Apple Podcasts: now on a website near you

Spotify’s purchase of Megaphone consumed podcast news last week. While definitely attention grabbing, the move marks a departure from Spotify’s previous strategy. And this new approach will be a massive boon, not bust, for the entire podcast advertising industry. - Bryan Barletta has the real story in Podnews’s new weekly ad-tech newsletter, Sounds Profitable, with Podsights. Go subscribe.

Aug 29 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Apple Podcasts has launched an embeddable podcast player, allowing anyone to embed the audio from any podcast on their own website. We’ve added it to our list of embeddable podcast players; you can add your podcast’s player by visiting your podcast’s page on Apple Podcasts on the web, or the Apple Podcasts Marketing Tools website.

  • Plays from the embedded player do not currently appear in Apple Podcasts Analytics. They’ll appear in your own podcast host numbers though.
  • Unlike the embedded Spotify player, the Apple one doesn’t promote other podcasts as soon as you hit play…

• Podcast host Libsyn has published its 2020 third quarter financial results. The company’s podcast hosting revenue for the quarter grew by 15% year-on-year. However, Libsyn’s ad revenue continued to fall, down by 22%; and the payoff to the company’s former CEO made the company lose over $2m this quarter. Libsyn also owns Pair, an internet hosting company.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 29 2023

• Spotify has added a way of saving individual podcast episodes to your library, called “Your Episodes”.

• Oh, and if you’re in the UK, Spotify is offering three months free access to Spotify Premium for new users, and if you cancelled Spotify Premium in the past for whatever reason, you can get three months for just £9.99. It seems a UK-only offer. First Dominic Cummings and now this: Britain’s on a lucky streak.

• Want a podcast, but scared of microphones? Poise is a service that creates podcasts from any content, and is “narrated by real voices”.

• Would podcasting be better without the headphones? Billboard reports on “sound beaming”, a way of beaming sounds directly to you without wearing headphones. “The technology uses a 3D sensing module and locates and tracks the ear position sending audio via ultrasonic waves to create sound pockets by the user’s ears.” Here’s a video.

Tips and tricks

• What is “Audience Development” anyway? (Jonas Woost, Pacific Content)

• Why is having a website for your podcast absolutely critical? Brenden Mulligan from Podpage is doing twice-weekly, free, webinars.

Podcast News - with Vurbl

On Vurbl Voices, Sean Howard, the founder of the audio fiction network Fable & Folly talks with Paul about the state of audio fiction, starting a podcast network and their unique approach to sponsored ads. Listen on Vurbl

Curveball is new today on ARN’s iHeartPodcast Network Australia. The new podcast talks to business leaders about a time this year when adapting fast was the key to determining a company’s future. The first guest is outgoing CEO of Virgin Australia, Paul Scurrah.