Can anyone list your podcast without asking?

• Consent is not optional - for podcasts, too says Yann Reider, writing for Podnews. He argues that some podcasting businesses are “endangering the strange and potentially fragile equilibrium between listeners, creators, and the apps that connect them”, by adding your podcast to their app without asking.

• iHeart Radio, which owns 850 radio stations and employs 12,500 people in the US, has announced a new organisational structure. There are layoffs, called “employee dislocations” by the company: numbers haven’t been released, but are in the hundreds.

• The iHeart Radio Podcast Awards are tomorrow night. The awards will be streamed on iHeart’s LiveXLive platform for US viewers only.

• MIDiA Research has published a response to their podcast study we reported on yesterday. The post clarifies the (prompted) question that was asked, and says “there are many podcasts which are still available on Apple Music”.

• Is Spotify really bigger than Apple Podcasts? Adam Bowie, an audio researcher, looks into the data from MIDiA and Morgan Stanley, and compares Libsyn’s actual download data.

Get the free Podnews newsletter for more like this

Get it free

• Google is to phase out user-agent strings in Chrome, and other browsers have said they will follow. User agents are used in podcasting to spot which platform is playing the audio; this won’t affect that.

• HuffPost published a Best Podcasts of 2019 list recently, including an award for Underunderstood. The podcast reports that they’ve been asked for $1,995 for an “accolade licence” so they can tell people. This one’s on us!

• Triton Digital’s Australian Podcast Ranker for the four weeks to 22 Dec has been released. Hamish & Andy are still #1; the ABC are still not being reported. The highest new entry is 7am, a daily news podcast (which returns Jan 27th).

• Podcast Movement Dallas 2020 has opened a call for speaker proposals.

Tips and tricks - with Acast Open

• How to book guests for your podcast - Tae Haahr has some good ideas: even covering whether you should pay them.

• [Three Things I’ve Learned From Editing Podcasts] by Jabriel AlSuhaimi includes a great way to spot guests clearing their throat or coughing.

Podcasts

The Topical, the new satirical podcast from The Onion, has published its trailer: it launches on Jan 29. It’s part of a new strategic partnership between The Onion and Sony Music Entertainment. (Megaphone)

Obsessed with… Dracula is a new BBC TV companion podcast, highlighting the BBC’s new show about the vampire. The show’s also on Netflix in the US. (Chalk & Blade / BBC)

Filter Stories, a coffee documentary podcast, is being promoted by RadioPublic today: their website was the first PodSite from the company. (Soundcloud)

Novel Gazing is a brand new podcast from a book website, dedicated to news, recommendations, and general goings-on from the world of literary fiction. (Book Riot / Omny Studio)

Eye on Potatoes is a podcast on all things potatoes, from the US’s National Potato Council. We just thought you’d like to know it existed. It’s hosted on Buzzsprout. Where else?

Thanks to our supporters we’ve been working on our podcast image generation tool, and have made the images better quality. They should, once more, change as publishers change them; no longer use the iTunes API; and ALT tags are now correct, boosting accessibility for those that need it.