Apple's accessibility; and Gimlet's not changing anything

• Jon Wilkerson suspects he knows what’s behind Apple Podcast’s recent attempt to clean up metadata: the ADA (the Americans with Disabilities Act). He points out that Apple received a class action last year because its website was “inaccessible to visually impaired users”. Others point out that episode number tagging would enable, for example, “Siri, listen to episode 125 of The Daily” which is currently difficult to achieve. Here’s our FAQ: we’d still recommend doing the tags, even if Apple isn’t threatening you.

• “Everything is continuing as it was,” says Matt Lieber of Gimlet, (still) trying to calm nerves that the Spotify acquisition of the company will stop us all listening to Reply All. He was speaking at the Hot Pod Summit, at the On Air Festival in New York NY, USA. (We heard lots more about the Hot Pod Summit over dinner last night, but a “cone of silence” prevents us from telling you.) Meanwhile, the Spotigimchor deal is validation for the industry, says Renee Wang, CEO of Castbox.

  
  Aug 11 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Mashable’s Marcus Gilmer is “giving up podcasts”. “I could listen to podcasts, on double speed, for every waking minute of my week and still not come close to chipping away at the stack of all of the episodes piling up in my queue.”

• The RØDECaster Pro’s multitrack recording firmware came last Friday: but some are disappointed that the system only allows you to record this via USB, not on the SD card. Podpraat says it is a “dead sparrow”, which is quite a literal translation from the dutch.

• Podcast Brunch Club’s playlist this month is “langugage”

Podcasts

Obsession delves deep into the history, culture, science and often deadly consequences of unrequited love. (Focus Features / LA Times / ART19)