered as Case 63 who claims to be from the year 2062. What begins as routine therapeutic sessions quickly turns into a story that threatens the boundaries of the possible and the real. The series is produced by Spotify’s Gimlet studios, Moore’s production company FortySixty, and Isaac’s Mad Gene Media.
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Data: In Australia, the ABC's Annual Report was published. The national broadcaster is seeing 33m downloads per month for its podcasts (p64), up 22% year-on-year. (ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia, the #1 according to the Australian Podcast Ranker, got 18m downloads in Sep 2022). News shows got the highest increase (50% year-on-year); the ABC News Daily achieved 46% higher downloads than its predecessor, The Signal. Long-form interview podcast Conversations remains #1, with an 8% drop. /ht Oscar
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The Australian Podcast Ranker for September was released. SCA says LiSTNR is #1. ARN says its iHeartPodcast Network is also #1. The ranker doesn't measure the ABC, which is probably #1.
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Enjoying nature and escaping to green spaces are an essential part of our modern lives. Now, more than ever, we understand the need to preserve and protect these places. But what if our love of the land is accidentally doing more harm than good? Produced by The Podglomerate, Trail Weight returns for a new season today.
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Writing about Podcasting's paradox of choice, Steven Goldstein suggests making your show easily scannable by getting the description right.
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Octave, a joint venture between Bauer Media and News UK, has launched podcast ad sales for over 1,000 shows and 100 million impressions.
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Hot on the heels of an agreement with Stitcher and SiriusXM, SCA's LiSTNR has announced that it will also exclusively represent Wondery's podcasts in Australia.
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In Australia, SCA's LiSTNR has announced an agreement to represent Stitcher and SiriusXM inventory in the country. This will increase LiSTNR's monthly podcast reach by 81%.
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The winners of The African Podcast and Voice Awards were announced in a virtual ceremony. Supported by podcast hosting company Captivate, the Podcast of the Year went to Mantalk.ke by Eli Mwenda and Oscar Koome Mbabu.
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SCA, an Australian radio broadcaster and operator of audio app LiSTNR, has signed a multi-year podcast deal with AFL, the Australian Football League.
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First look: Podcast hosting company Captivate has just announced v2 of their dynamic content and monetisation engine AMIE. The tool includes new slot management, interface upgrades and tagging to allow podcasters to manage dynamic content quickly and at scale.
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Alby has been accused of copying "almost word-for-word" an article from Fountain. Fountain's Oscar Merry spotted the similarities in the Podcast Index social board; Alby's Michael Bumann has taken the page down, and claims he "did not do the required review".
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Scaled: The Latino Business Story is the first business podcast from LWC Studios, produced for the Latino Business Action Network. The show tells the stories of Latino/a entrepreneurs and their journeys to scaling their businesses to millions in annual revenue.
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Mattan: Injustice of a Hanged Man is new from the BBC, exploring a shocking miscarriage of justice which led to the execution of Somali seaman Mahmood Mattan on September 3 1952. The first episode comes out on Friday; it's hosted by Danielle Fahiya.
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Björk: Sonic Symbolism is new from Talkhouse and Mailchimp Presents. Created and hosted by Björk, the intimate and immersive new podcast features a first-person reflection on the textures, timbres and emotional landscapes that characterized the creation of each of her albums.
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Missing Pages, Podglomerate's first original production, went live yesterday - a look behind the book publishing industry and its scams, fiascos, frauds, and lies.
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Daniel Karlsson has been made Vice President of Market Development & Global Strategy at Triton Digital. He started work at Triton Digital in 2008, and has been with the company a total of thirteen and a half years.
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Looking Forward hit 100 episodes at the end of last week. The host, Jeff Ostroff, told us that the 100th episode focuses on opportunities created by the somewhat obscure, yet growing industry known as “fiscal sponsorship.”
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A company called Ninet5 Technologies is fraudulently claiming to sell email lists of attendees of Podfest, Podcast Movement, Radiodays Europe and other conferences. Initial emails are sent from domains without websites like AbsoluteFair, Eviqevents, Inotegritty, CorbitalOrganisers and many others; and we can confirm that the data is not supplied by the event organisers. Approached for comment by Podnews, Mike Jordan, the VP of Sales, would not tell us how they got the data, and did not respond to follow-up questions. Their website looks impressive, but is demonstrably false and incomplete in many places. Other websites also suggest that Ninet5 Technologies are scammers; and the company, registered in Wyoming, didn't pay its tax, and was dissolved in 2020.
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Chameleon: Scam Likely is brand new from Campside Media. Ordinary citizens all around the US are losing their life savings to scam callers... so the hunt is on for the shadowy multinational mob behind the con. Hosted by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, it launches today.
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Grant Blackley, CEO of SCA, which owns LiSTNR, spoke about his company's app at a recent conference.
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False Idol from Religion of Sports has been named Best Sports Podcast at the 2022 Hashtag Sports Awards. The show re-examined the rise and fall of Oscar Pistorius.
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The latest edition of Career Crossroads interviews new Podcast Hall of Famer Evo Terra. Hear about his career path before podcasting, and how he ended up turning podcasting into a career. Other notable podcasters to appear on the show are Lindsay Graham, creator/host of History Daily, Business Movers, American Scandal among others, and Podnews's Editor, James Cridland.
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From Pushkin: From Montréal to Mexico City, Not Lost is a delightful travel escape and an insightful look at people — locals and visitors alike — trying to make sense of a constantly changing world. You can binge the entire season now.
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Mediatel has launched Audioscape, which they call "the UK's first interactive directory of the audio industry". It's free, and available to anyone.
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Curl Up & D.I. from Folding Pocket is already making headway into the trending charts before its release on Thursday. It claims it's the UK's first major scripted fiction podcast to feature household name acting talent, including Katherine Kelly, Vic Reeves and Morgana Robinson. A surrealist comedy-drama is a murder-mystery that sees a pair of hapless police officers turning to their hairdressers for their help in solving an escalating murder problem.
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Cinedigm has announced new shows for its podcast network, which has reached 50 million downloads … PodcastOne has announced 14 additional shows … YR Media and Critical Frequency are partnering for a new season of Inherited … Kate Mara is to star in a supernatural audio drama, Necropolis, from podcast studio Echoverse; no release date was given … Sound Talent Media's partnership with Evergreen Podcasts has expanded with three new shows: 3am Scary Stories, music show One Two Me You, and a show exploring bands who had only one big song, One Hit Thunder.
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The International Women's Podcast Festival was last weekend. PodBible's Francesca Turauskis writes about her day.
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The New Conspiracist looks at conspiracies across the world, with comedian and BAFTA winner Jolyon Rubinstein and Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist James Ball. They are joined by expert guests to unpack one specific conspiracy theory, from the frankly ridiculous but enjoyably escapist (the pyramids were built by aliens) to the somewhat believable and eye-opening (the truth behind the lack of pockets in women’s clothes). A new season launches today.
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Academy and Emmy Award-winning actress Julianne Moore and Golden Globe-winning actor Oscar Isaac are to star in a new podcast from Spotify called Case 63. The show was announced in September last year, and is an adaptation of a show from Santiago in Chile which was Spotify's most listened-to show in Latin America.
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A prisoner on the run has appeared on a podcast. Fugitive Greggor Grey appears in the latest episode of The Chop Shop Podcast. Tip: harbouring an escapee is a criminal offence with a maximum ten years in prison, even if you're harbouring them in a comfy podcast studio.
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The new episode of Pod Chat released today is with Captivate CEO, Mark Asquith. "The time for exciting things needs to take a break, and we need to get really good at the basics. How do we measure things? How do we make sure that all creators are represented fairly? How do we begin to educate that podcasting is different depending on your scale?"
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Tascam has released the Mixcast 4 Podcast Station, a product that will inevitably be compared to the RØDECaster Pro II.
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Headgum has acquired the Too Scary, Didn’t Watch video podcast, and launched a new show called Keepin' It Rel. Average weekly downloads for its Headgum Original podcasts have increased 50% year-on-year, the company says.
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"The choice facing the industry is that we can choose to fight amongst ourselves and elbow each other out and grow at the expense of a competitor. Or, [we can] all work together to grow the sector." Media Week interviewed Podnews's Editor about the podcast landscape in the UK and beyond.
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Yesterday, we mentioned a podcast claiming it had the oldest podcast guest of all time, at 92. Records are made to be broken: tomorrow, the new season of Remarkable Stories will start with an interview with Lou Landreth, who's 98. She talks with Mike McDowall about her life, her husbands and her criminal escapades around the globe.
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Thank you to Dave Jones, Adam Curry, Medus, Chrislas, the Mere Mortals podcast and Oscar Merry for your kind boosts over the past few weeks. Here's where to get a new podcast app that will help support us using value4value.
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CuriousCast, Corus Entertainment's podcast network, is to monetise through Megaphone. The network was hosting with Omny Studio.
