Fixed - the Apple Podcasts download bug

Vote for us in The Podcast Awards - voting closes tomorrow for The Podcast Awards, and we’d love it if you’d vote for Podnews in the Politics and News category. It’ll take only a minute, and you don’t need to vote for every category. Vote here, today. Thank you!

• Apple has confirmed a download bug has been fixed in iOS 14.7. This meant downloads from Apple Podcasts were down 20% in June and much of July. Since Apple accounts for almost half of all podcast downloads, it had a big effect on the industry - one analyst criticised Spotify, causing its stock to drop by $2.5bn: because of lower Podtrac figures caused by Apple’s bug.

  
  Sep 5 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Daniel Ek doesn’t believe Spotify has any editorial responsibility over what’s said in the Joe Rogan podcast, according to an interview. The show is a Spotify exclusive; Spotify paid the podcaster $100m for his show.

• Facebook has been showing off more of its plans for podcasting and audio. Ashley Carman tweets videos of Clips, a new podcast discovery service, and apparently automated captioning is coming. The service is unavailable to most podcasters, and entirely absent for the 97% of the world’s population who don’t live in the US.

• German podcast Cui Bono: WTF happened to Ken Jebsen? is to become a TV show: Florida Film is producing a six-part documentary based on the podcast, which traces the path of a public radio broadcaster turned conspiracy theorist. (Thanks, Steffen!)

Get the free Podnews newsletter for more like this

Get it free

• Audio-Technica has released a new low-cost dynamic microphone, the AT2040.

• Paula Szuchman has been named Director of Audio at the New York Times.

• WAMU, the public radio station in Washington DC, is hiring an Executive Producer, Podcasts.

• Last Friday, we disclosed that FeedBurner (still) powers 56,000 podcasts: a number we sourced from the PodcastIndex database. In The New Media Show, Todd Cochrane commented: “I’m not surprised. The question is, are they active?” Here’s the answer: of the 56,000 Feedburner shows in the Podcast Index, 9,115 (16%) were updated in the last 90 days - including The Adam Carrolla Show, Tom Merritt’s Daily Tech News Show, TED Talks Daily, The Moth, and shows from the Irish Times and Monocle 24, just to name a few.

Tips and tricks

• Looking for a reason to send out a press release? The 3 Takeaways podcast has “reached the top 2.5% of global podcasts”, according to a release yesterday. The data is from ListenNotes, and based on a proprietary Listen Score, - worked out by activities on the ListenNotes website, media mentions and reviews. Podnews is a “top 1.5%”: it’s likely you’ll be at least top 5%.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Sep 5 2023

• Steps to create your own podcast tribe - James Marriott has a five-step plan for full-on cheerleaders for your show.

Podcast News

Dave Winer was a guest on Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People a few weeks ago in this episode. He talks about the invention of the RSS feed, and the first podcast. (thanks, Josie!)

Hosted by Ivy Queen on Spotify, LOUD is brand new today, exploring the touchstones of Reggaeton through on-the-ground reporting spanning countries all across the globe. Each episode serves as a chapter in the story of the genre: from traces of the music beat that sparked a war between two San Juan DJs (and resulted in a drive-by shooting injury of Daddy Yankee) to drug trades and fearful politicians that shaped the successes of cultural hits like “Gasolina.”