AppleCoreMedia: what it is, and isn't

• Exclusive: Have you seen AppleCoreMedia, or “Unknown Apple App”, in your podcast statistics? We wondered: are downloads from AppleCoreMedia mostly from Apple Podcasts? We have 90 days of data to show whether your podcast host’s calculating them correctly. (Spoiler: they’re probably not).

• The Wall Street Journal claims that Spotify is to launch their podcast subscription service this week. Variety says it’ll be similar to Apple’s, launched last week, with one big difference: apparently Spotify won’t take a cut of the revenue.

  • Another big difference between Apple and Spotify, we presume, is that Spotify’s stuff will work.

• Unconnected to any of the above, there’s some big podcast news at 9am Eastern today. Our Twitter account will keep you updated.

  • (Audience research: we could, of course, just delay Podnews for an 8am or 9am embargo on days like these. Would that be a plan for next time? Hit reply and let us know.)

• NFL is to host a set of official rooms on Clubhouse this week, around the 2021 NFL Draft. It’s the first “official programming” on Clubhouse from any major sports league.

• Direcon claims to be the first analytics platform for Clubhouse.

• Headliner, the best-known tool to make social video for your podcasts, now supports Soundbites - a new Podcasting 2.0 tag also supported by Buzzsprout.

• mediabits․io is another, and new, editor to make small videos of your podcast for social media.

• Apple Podcasts Connect is still not working correctly. Like many podcast hosts, Transistor’s support team is busy answering queries about it; and is keeping a full list of bugs and issues with Apple Podcasts Connect. Additionally, Evo Terra sounds less than happy - he’s been five days waiting for Apple Podcasts Connect to set up his account.

• Wonder where the 'refresh feed’ button has gone in Apple Podcasts Connect? “The button is not included”, says a support person; their advice is to just wait 24 hours.

Thank you to Evergreen Podcasts, who return as a gold sponsor. Based in Ohio in the US, the company is committed to bringing entertaining content to people wherever they are - and we’re grateful for their support for our independent jornalism. Support us here

The Tech Stuff - with RSS․com

• We’ve been doing some interesting testing while running our iPod through a proxy. From that, one myth busted, one myth confirmed:

  • If a listener has just listened to a show, does Spotify download it again to overwrite the cache if the audio changes?
  • Does Spotify deliver downloaded episodes again if the audio changes?

• From our sample, we saw 1.2% podcasts switching podcast hosting company last week. Libsyn was the biggest loser, down 40 shows overall. Megaphone did best, gaining 41 shows. (Anchor gained 72 overall).

• Satoshis․stream report that over half a million sats ($340) have been streamed to podcasts using their Lightning node - 62 podcasts currently use the service.

• Like many, we were (too) reliant on iTunes IDs, and last week’s issues were a wake-up call. Podnews’s podcast pages are no longer reliant on them. We use a mix of Podcast Index, Apple Podcasts and other data. Legacy links will continue to work.

Tips and tricks - with Podcast Day 24

• How to design your podcast artwork - Christine Lieu is a branding specialist, so she should know how to produce some eye-catching work.

• Should you launch a podcast with episode 0? Rachel Corbett reckons so.

Podcast News

Emsolation from Australian broadcaster Em Rusciano has become a Spotify exclusive. She’d moved it away from SCA’s Podcast One, as it was then, at the end of last year.

Podland this week has Sam Sethi and our Editor, James Cridland, talk about Apple and Spotify’s plans for podcasting. Listen on Podfriend and try value4value for yourself.

Sounds Profitable suggests that postrolls are nonsense, and interviews Dane Cardiel from Simplecast about how to rebrand post-roll and to use DCI better.

Buzzcast features Travis, Kevin and Alban from Buzzsprout with their take on Apple Podcasts and Facebook’s plans.

Meanwhile, Podcasting 2.0 chats to Kieran and Mark from Captivate, and “Hydra Podping”, which we’ll cover when we understand it.