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The Australian Podcast Ranker was published for April. Orginal podcasts by both ARN's iHeartPodcast Network and SCA both lost 18% of downloads month-on-month. An incomplete ranker, it measures participating publishers only, and not the country's #1 podcast publisher, the ABC.
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New from iHeartRadio, Sympathy Pains is a chilling new true crime podcast hosted by Laura Beil -- acclaimed medical journalist and host of the chart-topping podcast, Dr. Death. It's the true story of Sarah Delashmit, a scam artist who convinced everyone that she was amazingly ill. The story even involved Dr Phil.
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There's a new #1 show in the Australian Podcast Ranker: SCA's Hamish and Andy top the chart. For publishers, ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia is still #1 for podcasts, but SCA is closing the gap.
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An Australian podcast covering a swindle got swindled themselves - by a fake guest. The guest, working through a bogus PR agency, demanded payment for her appearance on LiSTNR's The Briefing. Owner SCA said they removed the episode, and didn't pay.
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Dave Jones from the Podcast Index has posted about WebSub, and why "it doesn't scale well". The Podcast Index is using a system called PodPing, which it prefers.
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"The future of media is synthetic media", claims Aflorithmic, a company taking your text and making a podcast from it. The company claims it "makes personalised audio scalable"; it's based in London and Barcelona.
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The team behind Shelter in Place: escape into life is celebrating two years of award-winning work and almost two hundred episodes. The show is an award-winning narrative nonfiction podcast.
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Oscar Merry has suggested Lightning Comments as a potential solution for cross-app commenting: using "boostagrams" as a method of sending comments. We like this idea; and the spec is simple enough for us to code it; so, you'll find a "comments" section on every update in Podnews's web version. You can also see those comments in the Fountain app.
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Libsyn's AdvertiseCast has added exclusive partnerships with four new podcasts, including The Gist with Mike Pesca. Pesca was suspended last year from Slate, who subsequently sold the podcast to Pesca's Peach Fish Productions.
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The Real Estate Rebel with Scott McGillivray is back for a third season, this time working with Acast. It will cover topics like how to invest in a hot real estate market, how social media is changing the real estate landscape, and lessons Scott has learned from being a landlord for over 20 years. - read more
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A successful Australian podcast goes exclusive on SCA's LiSTNR app this week. 2 Guys 1 Cup got 28,655 downloads in January, according to the Australian Podcast Ranker, but will no longer be available on other platforms from this week. The Podcast Ranker means we can monitor the effect exclusivity has on their figures.
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Scoundrel: History’s Forgotten Villains is new from the creators of Myths and Legends and Kast Media. It tells "the stories of the rapscallions through time who were just a little more adept at hiding their evil from historians than others", and is hosted by Jason and Carissa Weiser. - read more
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In Australia, The owner of the iHeartPodcast Network Australia, HT&E's ARN "plans to invest heavily in podcasting", according to their 2021 results, which were released today. Meanwhile, SCA's LiSTNR is to invest in audio fiction.
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Another new service, Scale Your Podcast Marketing, offers to produce graphical assets for your show's social media, transcripts, sound bites and tweets.
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Spotify has acquired Podsights and Chartable. Spotify describes Podsights as "a leading podcast advertising measurement service that helps advertisers better measure and scale their podcast advertising", and Chartable as "a podcast analytics platform that enables publishers to know and grow their podcast audiences through promotional attribution and audience insight tools". No terms were given.
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James Cator, the Head of Studios for Spotify UK/IE, looks as if he is to leave the company, since his role is being advertised on the Spotify website. He'd been with Spotify for more than six years. Intriguing - we wondery where he's going?
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Poscar is a new podcast about podcasting, mainly targeting productions in Spanish from Latin America and Spain. A fortnightly podcast, it has just launched with an introduction and an episode all about podcast awards. It's hosted by Pablo Fisher.
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From the team that brought you S-Town and Serial, The Trojan Horse Affair launches today - S-Town's Brian Reed and journalist Hamza Syed investigate a mystery at the heart of a scandal that rocked Britain. Has an entire country been duped? - read more
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The BBC says it saw a total of 257m podcast downloads globally last quarter. That would make it the #3 podcast publisher in the world, possibly; NPR has 169m vs the BBC's 85m per month. The 257m doesn't include all plays though - a BBC spokesperson tells us: "If you listen via BBC Sounds as a stream (e.g. without downloading it) then they’re not included. If listening via BBC Sounds as a download then they would be."
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Pod People is to launch original podcasts with TikTok stars. Billed as "not celebrity interview shows", the podcasts are scripted, immersive soundscapes with original characters.
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Acast has announced the launch of a specialised "growth division", dedicated to helping podcasts scale and grow.
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Baby or Bust is new from Dr Lora Shahine, and will gather medical experts and patients to bust myths, shatter stigmas, and provide encouraging best practices to help anyone trying make their baby dream come true. The series will address the numerous questions that people struggling with fertility have but are too scared or uncomfortable to ask, and launches today.
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From Signal Hill Insights, Jeff Vidler offers information on how podcasting can manage the ad revenue boom, and move towards more scalable solutions.
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Corinna Bellizzi and Julie Lokun have launched Femcasters, a community dedicated to amplifying female voices worldwide.
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Tascam has announced updated firmware for its Mixcast 4 Podcast Station. It adds better voice effects, input gain control, and additional tools: but it won't be available until February.
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Sounds Profitable and Magellan AI have made a new update for their Podscape - a look at all the companies in podcasting today.
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When does a "lifetime account" only last nine months? When it's a lifetime account with podcast hosting company bCast. The service, which currently hosts 630 shows in the Podcast Index, has been accused by users of being a scam. After selling "lifetime accounts" on AppSumo earlier this year, bCast has announced that all lifetime accounts will expire in just two weeks. The TrustPilot reviews (which bCast still links to from its front page) are scathing.
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Ian Urbina, a journalist, has been accused of operating a scam by musician Benn Jordan. Urbina is claimed to be collecting royalties for more than 400 artists, for music he didn't write, using a distribution company that, it appears, he owns. Urbina has partially apologised in three parts, and a fact check questions some of the claims made.
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Sounds Profitable has taken its Podscape, its map of the podcast industry with Magellan AI, and turned it into a podcast. Bryan Barletta says the podcast will help give a voice to the hundreds of companies in this space and help answer the question: "what do you do again?"
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Australian broadcaster SCA has acquired Kinderling, a kids podcaster. No terms were given; Kinderling had previously been using part of the company's DAB+ spectrum for a kids radio station.
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In Australia, the winners of the Australian Commercian Radio Awards were announced, including a number of podcast winners. Best Original Podcast went to Zero Waste Baby with Veronica Milsom, produced by SCA's LiSTNR.
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Voiceworks: Sound Business has our Editor, James Cridland, as their guest this episode. James sits down with host Jim Salveson to discuss the current value in the podcast market, how Spotify is disrupting the landscape and make some bold predictions as to what might change in the industry over the next 2 to 3 years.
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Italian food - not just pasta and pizza, but also Casu Martzu, a cheese filled with maggots; and Sanguinaccio, a dessert made of blood. Yum! The Ugly Ducklings of Italian Cuisine - Scarrafoni in Cucina is a new, bi-lingual podcast from SBS covering those regional delicacies that don't get onto Instagram that often. Ascolta tutti gli episodi in italiano e in inglese per uno sguardo inedito sulla cucina italiana. - read more
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The newest episode of Days Like These, published in the next few hours, focuses on Iranian woman Jaleh Misaghi who was forced into oppression in the wake of the 1979 Iranian revolution, and managed to escape the country. It's produced by the award-winning producer Pariya Taherzadeh, who herself escaped Iran with her mother when she was eight months old. - read more
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Audiobooks are coming to Spotify - the company is to acquire Findaway, an audiobook distributor. Findaway will "enable Spotify to quickly scale its audiobook catalog". It's experimented with audiobooks before: adding classic books, and a bespoke category for spoken word. An app originally called Spooks but now named Zebralution Audiobooks surfaces more than 3,900 audiobooks on Spotify.
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Australian broadcaster SCA has invested in a US dynamic advertising company, Frequency.
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Meanwhile, Podtrac report The Daily was still #1 podcast for October, with Audiochuck's Full Body Chills being the only new entry; and iHeartRadio was still #1 for podcasts. It measures participating publishers only.
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Buzzsprout's stats for October 2021 were released, showing Spotify and Apple Podcasts level-pegging at 31% of all downloads. Downloads via Facebook are up by more than 50% month on month, but account for just 0.3% of all downloads. The data underestimates both Apple Podcasts and Facebook, since it discards AppleCoreMedia plays.
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Just in time for Halloween, Storyscapes, an immersive horror podcast, is hosting a week of Edgar Allen Poe horror stories this week.
