Alex Jones removed from Apple, Spreaker, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest

Buzzfeed News reports that Apple has now removed Alex Jones’s podcasts from its platform, saying “Apple does not tolerate hate speech”. Previously, Spotify had removed specific episodes. Infowars content has additionally been removed from Stitcher, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest. Spreaker, who describe themselves as the “secondary host” of the podcast, have also removed the podcast from their listings: “it violates our Terms and Service Conditions because of Hate Speech,” said a spokesperson for the company. Spreaker’s action will effectively pull it off most third-party podcast apps. In a response, the radio host claims “this is the modern day electronic equivalent of book burning”; as of press time, his self-hosted RSS feed is still available.

iOS podcast app Breaker launches Breaker Upstream, “the first open marketplace for podcasters to sell their premium content directly to listeners”. The new feature allows podcasters to offer premium podcasts and episodes for purchase inside the Breaker app alongside their existing free content.

The Editor of Podnews, James Cridland, has written an opinion piece about Why you only need two buttons to promote your podcast, pointing out further benefits of only linking out to Apple and Google.

RAJAR in the UK have released new podcast consumption figures as part of their summer release of their MIDAS study.

• 6.4m/12% of the adult population listen to a podcast in an average week.
• 65% of podcast hours are via a phone.
• Podcasts are mainly consumed whilst Working/Studying (30% share) and Driving/Travelling (25% share).

Hello, Goodbye:

• James Marriott is the new Head of Podcast Relations & Operations at Podcast Websites.
• Jay “podvader” Soderberg is no longer with BlogTalkRadio/Voxnest, he has tweeted.

This link is no longer available, as at Aug 4 2023
• Audible SVP Eric Nuzum has also announced he’s leaving the company in the next few weeks. He writes: “It’s summer, and it’s ****ing beautiful outside”. We hear he’s not the only person to be leaving Audible’s podcast division; if you know more, do let us know, in confidence.

This link is no longer available, as at Aug 4 2023
• Our jobs board is slowly growing. Got a job to tell us about? It’s free while in beta.

Stats from Libsyn’s The Feed podcast:

• If you have over 142 downloads of an episode in 30 days you’re doing better than 50% of all podcasts on Libsyn. If you have 1,200 downloads, you’re doing better than 80%; 3,300 90%; 8,100 95%; 19,000 98%; 32,000 99% .
• Spotify was 7% of all downloads in July. The top five countries: US (50.5%); UK (6.9%); Canada (5.6%); Germany (5.4%); Sweden (5.1%).

A new podcast from the University of Melbourne is launched tomorrow. Expert Hack is a show about the changing world of work, and how industry experts are finding clever solutions to tricky problems.

A useful data dump from Podcast Movement 18 by Justine and Olivia Moore.

There’s a Podcaster’s Meetup in central London tomorrow (Wednesday). It’s in King’s Place near King’s Cross Station, and it starts at 5.00pm - meet by the sofas, close to the fearesomely expensive coffee shop, a short distance away from the bar/restaurant, etc.