Castbox has 3m daily users; The Infinite Dial comes to Germany

• Podcast app Castbox has 3m daily users, says CEO Renee Wang in a TV interview on Bloomberg. The company, which has raised $30m to date, plans to launch premium content in the next two years. She says the company will be profitable by the end of the year. (The company has no Chinese users).

• Comparable data about podcasting is coming to Germany, as Edison Research and RTL Deutschland bring The Infinite Dial to the country later this year. Germany joins Canada, Australia, South Africa and the US.

• Podfund has invested in three podcasting companies, they’ve announced. We reported on Podfund on their launch in early May.

• Spotify has signed a deal with Kevin Bacon. The actor “will star in a scripted comedy podcast, I’m Gonna Be Kevin Bacon, in the near future”.

• The Outline argues that APM’s In The Dark should stick to its success of getting Curtis Flowers’s conviction overturned; and not to play prosecutor by offering up a new suspect to take his place.

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• When is a podcast not a podcast? When it’s a paycast, says Richard Berry.

• Advice: writing for audio, not for articles (Jay Acunzo); From strangers to hosting a 20 episode, 5k listens podcast in six months (Ryan Engelstad)

• Tech people in Melbourne VIC, Australia: no need to be so glum about the weather. Crawl out from under the doona and get your umbrella, because Omny Studio is hiring.

• Listeners to our podcast will have noticed that we were in Malaysia and South Africa last week. Our Editor wrote a boring long article about the aeroplanes he took. Nearly as boring as this article about a feature he wants in Google Maps.

• We’ve fixed a strange bug on our podcast pages where some links weren’t clickable. Thanks to the folks at AudioDroom, a podcast production company in the Netherlands (“Audio Dream”), for reporting it to us via Twitter.

Podcasts

The Signal from ABC Australia is always worth a listen. The latest episode shows the value of, occasionally, starting a podcast differently. A sobering listen during NAIDOC week. (ABC)

The RadioToday Programme has, in this edition, guests from Audioboom, Fix Radio and Somethin’Else talking about the UK podcast industry. Listen from about 14 minutes in for the podcasty stuff. (RadioToday / Audioboom)

The Obscura True Crime Podcast was featured in the Tampa Bay Times. Here’s the article in full. “They just DMed me on Twitter”, says host Justin Drown. (Acast)
Aug 14 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

How i Died launches tomorrow. It claims to be a new twist on the true crime podcast genre, set in a fictional world, with fictional characters who delve into some of the strangest true deaths in the world. (AudiOhm Media / Libsyn)

If you remember the History of 1995 podcast, you’ll love History of the 90s - from Kathy Kenzora, this new podcast launches July 17. (Kathy Kenzora / CuriousCast / Omny Studio)