Adnan Syed is out of jail

• Adnan Syed is now out of jail and in home detention, having had his murder conviction quashed by Baltimore Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn after 23 years in prison. Now aged 41, Syed is not officially innocent: he faces a new trial into whether he was guilty of the death of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. A new episode of Undisclosed was released last week after the prosecutors asked for this new trial; host Rabia Chaudry highlighting that Serial’s reporting was unreliable. A new episode of Serial is due today.

• Spotify’s video podcasting service is apparently being used to pirate movies. The company claims it takes IP infringement very seriously: Podnews has previously reported that Anchor has been used to pirate podcasts (using its own tools).

• Audio ads work much better than visual ads, says Mars Media Group, highlighting success in apps and games.

• Spotify’s Chartable, an analytics and attribution service, is to lower its prices by 50%.

• Adam Rostad posts three reasons why you should stop buying ads on podcasts, citing podfading, skip buttons, and jarring creative. He recommends making a podcast yourself instead.

“We [Universal Music Group] know that we are at least 80% to 85% of the acquisition pull of all the DSPs [digital service providers, like Spotify]. We’re 80 to 85% of their retention. Consumers, me, you, us, don’t want a subscription which gives you either white noise or something to go to sleep to, or an act that you’ve never heard of.” The boss of Universal Music Group, Sir Lucian Grainge, speaking recently.

Moves and hires

• Keisha Salmon has been named the executive director of the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR), a membership organisation of independent radio and podcast producers, editors, engineers, and reporters.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• Bitcoin magazine carries a long piece about Podcasting 2.0's “value for value” funding.

• Ivy, a podcast discovery platform, becomes the latest to support transcripts, soundbites and location data from the new podcast namespace.

• Transistor now supports the Open Podcast Prefix project and has added it to their list of analytics prefixes. The podcast hosting company claims it is the first to specifically support the project in-app.

• 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”.

Tips and tricks

• How radio experience can transition to podcasting (Blubrry)

• Evo Terra posts observations as to how fiction podcasters are using their podcast hosting company’s tools.

Podcast News - with Lemonada Media

From Lemonada Media: Every day, the world seems on the brink of crisis. In In the Bubble with Andy Slavitt when overlapping crises and a relentless news cycle overwhelm Americans, Andy finds the right helpers to help us move forward together.

Indie political podcast Unf*cking The Republic is celebrating 1 million downloads in its first eighteen months. It’s a NY-based podcast, politely known as UNFTR.

The Serial Killer Podcast on Acast has been so successful, Acast has launched it in Norwegian, as Seriemorderpodden. It’s not as random as it seems: the creator of the show, Thomas Rosseland Wiborg-Thune, lives in Oslo and is, himself, Norwegian.

Fireweed returns for a new season - a podcast from the British Columbia Institute of Technology and JAR Audio, which explores stories of adaptability and resilience. Hosted by Bianca Rego, Fireweed features industry experts and innovative thinkers who are reshaping their industries with new technologies, new thoughts, and new approaches to how we buy and fly.

From India, 3 Techies Banter #3TB is back for a second season: featuring three seasoned technologists from diverse backgrounds, Samiran Ghosh, Nilesh Patankar and Sheetal Choksi. Interestingly, the podcast sees more than half its downloads from Wynk, a music and podcast app from telecoms company Airtel.