Tu-whit tu-Whoo might be buying Wondery?

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

• The IAB have released v2.1 of their podcast measurement technical guidelines for public comment. There is no changelog - so we’ve created one for you - there’s some recommendations of useragent structure, Apple Watch, and a statement about IPv6.

  • Bryan Barletta, from our ad-tech newsletter Sounds Profitable, is disappointed, telling us: “The press release absolutely overstates the promise of client-confirmed ad plays, and ultimately falls short on all of its other goals. While I expect minimal, if any, effort needed for IAB certified partners to remain compliant, I still encourage everyone, IAB members or not, to read it and submit their feedback to audio@iabtechlab.com by December 31 - you’ve only got 19 business days.” He’ll be unpacking some of the recommendations on Monday (subscribe here), and here’s how to get in touch with him with feedback.
  
  Aug 30 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Spotify has launched 2020 Wrapped for Podcasters, with a personal look at the data for your podcast. Look at the big gains for Podnews’s podcast this year! You’ll find it linked from the Spotify for Podcasters dashboard.

• Steve Wilson has left Apple Podcasts, to join Los Angeles podcast network QCODE as Chief Strategy Officer.

• Podtrac has published top US publishers for November. iHeartRadio is still #1. Wondery has jumped from 6th to 4th. An incomplete ranker, it measures participating publishers only.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 30 2023

• Congratulations to Jim Collison who celebrates ten years of Home Gadget Geeks today. There’s a special live show tonight at 9pm Eastern.

• Anchor powered more than one million show launches in 2020, reports The Verge. “Spotify says Anchor shows account for more consumption, in terms of time spent listening, than any other third-party podcast hosting or distribution provider on its platform.” Wow.

• Spotify has made a big jump in US app store charts over the last few days. Joe Rogan became an exclusive show this week, but it also coincides with the release of “Year in Review”, an algorithmic and highly viral product allowing us all to brag about our excellent musical taste. Spotify made a similar jump in app store rankings last year when they released “Year in Review”. Investors liked what they saw: the stock jumped by 12.6% yesterday.

• Metronome is a new landing-page for podcasts. Here’s an example.

• Thomas G Martin, a private investigator, investigates podcast booking agencies and doesn’t like what he discovered. In response, someone called Design by Creatives, reckons his article is nonsense. We don’t have a horse in this race, though we’re bored of the automated emails from people wanting to be a guest on the Podnews podcast, which doesn’t do guests.

• Australia’s radio and podcast industry have collaborated in a “predictions for 2021” article.

• Congratulations to Hindenburg, which has won the Danish Centre of Podcasting Pioneer Award. “Alle kender Hindenburg”, says the award, “nu er det på tide at hylde pionererne bag.” (The translation here might help).

• In the UK? Podnews is now available in Radioplayer, thanks to our friends at Podcast Radio. Just search for Podnews to find our last three episodes.

Thank you to our latest gold supporter, Google Podcasts: we’ve reported on it being the 3rd most popular podcast app recently, and we’re excited to see it grow in 2021. Here’s the Google Podcasts Manager to claim your show and see more data about it. Be like Google.

Tips and tricks

• How to do a decent podcast guest release form - and avoid what Podmatch call “cancel culture”

Podcast News - with Fable & Folly

Fable and Folly presents The Amelia Project - a dark comedy about an agency that fakes its clients deaths and lets them reappear with a brand new identity. Declared “Best Fiction Podcast 2020” by Discover Pods.

In Australia, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has teamed up with Lachlan Murdoch’s NOVA Entertainment to produce a set of daily news headlines podcasts, called News Feed, with editions for NSW, QLD, SA and VIC. (The Murdochs’ control of the media is one concern of the Media Diversity Inquiry).

Podland, a new weekly podcast about the world of podcasting, launches today - with Sam Sethi and our Editor, James Cridland. This week there’s an interview with Captivate’s Mark Asquith, too.