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Crime Beat returns for season four. Presented by Nancy Hixt, it's been adapted for TV, and takes audiences inside some of the high-profile cases she has worked on that have impacted both sides of the US/Canadian border. It's produced by Curiouscast.
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Here's what else you need to know today - there's no change in the top 5 Top US Podcasts, with The Daily still #1. SmartLess - a new entry last month at #9 - is still #9.
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A new podcast audio checking service called Vib3s has launched, to check your podcast's audio quality is all that it should be. A free service, we tested it out with Podnews - our podcast's audio scored 3.5 - the algorithm didn't like our background music much, but other scores made good sense.
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Ashley Carman's Hot Pod Insider reports that podcast company Himalaya has been scaled down, with around eight people, almost half the company's staff, losing their jobs over the summer. Ariel Liu has been made CEO. We reported in April that the company was transitioning towards a focus on audio courses; the company is now pivoting again to "short-form inspirational and motivational content".
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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.
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Reid Hoffman from Masters of Scale has written a new book, promoted by a Forbes writer as "a new format for a broader audience". Genuine question: we'd love to know who reaches the broadest audience - a book, or a podcast? (Hit reply and tell us).
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Podland this week contains an interview with Oscar Merry, talking about the Fountain App, and Alex Jacobi talks about the Open Podcast Analytics Format.
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Melanie Withnall is SCA's new Head of News and Information, responsible for broadcast and on-demand news.
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Lemonada Media has launched its first Italian-language podcast. In Giro con Fra is created by Francesca Lazzarin, the wife of Jeremiah Fraites of The Lumineers. After a decade touring and raising their family, Fra talks to diverse Italians who have incredible stories.
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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.
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Podcast listeners are young, upscale and educated, and described by Westwood One's Pierre Bouvard as "exceptionally attractive". The data is from Edison Research and Nielsen.
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Audio equipment manufacturer Tascam has launched a podcast mixer, the Mixcast 4, which appears inspired by the RØDECaster in looks at least. It comes with free podcast editor software, and retails for US $599.
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Kid Don't Kill My Vibe's latest episode has an exclusive interview with Allyson Reneau, an Oklahoma-based mother of 11 children, who recently helped 10 members of the Afghan girls Robotics team escape Afghanistan. Having graduated Harvard with a Masters, she became a NASA advocate, and now is an activist and humanitarian.
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What's the future of podcasting? Our Editor, James Cridland, spoke with Niklas Hildebrand from Audry.
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Good news - cross-platform podcast app Pocket Casts is "scaling back up", the company posts in an update. In a comment perhaps aimed at the buggy Apple Podcasts, they've revealed that the first thing they're working on is "how quickly you get new episodes after a podcast author publishes them". They're also working on app translations; Emmeline Berry is rejoining the team as Content Curator and Podcaster Liaison.
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A few have told us that if you log into Apple Podcasts Connect and change the frequency of your podcast in the interface, that appears to get Apple to rescan your feed. "Oddly, it appeared and disappeared a few times from Apple Podcasts before being there permanently a few hours later", one tells us.
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Sales Talk for CEOs is a "first of its kind" podcast from Alice Heiman. Alice covers the good, the bad, and the ugly of scaling a sales organization with innovative CEOs.
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iHeartRadio is #1 for podcasts again, according to Podtrac's figures for July. The average US unique monthly audience was 7% down year-on-year, as a download bug in Apple Podcasts continued to disrupt data. The Daily is still the most listened-to podcast; the Podtrac numbers measure participating publishers only.
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Holy Priceless Collection of Etruscan Snood, Batman! HBO Max is to add exclusive audio to its app. Batman: The Audio Adventures will be released in Q3; they've also announced other forthcoming shows.
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WBUR is to present at the IAB's Podcast Upfront in September. The IAB will also release its first-ever Audio Landscape report on September 9, with insights into consumption trends and ad spend patterns.
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Also returning, this time for its seventh season, is the Overheard at National Geographic podcast. The podcast invites listeners with real life adventurers on an audio escapade of discovery beyond the magazine to “inspire the explorer in everyone.”
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In Canada, Corus radio stations have launched The Curiouscast Podcast Hour, airing a weekly show with a different podcast episode every week from the company. It'll be hosted by Chris "Dunner" Duncombe, the Director of Podcasting and Streaming for Corus Entertainment, and aired on GLobal News stations. The company owns 39 stations in eight of Canada's top ten markets.
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Here's what else you need to know today: The Daily is still the #1 US podcast.
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Podnews's Editor is speaking later today for The Podcast Academy members: the title is "Podcasting: A Whole World of Opportunity". James Cridland from Podnews talks about the podcast landscape outside the US, and the opportunities it gives us - from the different platforms used, the types of shows listened-to, and what that means for US-based podcasters. The webinar starts at 7pm ET.
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The Guardian tells us that "podcasting success is not limited to white old men", featuring the hosts of The Receipts. "While research on podcasting specifically is scant, ethnic minorities make up just 7% of the UK radio workforce (versus 12% of the wider population)".
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Tortoise, a "slow news" website in the UK, has been signed by the Creative Artists Agency, mainly because of their podcast output like The Slow Newscast.
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Three of talent agency WME's podcast team speak with Deadline, on the opportunities for creators. Some talent deals now include a share of podcast subscription revenue, they say.
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In Australia, SCA has partnered with the BBC to add full shows to their LiSTNR app. Many shows contain music, and are available in the BBC Sounds app (but not as podcasts).
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LiSTNR, from Australian broadcaster SCA, claims 2.7 million listeners to its premium original podcasts, and an 18% increase year-on-year. The LiSTNR brand was launched in February, combining their radio apps with the former PodcastOne podcast platform.
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Podtrac's US top 20 podcasts for May 2021 has an unchanged top ten, excepting Dan Bongino rising one place to 10. Bongino has taken the place of the late Rush Limbaugh on a number of stations. Of the US publisher list, iHeart remains #1, with almost a third more audience than NPR. It measures participating publishers only.
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It's hard to scale podcast advertising: but VAST might be the answer. Sounds Profitable, our ad-tech newsletter, goes into the tool that vastly simplifies (sorry) ad sales. Go subscribe
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Why do people cheat? Cheat is new from Somethin'Else, telling the inside stories behind some of the biggest scandals in contemporary history.
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West Cork has a new episode out: the first for three years. "The episode takes the listener inside an incredible courtroom drama in Paris in which a man was tried for murder without a legal defence and without even being present himself." The show is also to be made into a TV series.
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Catalina and iHeartMedia are to work together to see what effect podcast advertising has on product sales.
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Underlining how complex podcasting can appear, Amplifi Media has launched a "
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Audacy has launched Exit Scam, a true-crime podcast about cryptocurrency. In what the company calls a "unique windowing opportunity", the Audacy app has episodes a week earlier than everywhere else.
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HelloFresh, Manscaped and BetterHelp are the most recalled brands from podcast ads in Q1/21, Edison Research say, according to their Podcast Consumer Tracker.
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Matt Deegan comments that building scale is essential to podcast success.
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Emsolation from Australian broadcaster Em Rusciano has become a Spotify exclusive. She'd moved it away from SCA's Podcast One, as it was then, at the end of last year.
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CuriousCast announced its Q2/21 slate, including two new fiction titles and an investigative politics series.
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Here's the global podcast industry 'podscape', from Magellan AI and Sounds Profitable. It was last updated on March 29th.
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One of One Productions, a women and minority led company based in Fort Lee NJ, USA, has launched a set of "professional-grade podcast kits" for home use. They're curated collections of kit like the Focusrite Scarlettt 2i2 and AKG headphones.
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The host of The Sporkful, Dan Pashman, has invented a new shape of pasta, called "cascatelli", according to NPR's Planet Money.
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Sonnant, an Australian AI company focused on spoken word discovery in audio, has completed a $750,000 (US $575,000) seed round. Investors include SCA, the Australian broadcaster, who will use it in their new LiSTNR app.
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Today, the RAIN Podcast Business Summit takes place from 10.00am to 1.30pm New York time. It's free to take part on Zoom; tickets are here. Our Editor, James Cridland, will speak with National Public Media's Bryan Moffett about the latest happenings within the podcast landscape. Conal Byrne, Eric Eddings, Anne Frisbie and Christian Facey are among the speakers.
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Analysis: Tom's explanation - that Serial included Nice White Parents in full - is certainly part of the answer: as independent verification, Podtrac reported the audience for the Serial feed was huge in July 2020, up 48 places to #11. However, that "up 48 places" tells us that Serial was #59 in Podtrac's chart in June - which is worth highlighting. In spite of Serial not releasing an episode since November 2018, it was still in the top 60 podcasts on Podtrac, measured by unique audience. Serial appears to be relatively unique as an evergreen podcast that new listeners seek out, and as Edison Research's data also shows.
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AdsWizz Audiomatic got a deep-dive in Sounds Profitable last week. A scalable way to reach podcast and audio listeners, Erik Barraud shows Bryan Barletta how the product achieves targeting, real-time measurement and attribution.
