New tool makes YouTube podcasting easier

• Exclusive: Adori is looking for podcasters to use the company’s new tools to publish, share and grow their podcast on YouTube. The first 100 eligible podcasters get free access to AI-powered tools to upload and enhance their show on YouTube, and some bespoke support. There are demo videos and more details on their website.

• TikTok is quietly testing a podcast feature, says Business Insider. However: the feature might be called “Podcasts”, but it just allows users to continue to listen to a TikTok video’s audio while the app is in the background.

  • Opinion: We hope they don’t confuse their audience by calling the feature “podcasts”. Background playback is what YouTube Music calls it.

• Jordan Harbinger has added an AI-powered search function to his show’s website (top-right, marked “AI”). It’s particularly useful for queries like “what was the better help promo code?” - neatly, the URLs are linked, too.

• Children’s radio station and podcast network Fun Kids has launched a 33-title podcast subscription service. It works in both Apple Podcasts and other platforms including Spotify and Google Podcasts.

• Audioboom has announced a set of new content partnerships, including The Tim Dillon Show (ex Megaphone), Myths and Legends (ex Omny Studio), The Minds of Madness (ex ART19), The Nateland Podcast (ex Omny Studio) and Celebrity Memoir Book Club (ex Buzzsprout).

• A conference at the University of Sharjah in the UAE shared data about podcast listening in Arab countries and other areas. The number of podcasts from the middle east has increased rapidly; there are already 5.1 million listeners to podcasts in Saudi Arabia (14% of the population). Radio, too, is making a resurgence.

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

• Captivate is the latest podcast hosting company to remove email addresses by default from its RSS feeds. It’ll help cut down on spam and enhance privacy.

• Blubrry has launched Media Mastering by Auphonic as a tool for their publishers. The integration allows quick and easy audio post production, ensuring it’s the right volume level and includes noise reduction. It’s free for all customers for the next thirty days.

• Our Editor tweeted a question about whether the Apple Podcasts Connect “Remember me” option actually worked for anyone. After a number of responses, 90% of whom said it doesn’t work for them either, today we notice the option has disappeared from Apple Podcasts entirely. 💪 (Hmm. With this new power, let’s try this…)

Tips and tricks - with Podcast Movement Evolutions

• Business Daily Africa writes about Keeping it real and other rules for producing golden content, interviewing a number of Kenyan podcasters.

Podcast News - with editaudio

From editaudio: Lost Voices: An Untold Story of the South Asian Diaspora A four-part interview series hosted by journalist Alisha Sawhney that explores how South Asians in Canada collect, preserve and reconstruct family and community histories.

In German, Teurer Wohnen - “expensive living” - is new from detektor·fm and radioeins from rbb, and could be the first cooperation between a private radio station and a public broadcaster in the country. It’s an ambitious storytelling podcast about the housing market in Berlin, which is rapidly spiralling ever higher in cost - and is, perhaps, being helped by government rules and overseas companies.

Need a new show to listen to? New Podcast Trailers is available in your favourite RSS podcast app, and contains trailers from lots of new shows.

Podcast ads in the wild

Spotted in a supermarket in Brisbane, Australia. It’s really quite hard to read the title; and even once you do decipher it, you’ll not find it in your favourite podcast app: it’s a “shows with music” podcast which is exclusive to Spotify. A learning experience: if you’re into the music, though, enjoy!