The Ambies are coming

• “And The Ambie for best daily podcasting newsletter goes to…” The Podcast Academy has announced The Ambies, the organisation’s podcast awards. Nominations will be accepted from next Monday: the name is from “ambient sound”.

• First look: Podcast host Sounder·FM is to offer monetisation opportunities for their hosted shows with DAX, an audio advertising platform. If you’ve more than 25,000 monthly plays, you’re eligible.

• Google has announced a new feature for Google Podcasts Manager. Podcasters can see how many times their show appeared in Google search, as well as top discovered episodes and search terms that led to their podcast. Podnews’s podcast got 10,745 impressions in Search in the last 28 days (our website got 4.2m though). Google have also added optimisation tips for podcasters.

• Three-quarters of Americans listen to the spoken word - the latest from The 2020 Spoken Word Audio Report, published yesterday by NPR and Edison Research. From all audio, the share of spoken word audio listening, including podcasts, has increased by 30% over the last six years and by 8% in just the last year. The research also found that almost a third of all listening is to podcasts from NPR and public radio.

• Marco Arment, the developer of Overcast, has posted concern about the level of piracy on Anchor, and says that he may restrict Anchor shows from appearing in Overcast’s search. (Podnews coverage here and here).

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• Libsyn shows us how to do good social media, responding to a support query from a podcaster threatening to switch from a different podcast host in a positive, constructive way.

• Luminary is working with Entercom’s Cadence13 to make a former Luminary exclusive show available to everyone. Fiasco - Bush v Gore, until now behind the Luminary paywall, is now available wherever you get your podcasts. (This is a windowing deal - season two and three are still exclusive to Luminary).

• The free and open podcasting app for Android AntennaPod has released v2 on Google Play and F-Droid. A significant rewrite, it looks great, is nicely geographically aware (giving locally popular show suggestions), and offers access to searches within iTunes, fyyd and, soon, The Podcast Index.

• Audioboom is no longer for sale. The company had been looking for a buyer since February, but has raised £3m ($3.8m) by selling 10% of the company to a Singaporean investor, Peter Antonioni.

  
  Aug 28 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Podcast Day Online happens in less than two weeks, and PodBible interviews the team behind it. Asked “Who are you most looking forward to hearing from at this years event?”, weirdly the answer wasn’t “Podnews’s Editor, James Cridland”. We’ll have words.

• Aussie media company Mamamia announced a set of new shows today, and also announced they’ve has more than 100m Australian downloads across their women’s podcast network.

  • PRX also posted their new slate announcements made last week.

• Apple has introduced “HomePod Mini”, a small, $99 smart speaker. It will play podcasts, among other things - from Apple Podcasts, not Spotify. “Hey, Siri - play news from Podnews” is probably the best feature.

• We hear from multiple sources that Megaphone appears to be looking for a buyer.

• Max Branstetter has launched MaxPodcasting, a podcast production service for business or branded podcasts. He writes about the new service here.

• Here’s a good primer on how podcasting is developing in Africa.

• Tanner Campbell, who wrote a spirited call for Apple Podcasts to kill their reviews section, has written a follow-up, suggesting feedback is left private, not public. We’d tend to agree, especially after one disgruntled podcaster left us a one-star interview because he didn’t like Podnews highlighting his poor behaviour: among other things, reporting an accusation that he was, um, leaving one-star reviews.

  
  Aug 28 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

Tips and tricks - with True Crime Reporter from PAR

• How to negotiate podcast IP (KCRW)
• The top 10 things I learnt in my first 100 podcast episodes (Max Branstetter)

Podcast News - with cabana

From audiochuck: A murder case has many layers: the victim, the crime, and the investigation. Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi and Scott Weinberger get to the heart of it on Anatomy of Murder, a new weekly true crime series launching today. Ad sales by cabana, an AdLarge company.

Award-winning Latin American documentary podcast Las Raras returns tomorrow: as a Adonde Media Original, says Founder and CEO Martina Castro. Over six episodes, you’ll hear stories from Buenos Aires, Madrid, Bogotá, Mexico City, San Francisco and Santiago de Chile. (Comunicado de prensa en español)

Congratulations to CNN en Español for winning the Latin Podcast Awards “Best Podcast in the United States” for the third consecutive year for Zona Pop.