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Production of The Gist is on hold after Slate suspended host Mike Pesca for, reportedly, repeatedly using racial slurs.
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AdsWizz's AudioMatic tool is the latest to get a deep-dive by Sounds Profitable. The tool is a scalable way to reach podcast and audio listeners.
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How did 2020 influence podcasting? Zainab Hassan notes that some categories saw increased listenership as a result of the difficult year.
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iHeartRadio is still the #1 podcaster, according to Podtrac's January data: the company leads NPR for both US unique monthly audience and global streams/downloads. Here's what else you need to-know-tdy: The Daily remains the US's most popular podcast. An incomplete ranker, it measures participating publishers only.
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Australia's Podcast Ranker for December shows Stuff You Should Know at #1, represented in the country by ARN's iHeartPodcast Network. They had 9.2m downloads in December; the second place, SCA/PodcastOne, had 5.2m. The ranker is incomplete, listing participating publishers only.
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The treatment by the New York Times of its audio producer Andy Mills has attracted scrutiny in the US press. Mills - the producer of the discredited Caliphate podcast - appears to have escaped without any public censure, unlike host Rukmini Callimachi; he has since hosted The Daily. The Radiolab team have posted a statement and apology about his alleged behaviour while at WNYC.
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iHeartRadio is still the #1 podcaster, says Podtrac. They've 32% more US unique monthly listeners than podcasts from NPR, and 26% more global downloads; though they do have ten times more shows. The Daily is still the US's most popular podcast, too. An incomplete ranker, Podtrac measures participating publishers only.
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The CBC has published a look back at the movers and shakers of podcasting in 2020. The Canadian broadcaster perplexingly, but pleasingly, calls us a "podcast industry watchdog".
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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.
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ESPN Podcasting had a record year, with 96.5m downloads in October alone, they say.
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Magellan and Sounds Profitable have released v1.1 of The Podscape, a visual landscape of the podcast industry. It's got us in it now, so go download it.
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The Podcast Host does a review of the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 USB audio interface.
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MANSCAPED and podcasting are growing together, says Midroll, who have posted a case study into the men's grooming product. More than 40 shows on Midroll have run campaigns with MANSCAPED.
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How different - and similar - is audio across the world? Matt Deegan, who runs both the Australian and British Podcast Awards, says that a lack of ambition from commercial radio seems similar in both cases; but the BBC's commissioning structure adds depth to the UK's audio landscape. You can also watch both ceremonies.
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Magellan AI and Sounds Profitable have produced a map of the podcast advertising landscape, designed to help make sense of the space. Dubbed a "Podscape", you can learn more about it in this week's Sounds Profitable.
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In India, Pratilipi, India's largest Indian storytelling platform, and IVM Podcasts, one of the oldest companies in Indian podcasting, have announced a partnership to "create a sustainable and scalable model for podcasting" in the country.
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Whatever Happened To? from CuriousCast looks at what happens after the cameras shut off and the reporters walk away. Just because a story disappears from the news doesn’t mean it’s gone, after all. It's brand new, and launched yesterday.
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Nielsen shared stats about podcasting at Podcast Movement Virtual. In a blog post, the company covers its own data, and the other speakers in the panels that the company took part in. Nielsen also spoke at the Radio INK Hispanic conference.
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Want a podcast, but scared of microphones? Poise is a service that creates podcasts from any content, and is "narrated by real voices".
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...while the "best podcast, long-form storytelling" went to the Spanish-language Buscando Una Luz from Podium Podcast; produced by long-time Podnews reader Francisco Izuzquiza. All the winners are here.
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"For companies that have a hard time to break even it is very enticing to take the money and run, since monetization of this market is not a given. Scalability is still an issue because people seem to prefer own-language productions - which is different from the huge video on demand market that is focused on English for most of the world outside Asia. It’s not yet clear if this is good news or bad news, all the more because what might be good for podcast creators might be terrible for podcast investors and vice versa." - A secret Podnews reader
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13 Hours: Inside the Nova Scotia massacre is launched today from Curiouscast and Global News. A 13-episode series, it looks to piece together exactly what happened and what could have been done to prevent it.
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The New York Times has seen a 19% increase in podcast revenue in the first nine months of 2020, according to its latest quarterly report. The Daily is the #1 US podcast, according to new Podtrac figures for October.
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PodcastOne Australia, which is operated by Southern Cross Austereo, saw an increase of 96% in revenue in the financial year ending June 30. It brought in AUD$4.6 (US$3.2m) in revenue.
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Exclusive: The CuriousCast podcast network in Canada has partnered with Podcast Radio in the UK to bring new shows to listeners to the radio station. Among the podcasts to be featured will be Crime Beat, Dark Poutine, and The Ongoing History of New Music. The shows join Podnews, which broadcasts podcast updates every day on the station.
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First look: In Canada, Corus Entertainment's Curiouscast has posted their Q3 2020 slate - including three investigative podcasts.
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Is it that time of the month already? Podtrac have published their US Top Podcasts list for September; The Daily is still #1. In their US Top Podcast Publishers, NPR also remains the US #1 for audience; iHeartRadio, the #2, is measuring 44 new shows and remains the global #1 for downloads. An incomplete ranker, it measures participating publishers only.
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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).
Thank you to our latest gold supporter, Focusrite, the makers of the Scarlett USB audio interface. We're grateful to all our kind supporters, who allow us to focus more time in improving Podnews for everyone.
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In Australia, Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp has launched AirTime, a programmatic buying platform for the company's podcast network, which it brands as NewsCast.
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The Guardian: "Thousands of documents detailing $2 trillion of potentially corrupt transactions that were washed through the US financial system have been leaked to an international group of investigative journalists" — Eighteen months in the making, Entercom's Pineapple Street Studios has released Suspicious Activity, a podcast to accompany the FinCEN files, a landmark investigation from BuzzFeed News and the international consortium of investigative journalists. This is the first time that a large-scale investigation like this has been accompanied by a podcast series. It's available now.
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In Australia, PodcastOne Australia makes two appointments - Sam Cavanagh will look after "entertainment and news content" for the company, while Jennifer Goggin will focus on specialist content. PodcastOne Australia is owned by broadcaster SCA.
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Cumulus Media's Westwood One has selected Placements.io to create a custom operating management system that will integrate with Megaphone, to "dramatically improve the ease and scalability of Westwood One Podcast Network’s advertising sales operations".
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Acast Australia has hired six new people: Tom Roach (SCA), Katalina Haddad (NOVA), Isabella Gibson-Giorgio, Michelle Smith, Diana Lee and Teresa Ly. The company ended a relationship with NOVA Entertainment on Monday.
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NPR is back at #1 in Podtrac's August US podcast publishers ranker; iHeartRadio is at second place, though is still #1 for global consumption. US unique audience increased by 10% month-on-month for the top 10 publishers. There's no change in the top 5 in Podtrac's August US individual podcast ranker. The services measures participating publishers only.
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The IAB has announced the full schedule for the IAB Podcast Upfront event in September, and the host: comedian Franchesca Ramsey.
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Fraudsters explore scams that have made millions and the fraudsters behind them, like Enron and Jim Bakker. A Spotify Original, hosted by Seena Ghaznavi and Justin Williams, it's from the guys behind The Last Podcast on the Left.
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iHeartMedia has signed an agreement with US sportscaster Dan Patrick for a slate of shows on The Dan Patrick Podcast Network.
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SCA's PodcastOne Australia grew its revenue in the year ending June 30 by 96%. The division is now cashflow positive, according to the company, and brought in $4.6m (US $3.3m). That's less than 1% of total revenues for the broadcaster, however, which fell by 18.2% to $540.8m (US $388.4m).
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AdExchanger claims that podcast measurement is improving as the industry shifts from downloads to streams.
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Why did Serial bounce so high in Podtrac's Top 20 Podcasts for July? It wasn't anything to do with the news about the New York Times buying Serial Productions, it turns out - instead, it was that Serial's feed had a promo in it for Nice White Parents, and the amount of people still subscribed to the Serial feed kicked off all those downloads.
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Podtrac have released their top 20 US podcasts for July 2020. Surprisingly, Serial has risen from below the top 50 up to #11: because of the publicity surrounding the NYT purchase of Serial Productions, maybe? The ranker only measures participating publishers.
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Dan Misener from Pacific Content looks at square podcast artwork and suggests you should consider other formats for other platforms. (For the record, we use 2048x1024 landscape in our hero images).
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Podcast Junkies interviews Dave Zohrob from Chartable. "We’re really trying to do good work here. We’re not trying to do anything weird. We’re not trying to scam people. We’re not trying to collect data that we shouldn’t be or anything like that. We’re trying to help podcasters."
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Thing that has probably existed for some time: A Spotify scannable code generator. Just paste your podcast's Spotify URL into the box.
