A quarter of all podcast episodes last month were on Anchor

• More than a quarter of new podcast episodes published in April were on Anchor, according to data from John Spurlock: Spotify’s free podcast host was responsible for 25.8% of all new podcast episodes in April, breaking 25% for the first time. The rest of the top five were Buzzsprout, Spreaker, Libsyn, and at #5, Podbean which overtook Omny Studio last month. More ranking detail in The Tech Stuff, below.

• The Asian American Podcasters Association has announced 31 podcasts for May’s Asian American Pacific Islander Month. The organisation is also looking for submissions for the Asian Podcast Festival on May 20.

• Winners of CrimeCon’s first annual CLUE Awards were announced in Las Vegas. Gimlet’s Stolen: The Search For Jermain, and CBC Podcasts’ Carrie Low Vs, were podcast winners; we list all the winners, nominations and categories.

• Spotify is hiring for a podcast moderation team in Dublin Ireland.

• South Africa’s podcast industry is booming, says ITWeb, quoting from PwC’s Media Outlook for the country: podcast advertising revenue is estimated to be worth R302m (US $19m) in 2023.

  • Netflix has launched its first podcast in Africa. Called Never Late | African Time, it interviews African on-screen talent, and is hosted by Jo’burg broadcasters Andy Maqondwana (Kaya FM) and Zweli Mbhele (947 Radio).

• Snigdha Sur, founder and CEO of The Juggernaut, is the curator this week of the EarBuds Podcast Collective, looking at podcasts and stories that break down the stereotype of success. She says: “at the end of the day, it’s not about How I Built This, but How I’m Building This”. Looking for great podcast episode recommendations? You should subscribe!

  
  Sep 13 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Acast was the #2 company mentioned in Podnews coverage according to our latest ranker - a distant second from Spotify, which got the most mentions in our coverage over the last 90 days - helped by sponsorship of a feature last month. The ranker, which covers the people and companies we’ve mentioned most in the past three months, still has a UFC commentator at #1. Podnews achieved a 36% female gender split for people mentions in the past 90 days, remaining consistent with the previous period.

Eid Mubarak if you are celebrating today; or Happy Labour Day if you’re celebrating that, or Happy Monday if that’s a thing where you are.

Moves and hires

• Tom Webster has announced he is to leave Edison Research. In his newsletter, which also focuses on the recent Spotify financial results, he says he will leave Edison Research at the end of May, and “wants to continue to work to establish a podcast industry: a place where established networks and independent podcasters alike have fair access to information, revenue, and opportunity”.

  
  Sep 13 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Pierre Bouvard, Chief Insights Officer at Cumulus Media, has been given a Leadership Award by the Broadcasters Foundation of America.

  
  Sep 13 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Astead Herndon is to host a new politics show for the New York Times. “We’re excited to develop a midterms show with him,” said Lisa Tobin and Paula Szuchman.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Sep 13 2023

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• Someone wondered about the point of the “a valid download must be over 60 seconds” rule from the IAB, so we ran some analysis from Podnews’s audio server. Over the past ninety days, we saw…

  • 486,107 requests for/downloads of (MP3 and AAC) audio files
  • 342,361 (70%) of those downloads were above 500kB
  • 143,746 of those downloads were below 500kB (less than 1 minute of audio)
  • 81,688 (16%) of those downloads were below 1kB (not enough data for a single audio frame, and likely just an automated check).

• Podcast redirect trackers are being used on 12.6% of all podcast episodes, a number that’s slightly shrunk from last month. Spotify’s Chartable is on 4.71% (down by a tenth of a percent); Podtrac growing from 4.37% to 4.44% at #2.

• Amazon Cloudfront has increased its share in podcasting, and was used by 51.9% of all new episodes last month. The second-highest, Cloudflare, was used by just 12.71% of episodes; most of that is likely to be Buzzsprout.

• On the web player, Podverse now supports liveItem from the new podcast namespace. If you stream your show live, the liveItem tag tells your listeners the moment you start streaming.

• The Podcast Index have produced an “episode by GUID” endpoint. It uses episode GUIDs as set in the RSS feed. /episodes/byguid?guid=PC2083&feedid=920666 is an example. Documentation on the way, they say.

Tips and tricks - with SoundStack

• How to use Instagram to grow your podcast

• The top 100 podcast names contains the slightly surprising detail that there are 1,719 podcasts called “Real Talk”. What happens if someone new pops up and tries to use your name? It’s our experience that a registered trademark could help you.

Podcast News - with Lemonada Media

From Lemonada Media: As reported last week, Lemonada Media launched BEING Trans, the first season from their innovative new audio reality arm, BEING Studios. The series follows six transgender individuals living in Los Angeles. Over the course of six episodes, you’ll get to be a fly on the wall for their most intimate conversations and unscripted, raw moments. With this podcast, Lemonada hopes you’ll gain unique insights and an empathetic understanding of their personal experiences.

The only Taiwanese history podcast in English, Formosa Files:The History of Taiwan will help you understand the history of this part of the world, from defections during the Cold War, to the history of baseball. Covered in The Taipei Times in December, the show is boasting a new website from Podpage.

Best known as Joelle Brooks in Dear White People, Ashely Blaine Featherson-Jenkins has launched her podcast on the Oprah Winfrey Network, Trials To Triumphs. Known to friends and fans as ABFJ, Ashley will be in conversation with friends, colleagues and people she admires about the moments when their trials have led to triumph. It launches today.

Launched last week from iHeartMedia, Betrayal is a true-crime podcast of the story of TV producer Jenifer Faison whose picture-perfect marriage completely shatters when Faison came home from work one afternoon to find her house searched and her husband arrested for the continued sexual assault of a student. She tries to learn more about convicted sexual predator and two-time Kell High School ‘Teacher of the Year’ Spencer Herron.

Let your ears go on a journey to the Bruce Peninsula National Park, in Ontario, Canada, for the fifth season of Songbirding, which launches today. Aimed at an audience of both birders and general nature enthusiasts alike, the podcast also attracts a substantial audience that just likes to listen and relax.