Auxbus launches; NPR press the wrong button

• “The first end-to-end podcast creation platform for brands”, Auxbus launches today. After a successful fundraising round, Auxbus includes a number of proprietary features including sound processing, studio-quality connections, automatic episode assembly and distribution to major platforms. Podcaster John Lee Dumas has joined the company as Chief Ambassador.

• “We’re incredibly sorry for the inconvenience,” say NPR in a statement, after a configuration change messed up all the broadcaster’s RSS feeds, adding hundreds of episodes and kicking off a large number of downloads of seemingly random shows for many. One correspondent tells us: “They managed to download 61 episodes of Planet Money for me overnight, a podcast I have never subscribed to.” They’ve fixed the issue, and we’re told: “we’re already speaking to Podtrac as to how best address this.”

  • It also means our data for NPR in our podcast pages is well and truly messed-up. That’ll take three days to work its way out of our system.

• The BBC talked to potential US advertisers earlier this week, highlighting some work they’re doing for targeted audio. (The BBC earns revenue outside the UK from advertising).

• The Daily from the New York Times is now doing two million downloads a day, according to publisher A G Sulzburger. It has a staff of 17, and has just hired an international producer.

  • We bet you wondered: ignoring weekends, that’s 963.4 terabytes of bandwidth a month. If they hosted on Amazon S3 like we do, that would cost $48,970 in monthly bandwidth transfer charges.

• Another one leaves Luminary - the podcast app has lost content from ESPN. Meanwhile, also gone: a bunch of Luminary podcast feeds on Apple Podcasts, which contained short promo shows and unsubtle advertising for the Luminary platform.

• The O2Pod meetup in Bangalore, the biggest podcasting event in India, happened at the end of April. Some notes from the event.

• US broadcaster Entercom has done a deal with Waze, a traffic app. Waze gets the RADIO·COM content from Entercom, including local content, live stations and podcasts (including Podnews); Entercom gets updated travel news.

• Data and stats: for live radio, there’s much more use of smart speakers over weekends, say the Triton Digital Webcast Metrics for January 2019. Mobile devices get most use in the mornings, too.

• NBC News is working on lots of podcasts, says Variety.

• Slate expects nearly half of its revenue will come from podcasts this year.

• Is podcast advertising effective? On the other side: how should you use Facebook advertising for your podcast?

  
  Aug 12 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Bill Clinton is planning a podcast. It’ll be called Why am I telling you this?, and we know because his people are attempting to register it as a trademark.

• Audioboom has a new logo. (See it below).

• Spotify supports timestamps in your shownotes. They’ve also seemingly added official listen badges for your website; we’ve updated our link generator pages.

  
  Aug 12 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Our podcast pages now link to Bullhorn, an app that has a call-to-listen feature (to use your free phone minutes, not your data). Here’s our page for How Stuff Works.

• Watch our Twitter later: we have embargoed news.

Podcasts

The Vergecast features Nick Quah this week, talking about “Apple, Luminary, Spotify, and the podcast wars to come”.

Persistence 360° is hosted by comedian Mark Malkoff, talking to people for whom persistence paid off. “A lot of times we don’t hear the struggles that come with these success stories,” he says. “I’ve walked away from these interviews inspired as well as practical tips to help me get to the next level of my own personal goals.” (Libsyn)

Producing almost religious veneration in their preparation and consumption, Cult Foods generate queues, make restaurants and crash Instagram. Food Busker’s Cult Food Stories is a journey to discover the history of these dishes, hosted by John Quilter, aka YouTuber “Food Busker”. (DAX)