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We hear that recently there have been a lot of takedown requests to podcast hosts from record companies discovering unauthorised use of music. David Oxenford writes a long article about using commercial music in podcasts. "The bottom line: don’t use music in podcasts without getting permission directly from the copyright holders." (We've added to to our guide on how to use commercial music, which contains the word "no" eighteen times).
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A prime example of good podcast marketing for your show: find a good angle and stick with it. Fireflies: the original kids debate show sent us a press release, which we covered; Steve Scauzillo from the San Gabriel Valley Tribune got in touch with us, and covered the story in the newspaper.
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Podtrac has also released their US Top 20 Podcasts ranker. The Ben Shapiro Show climbs to #5. It only measures participating publishers.
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On The Jordan Harbinger Show Coffeezilla: a prolific YouTuber who exposes fake guru scam artists and alerts would-be victims to the tactics used to part them from their hard-earned money. Learn what to spot
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On The Jordan Harbinger Show Coffeezilla: a prolific YouTuber who exposes fake guru scam artists and alerts would-be victims to the tactics used to part them from their hard-earned money. Learn what to spot
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Lindsay Graham from podcast maker Airship tells us that he saw record downloads in May. American Scandal saw a 71% increase in listenership in May over April.
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Podtrac has also released their US Podcast Ranker. Call Her Daddy moved up eleven places after the return of the show. It, too, only measures participating publishers.
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In his weekly newsletter, Tom Webster asks How can podcasts create 'events'? - suggesting that we make them special, scarce and involving.\
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Manscaped, a company that sells trimming kits for the hair down there, tells Podnews that the company is looking for new podcasters to work with. They're now present in the US, UK, Australia and Canada, so if you're popular in those countries and good at talking up their product, you can email them at podcasts(at)manscaped.com
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RomComPods "harnesses our culture’s reinvigorated love of the charming romcom genre, and provides a bit of much-needed escapism during the COVID craziness", with more than twenty voice actors recording remotely. The first season, Honeymoon for One, launches today.
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Pex, a service that is scanning podcasts for music, has revealed that 17% of podcasts contain at least ten seconds of music. Of all types, they add.
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Thrilling tales of modern capitalism is new from Slate today: featuring on companies who are in the news and what stories have shaped them. Slate tells us that while some will mention the coronavirus, other stories will "provide a nice escape".
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Podtrac has released their top 20 US podcasts for April 2020. The Daily is still #1. The service only measures participating publishers.
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A month ago, Zoom had 200m daily users. It now has 300m. It's been used for a while by podcasters for guest interviews.
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Australian audio equipment company RØDE have published a free ambisonic sound library, and DAW plugin. "Ambisonics is a 360° surround sound format that, unlike conventional stereo and surround sound, records the full directivity information for every soundwave that hits the microphone – including, crucially, height information. Once captured, ambisonic recordings can be manipulated in post-production to create any 360° surround soundscape desirable," says the company, which makes a suitable microphone.
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Southern Cross Austereo, an Australian radio and TV broadcaster, has launched a new daily news podcast, called The Briefing. It's being hosted by four award-winning journalists from the ABC, News Corp, Network Ten and Nine Networks.
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If you buy the top 5 US podcast networks, you reach 50% of weekly podcast consumers, according to new data from Edison Research's Podcast Consumer Tracker. "Achieving that kind of reach 10 years ago would have meant buying thousands of individual podcasts, but as these reach numbers continue to change, buying podcasts at scale is more feasible than ever," says Tom Webster. The networks aren't named.
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Podtrac has published their top 20 US podcasts for March. There's only one new entry: CNN's Coronavirus: Fact vs Fiction, which debuts at #13.
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One in four women in Saudi Arabia listen to podcasts every week, says new research from markettiers and 4DC. 15% of the country listens every week, putting the country roughly on par with the UAE. More than nine out of 10 people in the Kingdom trust podcasts more than any other medium.
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Joe Biden's Hear's The Deal is described by New York Magazine as "bad": "so stilted and awkward that it makes me legitimately alarmed", says Will Leitch in a scathing review.
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Acast points to more usage of smart speakers to consume podcasts.
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In The Bubble with Andy Slavitt launches today - Slavitt is a US healthcare expert, and his podcast will interview "important guests and friends" about how they’re handling life in their respective bubbles and how to process the changes happening today and as well as those coming around the corner. Guests announced include Chelsea Clinton, Anthony Scaramucci and Tina Fey.
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AdsWizz has added automated ad-buying capabilities on its programmatic platform, including the opportunity to buy host-read ad campaigns. The company notes that these have historically been difficult to do at scale.
Thank you to our many new subscribers, helping us hit 12,600 readers earlier this week. Among the 200 recent subscribers in the past two weeks, welcome to those from SCA, Megaphone, Crate Media, JAR Audio, Spotify, the Jordan Harbinger show, Cavalry Media, Media Radar, Deutschland Radio, Pushkin, Condé Nast, ABC News, FOX News, and Radio France. Please consider becoming a supporter or advertising.
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ABC Australia, the public service broadcaster, is now listing selected podcasts on Spotify. Their Coronacast podcast is now also on Spotify. (Our systems can't match them up, yet, since they use different publisher names - but we'll work on that). The BBC, however, is still witholding its Coronavirus Newscast podcast from Google Podcasts.
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Staying In with Emily & Kumail is a podcast for charity about making the best of living life under quarantine. Oscar-nominated film The Big Sick was based on Emily Gordon's chronic illness that forces her to stay indoors for long periods of time. (Hyperobject Industries / Three Uncanny Four Productions / Megaphone)
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Former WNYC Studios VP and Commissioning Editor for the BBC, Tony Phillips has joined London-based audio production company Broccoli Content as their new Chief Creative Officer. He'll help scale the company, including developing international partnerships.
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Podtrac publishes its ranker for February. The top 8 is unchanged from January.
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Rachel Corbett, Mamamia's Head of Podcasts, has resigned. Bridget Northeast has replaced her at the women's publisher: she previously worked with the ABC and SCA, and has been working at Mamamia for the last year. Corbett is "moving on to new adventures"; she also runs online course PodSchool.
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The Westwood One blog looks at Edison Research's Share of Ear report from Q3 2019, to conclude that: podcast listeners are super fans of audio; podcast listeners’ #1 content audio source is podcasts.
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The BBC's Newscast podcast is to be turned into a daily news podcast from Q2 2020, according to reports. Bill Rogers, a media pundit, says: "This is not a bold confident move; this is mere apery of the success of the New York Times' The Daily".
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The news bulletins are taking over the rankers: Podtrac has published their top 20 podcasts for January. NPR News Now, a five-minute news bulletin mainly driven by smart speakers, is now at #2; Fox News Radio Newscast is a new entry at #20. Podnews reported on Feb 6 that Sky News's News Bulletin, which is not available as a podcast at all, is #2 in the Australian Podcast Ranker. (Podnews is also available in your daily news briefing settings).
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Nick Quah weighs in about The Podcast Academy. "There is a way to approach this cynically: give up trying to fully represent the podcast universe as a whole and instead build the buzziest possible coalition ... But the involvement of founding member PRX in particular, which has historically advocated to preserve the open nature of podcasting, suggests that such a bottom-line strategy isn’t in the cards."
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Podcast Radio has launched in London, on DAB+ Digital Radio. If you're in London and you can pick up either Radio Caroline or Atlantis, you should be able to find Podcast Radio too - do a rescan if you can't. Excitingly, we're on it, several times every weekday!
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Posta, the "number one podcast producer in Argentina", has done a deal with airline LATAM to get its podcasts into their in-flight entertainment systems. LATAM is now 20% owned by Delta Airways, who have also added podcasts to their seatbacks.
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From The Newsroom is a new shortform podcast from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp in Australia. It's sponsored by Australian telco Optus, and publishes daily at 7am. (NewsCast / Acast)
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Triton Digital have released their latest podcast ranker for LATAM. One new entry is interesting: the FOX News Radio Newscast, which is (as far as we can tell) the only podcast in the ranker in English.
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NPR News Now is a brand new entry at #3 in the Podtrac top 20 US podcasts chart for December. The podcast, consisting of the latest hourly news bulletin from NPR, was previously excluded from the chart.
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Palace Intrigue: A daily Royal Family podcast is the best place to hear an amazing fairytale story about a prince called Harry and a princess called Meghan wanting to get away from their evil grandmother's family by escaping to Canada, only to find their evil grandmother's picture is still on all the money. (Libsyn)
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Matt Saraceni, formerly of Omny Studio and Telstra, has joined Australian broadcaster SCA as "Innovation Director - Audio on Demand".
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Audioboom has appointed Stuart Last as their new CEO. He joined the company in 2014 (from Voxnest and the BBC), and was appointed Interim CEO in September. Meanwhile, Audible has a new CEO: Bob Carrigan (who joins from Genscape, a data company).
