The Ambies 2021: the full nominations

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• The nominations for the Ambies, The Podcast Academy’s awards for excellence in audio, have been announced. They were chosen by 120 members who volunteered to be on the Blue Ribbon Panel, and listened to over 30 episodes each, rating them across multiple variables. If you’re a member, you now get to vote for the winners. Just want to listen? Our list of the nominations has links to all the major platforms.

  • According to our compiled data, NPR and Wondery both lead with 14 nominations; Gimlet has 13; and iHeart has 11.
  • Megaphone host 62 of the nominations; ART19 host 24; and PRX 19.
  • Being open helps, seemingly - just four nominations were for Spotify exclusives; and one for Amazon Music’s exclusive “The First One”.
  • Of the 164 nominees, fewer than 10% were from outside the US: 7 from the UK, 4 from Canada, 2 from Australia and 1 from the UAE.

• Analytics within Google Podcasts Manager has been improved. You can now see a subscriber count for each show; and a new “share podcast” menu (under the settings icon) lets you grab your direct link and a Google Podcasts badge. Most importantly, the data is now updated faster, with new data appearing in about 24 hours. (Most podcast hosts agree that Google Podcasts is the #3 podcast app, though with around 2% of all downloads, your numbers may look quite small.)

• Apple Podcasts is relaxing their 300 episode limit shortly. Listeners using the latest beta versions of the app can browse the latest 2,000 episodes.

• Entertainment company Free Turn has launched Free Turn Audio, which it describes as an immersive audio company - indeed, the press release avoids the word “podcast” completely.

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• Captivate is the latest podcast host to support the new podcast namespace: they’ve anounced support for transcriptions, including the new podcast:transcript tag.

  
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• Podcast app Player FM has announced a partnership with podcast host Podomatic, for a simple one-click submission for their directory. (Here’s all the directories you should be in).

  
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• Private podcasts on Transistor can now be subscribed-to using email.

• A reminder that our podcast host changes page is fully updated every week. We may be able to switch this from a sample of podcasts to every single podcast out there, if that’s of interest. Hit reply…

• On Clubhouse, and quoted in Recode, Guy Raz says: “If I was starting a podcast today — I wouldn’t start a podcast, I would just come right here [to Clubhouse].” Thankfully, Guy Raz has restored our faith in him by clarifying what he meant on Twitter: “If you just want to broadcast your voice quickly without friction (or production), much easier to just go on Clubhouse than start a podcast. A produced audio show? No. A podcast is still better.” Phew.

• Our Editor is taking place in a podcast-rich Twitter Spaces session tonight (NY time). Here’s where to get the details; we’d recommend following both @podnews and @jamescridland for notifications. Tip: if on Android, opt into the beta by visiting Google Play and searching for Twitter: we’ve got access to it too.

• This Sunday evening, join PodFest Cairo's virtual event. PodFest Cairo 2021’s virtual keynote speaker is Linah Mohammad, an associate audio producer from The Washington Post “Post Reports” podcast. She will discuss the power of podcasts. Local times on pod.events.

Thank you to Disctopia, a flexible podcast host with integrated merch, for becoming a gold supporter today. We really appreciate their support, and those of all our supporters. You can become a supporter over here.

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• To discover great new podcasts, says Arielle Nissenblatt, sign up to a curated podcast discovery newsletter. She runs the Earbuds Podcast Collective, a weekly podcast discovery newsletter, and we’d recommend it.

  
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• 9 creative tweets to promote your show - from Headliner.

Podcast News

Podland this week contains an interview with Kal Amin, the CEO and co-founder of Sounder․fm, and Sam Sethi and James Cridland discuss the Apple vs Spotify race.

Don’t tell my mother is new from Acast: celebrities and comedians share true stories they’d never want their mums to know. And then they tell them.