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Let's make a poop with Triumph the Insult Comedy Dog is a new podcast from Conan O'Brien's Team Coco. In the first episode, Lawrence O'Donnell, Pete Davidson, and Anthony Scaramucci compete for charities and their dignity, at Union Temple's Murmrr Ballroom in Brooklyn NY, USA. (Starburns Audio / Team Coco / Robert Smigel / Megaphone)
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Exclusive: 2020 looks like it might be the year podcasting finally gets smart, says Entale's Wil Harris, writing for Podnews: "It’s clear from just about every survey of consumer trends that podcasts are only increasing in popularity ... and supporting that requires not just experiences that can scale beyond the hand-curated, but data and monetisation that can support that growth."
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There are more than 700,000 podcasts, but only 15% are making money - according to Podcorn, a new self-service advertising platform which has launched today. Podcorn promises to "streamline podcaster discovery and provide the tools to run native podcast ads at scale". The product has a good ancestor - it has been built by the founders of FameBit, a service which allowed YouTubers to connect with brands: Google thought it was so good, they bought it.
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Starting Greatness offers lessons from startup super performers before they were successful, and features interviews with some of Silicon Valley’s most influential business leaders including Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Nextdoor co-founder Sarah Leary, and Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Kreiger. It's hosted by Mike Maples from Floodgate. (Simplecast)
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Spreaker Prime: The Dirty Bits is performed by Tawny Platis, a professional voice actor, who gives a casual – and hopefully comical – Southern Californian retelling of the sexy, scandalous, and salacious stories from history that your teacher probably left out. She’s using Spreaker Prime to increase exposure and maximize monetization.
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Along the same lines, What's New In Publishing also highlight why it's so hard to scale paid podcast subscriptions. (Our Editor has a solution for that).
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The Weird Tales Radio Show supported Podnews for the last twelve months. Lawyer turned award-winning writer and sometime werewolf-hunter Charles Christian has a weekly feast of folklore, magick and scary tales. We're grateful to them for their support! (Omny Studio)
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Culture First is a new podcast from Culture Amp, an employee engagement platform, on business culture and managing change. The monthly podcast will start by covering relationships at work, scaling culture, and activism in the workplace. (Culture Amp / ART19)
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Using a little music that you know you shouldn't? Pex, which automatically scans social media for unauthorised use of commercial music, is now automatically scanning podcasts for music. It can identify clips as short as half a second. (Here's our guide on how to use commercial music in your podcast).
the winning team is Adrienne Quartly & Hannah Price with their production of Treasure Island. Adrienne, Hannah and their team stuck to the brief they had devised for themselves and delivered a production with a distinctive soundscape of musical and sound tones and pulses, which was richly layered to create an atmospheric, contemporary production, complimented by solid performances and sound effects. The brief suggested an unusual approach to such a normally organic piece, and that is precisely what was delivered. The team also displayed proficiency in the recording studio throughout their four hour session - they were excellent at communicating their audio vision with their actors, with clear focus on the schedule and a calm, professional approach to technical problem solving. This resulted in excellent, nuanced performances and believable character choices forming an excellent platform for the unusual production style mentioned. Audible hopes to work with the team fully on something even more demanding in future.”
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Hunted launches on November 12th: the first in a slate of audio fiction from Wolf Entertainment and Endeavor Audio. "When four convicts escape from a maximum-security prison, Deputy Marshal Emily Barnes (Parker Posey) is called in to pursue the criminals on one of the most treacherous and violent manhunts in United States history." The trailer's in our podcast today. (Wolf Entertainment / Endeavor Audio / Megaphone)
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Bauer Media, a radio broadcaster in the UK (and present in other countries), has launched a podcast from Dave Berry, the host of Absolute Radio. Dave Berry's Dadpod celebrates the wonderful, exciting, sometimes scary, but absolute joy of fatherhood. (Sharpstream)
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Bauer Media, a radio broadcaster in the UK (and present in other countries), has launched a podcast from Dave Berry, the host of Absolute Radio. Dave Berry's Dadpod celebrates the wonderful, exciting, sometimes scary, but absolute joy of fatherhood. (Sharpstream)
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Camp Monsters focuses on stories of impossibly scary creatures across the wildest corners of North America. ("Camp" like campfire not like RuPaul's Drag Race, although the enormous frog sounds fabulous). The trailer's in our podcast today. (REI Co-op / Simplecast)
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Crime Beat, a Canadian true crime podcast, has returned for its second season. It launched yesterday with two brand new episodes about one of Canada’s most haunting triple murder cases. (Curiouscast)
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Audio drama podcasts are interesting to famous actors because it lets them escape from typecasting, and they are less time-consuming, according to Carrie Coon in this piece, first carried in the New York Times but visible to everyone in The Independent.
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Sports podcasts are almost as popular as true crime podcasts. So... what would happen if you managed to produce... both? Sports Criminals highlights professional athletes who thought they could get away with anything, including blackmail, theft, prostitution and even murder. The first few episodes focus on Oscar Pistorius. (Parcast / Megaphone)
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Evo Terra notes that live, host-read ad buys, the current gold standard of podcast advertising can't scale, and is worried about the podcast ad bubble bursting.
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Lawyers acting on behalf of Mike Boudet have sent Justin Drown from Obscura a cease-and-desist letter, The Verge reports, after Drown accused Boudet of orchestrating negative one-star reviews against his podcast.
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THE NEWS with Anthony Davis is a daily newscast, promising "five minutes of verified, honest & truthful world news". It's produced by Anthony Davis, a UK broadcaster. (Buzzsprout)
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At the bottom of this Westwood One blog post about US smart speaker use: detail about the fastest-growing podcast segment: 18-34 year-old African Americans, who are listening to podcasts in significantly greater numbers.
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PodcastOne Australia is "expected to reach cashflow breakeven in the second half of 2020" according to owner Southern Cross Austereo.
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Who's number one in Australia? There's a fight brewing - radio broadcasters HT&E and Southern Cross Austereo are both arguing who's largest in Australian podcasting, with SCA claiming they're "undisputed" number one after they "generated 150m downloads" over the last 18 months. We'll dispute that: neither are; the Australian ABC was claiming 167m downloads in 2016.
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LA-based business content publisher Podco Media Networks has launched a podcast content network, and acquired two existing podcasts, Confessions of a Marketer and The Innovation Podcast.
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Last year, Rupert Murdoch's News UK halved the amount of podcasts it produced, says Digiday. The focus was one of individual scale, says Jimmy Buckland, who's Managing Director of the company's Wireless Studios podcast unit.
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Climb the ladder to success, escalator-style. Backspin won't be quoting Biggie Smalls like that, but will be journeying back to the 1980s to find Milwaukee’s first hip-hop song. (88Nine Radio Milwaukee / Spreaker)
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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.).
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Jeff Gordon - A Colorful Career is a new podcast telling the story of one of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history. It's the sixth original series from Motor Racing Network, the largest independent sports radio network in America, which is now in its 50th year of broadcasting. (Motor Racing Network / StreamGuys)
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If you remember the History of 1995 podcast, you'll love History of the 90s - from Kathy Kenzora, this new podcast launches July 17. (Kathy Kenzora / CuriousCast / Omny Studio)
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Mike Boudet is to rejoin his podcast Sword and Scale, and will re-record the episodes voiced by Tricia Griffith after he was fired for aggressive and offensive behaviour online.
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The "awesome guest" for the live edition of Masters of Scale, the podcast hosted by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, has been announced as Tory Burch, the American fashion designer and businesswoman who owns 250 stores worldwide.
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Reid Hoffman's Masters of Scale is hosting its first ever live event in Boston on July 23, with "an awesome guest".
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MediaWeek Australia appears to launch a weekly podcast column, called Podcast Week. It discusses Acast, NewsCast (a podcasting arm of News Corp), and Brexitcast.
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Artshub suggest that the Australian podcasting landscape is growing.
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Which is Joe Rogan, and which is Faux Rogan? Dessa, an artificial intelligence company, has recreated podcaster Joe Rogan's voice - take a listen. As the company says in their announcement, "it’s pretty f*cking scary".
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Jesse Baker and Eric Nuzum have launched Magnificent Noise, "a boutique production house and consulting company, built on an intimate scale". They say they are already at work on projects with longtime collaborators TED and Esther Perel, and developing projects with The New York Times.
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In the UK, Somethin'Else is currently casting for a new business reality podcast that will offer one new “scale up” business the chance for £250k investment from one of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs. The series will be called The Investor and will air later this year; a form to participate is here.
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Podcasts are the perfect antidote to our poisonous news environment, writes Mike Pesca, the host of The Gist, in the Washington Post. This weekend, the podcast celebrates its fifth anniversary, making it, says Slate, "the longest running continuous daily news and analysis podcast".
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KPCC is launching Tell them, I am next week, with a new episode every day this Ramadan. The stories are universal; the guests are all Muslim. Tan France, star of Netflix’s hit show Queer Eye, actress Alia Shawkat, best known for her role as Maeby Funke in Arrested Development, and Iqbal Theba from the Oscar-winning movie Greenbook are among the many high-profile guests. (Megaphone)
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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.
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Decomposed is a new podcast from American Public Media. Concert pianist and host Jade Simmons is the host; it shares the tales of heartbreak, scandal and sheer genius that have shaped classical music.
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Forbes covers the pros and cons of internal company podcasts.
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Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in Australia has launched NewsCast, a podcast unit.
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Sword and Scale earns at least $75,000 a month from Patreon, and after a review, Patreon has decided that its host, Mike Boudet, can remain on the platform, in spite of his denigrating comments and social media bullying. We reported on Monday that Wondery had sacked him from the network. He's also deleted all but 65 of his tweets. Patreon removed some creators last year.
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Wondery has parted ways with Mike Boudet's true crime podcast Sword and Scale, after Boudet had repeatedly posted comments many found offensive, and behaved aggressively online. Sword and Scale posted an emotional announcement from Boudet, who blames Aaron Mahnke and Rabia Chaudry, and says he has laid off his staff and closed his show. Chaudry congratulates Wondery for "finally doing the right thing"; Mahnke claims, in a long thread, that Boudet has been increasingly aggressive and that hundreds of people had complained to Wondery. A freelance journalist called Maggi sums up the story from her point of view.
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Crime Beat launches today - a journey deep inside some of Canada’s most high-profile cases. It's hosted by Nancy Hixt, an award-winning crime reporter.
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The government won't tell you to get a cab. That's advice from Scamwow, a podcast about the worst scams. After receiving a mysterious phone call possibly concerning her parents’ safety, Abby Holland embarks on an epic journey that involves the IRS, a Mexican drug cartel, graphic designers, and one extremely helpful Apple store guy. (Libsyn)
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PodcastOne in Australia, run by Southern Cross Austereo, has doubled its downloads year-on-year to 100m. It claims 60 "authors", according to SCA's CEO Grant Blackley, who says that it should move into profitability towards the middle of next year.
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Not Skinny But Not Fat is a podcast inspired by an Instagram account, covering the dating lives, drunken escapades, and makeup lines of superstar digital citizens. (Podglomerate / Megaphone by Panoply)
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WaitWhat, the podcast creator and "media invention company" announced this morning that it has raised $4m in funding. The company was founded by former TED executives June Cohen and Deron Triff, and is responsible for the Webby award-winning Masters of Scale.
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The podcast industry is changing, says Voxnest's Francesco Baschieri in an OpEd piece for UK website RadioToday, pointing to Spotify's recent acquisitions.
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Masters of Scale answers the question "how do companies grow from zero to a gazillion?" Legendary Silicon Valley investor / entrepreneur Reid Hoffman tests his theories with famous founders: this week's edition focuses on Hoffman himself. (WaitWhat / ART19)
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Meet your Maker returns for a fourth season next week. Focusing on the stories behind the creation of all manner of culture, Liam Geraghty returns with his New York Festivals Radio Award nominated podcast; and will feature guests such as American cartoonist Chris Ware, Oscar nominated filmmaker Nora Twomey, Senior Conservator at the Chester Beatty Library Kristine Rose-Beers and video game maker David O'Reilly. (Libsyn)
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Russia Rising launches on Monday. The seven-part original investigative series, led by Global News’ Jeff Semple, takes listeners inside Putin’s Russia to unravel its mysterious evolution from tenuous ally to potential global threat.
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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.
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Vocalkast is a new podcast aggregator helping to organise sports podcasts. They tell Podnews: "Our process allows us to comb through thousands of podcast episodes every day to identify and rank those belonging to the major sports disciplines: NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, NCAA Football, NCAA Basketball, Football, Golf, Tennis, Rugby, Cricket, Cycling, F1 and Nascar." Apple Podcasts has four, US-leaning, sports subcategories.
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Audio company TASCAM has a fortnightly podcast, called TASCAM Talkback, and tomorrow will launch a Facebook group for podcasters.
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Mark Thompson, CEO of the New York Times, talks to Digiday about (among other things) the newspaper's plan for podcasts. "We’ll look to scale the number of podcasts and the way we think about podcasting." (He'd know - he was the boss of the BBC for seven years.)
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Retisean is technology that records and analyses you to give an "emotion-scale" level for your voice - marketed for public speakers, but perhaps useful for podcasters too.
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Nothing Much Happens, "bedtime stories for grownups" hosted by meditation specialist Kathryn Nicolai, has joined Corus Entertainment's CuriousCast. It's the network's first alternative health podcast.
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The Financial Times posts Podcasts — when brevity is best: which is actually a review for 10 Things That Scare Me, which we covered at launch.
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The CEO of Australian commercial radio broadcaster Southern Cross Austereo has done a bullish interview, where he says he wants "to turn original podcasting into SCA’s biggest profit growth driver". He anticipates significant profits from branded podcasts by... 2021.
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Media lawyer David Oxenford covers the recent news of a prominent podcaster being sued for copyright infringement by a set of record companies. Oxenford says: "The bottom line – don’t use music in podcasts without getting permission."
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Podcasting solution provider Voxnest announces today that it has partnered with DAX to help monetise UK audiences. Voxnest customers, including those on the company’s Spreaker platform, now have the benefit of DAX monetisation, while advertisers can take advantage of advanced targeting and measurement solutions. Voxnest President Francesco Baschieri says: “It’s an exciting time to be involved in this medium, and we’re confident that our easy-to-use, efficient and scalable solution for creating, monetizing and distributing audio content will have a catalyzing effect on creators worldwide.”
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American comic book writer Stan Lee passed away earlier this week; but he'd been fighting battles of his own at the end of his life, with charges of fraud, elder abuse, theft, and plenty more as his family fought for who would control his business - and his money. Scandal - Stan Lee's World covers the ugly inside story. (reVolver Podcasts / ART19)
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Headliner has signed a deal with international German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, to create social video from DW’s audio content at scale.
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Wooooooo. It's halloween, and therefore Podcast Websites share The Scariest Podcasting Stories We've Ever Heard, and Pacific Content post advice on how to dress up as your favourite podcast.
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The Bello Collective post a list of podcast awards, partly as a result of iHeartRadio's podcast award announcement last week.
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It Seemed Smart was launched yesterday by Vox Media and SB Nation. Promised are absurd stories of stolen bats, pirated play calls, renegade cross-country road racers, and fantasy football's own insider trading scandal. (SB Nation / Vox Media / ART19)
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The "screwy and seemingly scammy" state of the Apple Podcast Charts is the subject of much of the latest issue of HotPod; meanwhile an Apple website claims that Apple is aware, but offers little proof. Our Editor's piece yesterday has resulted in a number of private emails from podcasters disillusioned and demotivated by the cheating.
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A Stitcher Premium exclusive comes on Oct 11: a scripted podcast created by NY-Times best selling author Zane. The NSFW trailer for the podcast is over here. We'd mention it by name if the corporate email scanners wouldn't instantly consign us to your spam box.
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A Forbes blogger highlights an attorney scaling her practice with podcasting (we assume scaling it up, rather than down)
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"The Mooch", is making his way into podcasting. Deidre and Anthony Scaramucci are producing a podcast, "Mooch and the Mrs", which will be exclusively available on Entercom's radio·com platform.
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Feminists Don't Wear Pink is launched today: "Journalist and activist Scarlett Curtis interviews inspiring women about what feminism means to them, and why it matters." (Audioboom)
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It's the first birthday of Podcast One in Australia. Grant Tothill, the unit's boss, is interviewed in B&T. Meanwhile, Tyler Moody from Turner Podcasts is interviewed in AdExchanger.
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Latest episodes of The Bosscast features Springsteen fans and comics Casey James Salengo (Jimmy Kimmel Live, Comedy Central) and Jess Lane (Adult Swim and The Special without Brett Davis) (Libsyn)
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Ten million people have been diagnosed with it - but few people know much about it. When life gives you Parkinson's launches tomorrow; co-hosted by Larry Gifford (above), a thirty-year broadcast veteran who was diagnosed in August 2017. "My goal is to help people with Parkinson’s realize they aren’t alone", Gifford says in a press release. (CuriousCast / Parkinson Canada / Omny Studio)
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US sportscaster ESPN has revealed their "three-pronged" podcast strategy. The company had 36m downloads in May 2018.
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Fired Up! is an "inspirational and funny" podcast with "high profile people from a variety of walks of life who have been fired or faced a downturn, and managed to turn things around to achieve greatness". (Cascade Media, Libsyn)
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The CBC have launched their Q3 2018 podcast slate. They promise an audio fiction podcast The Shadows from Kaitlin Prest; Uncover: Escaping Nxivm investigating the alleged cult; and the fifth season of hit true crime series Someone Knows Something.
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HotPod 174 discusses the PRX/PRI merger (in 1,787 words).
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The Brain Machine's The Bosscast, "a podcast about Bruce Springsteen by the fans, for the fans". (#PM18 attendees born in the USA could download this and listen on the streets of Philadelphia, ah, ha)
Welcome to our new readers this week, including fine folk from Auscast Network, the New York Times, Midroll, Loftus Media, the Wall Street Journal, Cliff Central, the Financial Times, the BBC, Monash University, Radio France and Future.
Thank you to Auscast, Australia's coolest podcast network, and Alitu, the podcast maker app, for becoming supporters of Podnews. I appreciate your support.
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Podtrac publish the top 20 [US] podcasts for June 2018. NPR's Up First has slipped to #5; Wondery has a new entry (their first in 2018) with Sword and Scale.
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In the New Media Show over the weekend, Google Podcast product manager Zack Reneau-Weden was interviewed. He gave strong hints that Google Podcasts would be available on more platforms in future; discussed support for deep links into audio, like chapter marks, from show notes; and claimed that there were over two million podcasts indexed in Google Podcasts. (Apple claim about 600,000; he may have been including duplicate RSS feeds like those from Castbox, which are still partially visible in Google's search index). He also made great play of Google's personalised recommendations, rather than using editorial teams, which he claims doesn't scale: particularly for the diverse groups of people who listen to podcasts. He also trailed new announcements at Podcast Movement.
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China: there was a podcasting event today in Dongdaqiao in Beijing. Of note from this story: Chinese audio platform XimalayaFM is "dominant; they have twice the subscribers of iTunes"; and the registration process for attending the event was to scan a QR code.
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Podcasting now has scale and growth according to Cathy O'Connor, CEO of Australian podcast and radio company NOVA Entertainment. She was speaking at a radio industry conference in Singapore.
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Bauer Media UK's magazines are "getting into podcasting", according to Digiday. (Bauer is the third-largest radio broadcaster in the country).
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"Every podcast starts with zero listeners" - Panoply's Andy Bowers on monetisation
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A UK journalism website profiles Today, Explained from Vox. "There's a lot less formality than there was at the beginning," says Sean Rameswaram.
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Acast and Wisebuddah have announced Launchpod, which they say is the UK’s first ever large-scale podcast competition, in a bid to find the UK’s new podcast star.
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A long interview, and case study, for a podcast that has 35,000 downloads/month after two years: the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. Also in this vein: Kevin Goldberg is a guest on the latest Bitrate, discussing "how to market podcasts correctly".
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Wondery also announce a new podcast, American Innovations, which will "tell the stories of the scientists, engineers, and ordinary people behind the greatest discoveries of the past century". Fans of wifi, the black box recorder, the electric drill and the ultrasound scanner are going to be out of luck.
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Blubrry's Todd Cochrane has a view on the adoption of podcast pingback and RAD. He says he spoke with someone at Apple, and 'when posed the question on a scale of 1-10 would Apple participate in RAD I was asked why zero was not an option'.
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Following the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal, MouthMedia has an interview with former Cambridge Analytica director Brittany Kaiser on American Enough. This is for you if you like data privacy, consumer rights and governance - and who doesn't?
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Carl Kasell, familiar to podcast listeners as the voice of Wait Wait, has died.
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Podcast killed the radio star says The Michigan Daily. (Context: 73m Americans listen to podcasts every month; 243m Americans listen to radio every month. Many people listen to both. Relax - Biffo, Johnny And The Morning Crew are still safe and well. #prayforbiffo)
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Adlarge's Cabana has signed The Nerdy Show Network, a podcast network dedicated to nerd culture and entertainment, for exclusive ad representation.
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In the US, Shondaland has launched two new podcasts: Katie's Crib and a forthcoming one, Geri & Milli.
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The BBC and Norwegian broadcaster NRK are working together on a Scandic true crime podcast. Death in Ice Valley had a premiere last week in the BBC Radio Theatre, and is the first such collaboration for podcasts. The podcast launches in April.
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AdLarge's cabana has made a podcast advertising sales agreement with Consequence of Sound, a music and pop culture publication.
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A long piece from Technode discusses the podcasting landscape. "The podcast industry is chaotically fragmented. It is in desperate need of centralization, and the efficiencies and monetization that can come from that."
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Stats: The Sydney Daily Telegraph claims 24,097 podcast downloads for their Miranda Devine Live podcast. That would be 2,008 downloads per show. <== actual maths
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Should you be getting into podcasting? asks broadcaster Lisa Francesca Nand, and offers some advice for aspiring podcasters.
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Pandora posts a set of plans for 2018 including dynamic ad personalisation and a plan for shorter audio ads.
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Jaime Chaux, formerly Head of Digital Platforms at Australian broadcaster Southern Cross Austereo, and then at PodcastOne (which SCA works with in Australia), will join Commercial Radio Australia in March as their Head of Digital. He'll drive the lobbying group on streaming, podcasting and DAB+ Digital Radio, the broadcast format in the country.
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A new podcast called the Global GoalsCast launches - not about soccer, it instead focuses on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, also known as the Global Goals, signed by 193 countries in 2015.
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Cabana, a podcast community in New York NY, USA, launches a guide to buying podcasts - "from understanding the current landscape to building the campaign of your dreams"
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Steven Goldstein posts some stats on today's podcasting landscape as an aid to consider where 2018 will take us. "It has taken podcasting about 12 years to get to 60% of general public awareness. Smart Speakers have hit that mark in one year."
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The new top 15 "snackable" podcasts list has lots of content from iHeartMedia as well as short newscasts from NPR, Fox News and APM.
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Sam Logan writes a list of My Favorite Podcasts of 2017; Or How I Survived the Hellscape Year - "Podcasts were my daily self-care. These are the folks who helped me understand and survive this nightmare of a year."
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Scale Up is a new podcast about startups in Melbourne scaling to global success.
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Australian duo Hamish and Andy may have finished on the radio, but they have just signed a deal with PodcastOne to produce 40 podcasts over the next two years. PodcastOne is represented in Australia by their former broadcaster, Southern Cross Austereo.
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The New Yorker discovers In Our Time in their podcast column. "It’s just four intelligent people in a studio, discussing complex topics that are, as a friend of mine once said of Bragg’s openers, aggressively uncommercial."
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Job: "Head of On-Demand Audio" at the UK's Wireless Group. Owners of talkSPORT, talkRADIO and Virgin Radio, as well as being owned by The Times and The Sun's News UK.
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Podcasts: Thoughts From The College Generation is a good overview of the podcasting landscape, from the Gettysburg College (Gettysburg PA, USA) Medium account.
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The fashion industry notices podcasting. MouthMedia Network's American Fashion Podcast "has over 1.5 million downloads of its in-depth interviews with fashion industry insiders" (though no timescale given).
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New microphones from TASCAM, specifically for podcasting.
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Recommended: the Cascadian Beer Podcast - a "Podcast Series about the Stories Behind Craft Beer in the Pacific Northwest". Beer, podcasts, what's not to love? (Disclosure: presenter Aaron knows where all the beer is in Vancouver, and the entire podnews team helped him drink it.)
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Videos: the output of the Ignite Podcast Movement set, consisting of short five minute presentations.
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Australian radio and podcasts continue to converge: Southern Cross Austereo (the biggest commercial radio broadcaster) officially launches PodcastOne Australia with a fancy Sydney launch event.
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Also in Australia, ARN and Whooskhaa create a 'radio podcast network': Whooshkaa will host ARN's podcasts, and appear to also have some sales role. (Recently, SCA partnered with PodcastOne, and Nova partnered with Acast).
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PodcastOne's partner in Australia, Southern Cross Austereo, says they "may charge advertisers more to be in podcasts than on the radio". "The time will come where we can achieve not only comparable, but potentially premium CPM for that". The CEO also signalled more investment into podcasting. Profits for the company, which has radio and TV assets in Australia, were up 40.7% up year-on-year.
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Australia: PodcastOne and Southern Cross Austereo launch two new podcasts. A Plate To Call Home, about passion for food (but not a cooking podcast, they're keen to point out); and Sex and Life from a relationship expert.
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Interview with June and Deron from the Masters of Scale podcast. "We wondered what might happen to an ideas program if it were set to an original score, the way an independent documentary might be. Why shouldn’t an audio program surprise and delight you?" - notably, the show also commits to a 50/50 gender split for guests.
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"Our podcasting landscape today demands new podcasts to be more than just funny — they need to be funny and incredibly edited, funny and knowledgeable, funny and uniquely formatted." - a piece about comedy podcasts
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Mike Francesca, New York sports radio personality, is leaving WFAN at the end of this year, and might be eyeing up a podcast of his own. What interests him about podcasting? “Right now, nothing. They’re doing it so wrong.”
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Nice one-sentence reviews of almost every single podcast app out there (mainly iPhone).