Castbox to launch a premium subscription service; is Apple censoring podcasts?

Podcast app Castbox plans to announce a premium subscription model this week, according to FastCompany, which posts a piece about subscription podcasts and companies who are trying to build 'The Netflix of podcasts’.

Podcasts just for your staff? Texan company uStudio has announced what it calls “the industry’s first and only podcasting solution purpose-built for private enterprise communications”. (By the way - the American Airlines employee podcast is publicly available; and Uber has private podcasts delivered to driver apps.)

Our daily podcast is just two minutes long and is about one megabyte to download. Auphonic discuss a new audio codec, Codec2, which promises to squeeze a whole hour of speech into a megabyte.

The ACLU - the American Civil Liberties Union - launch At Liberty. “Each week this 30-minute show will take a deep dive into the pressing civil liberty or civil rights issues of the moment.”

Joe Clark discovers what he calls censorship of a sort - Apple Podcasts is, according to him, censoring podcasts from far-right groups; and thus, all podcast apps that use Apple’s directory are doing similar. (The majority of the censored podcasts are, however, listed in Google Podcasts, we’d note, which has no editorial gatekeeper).

Podcasting show notes: does anyone read them? Dave Jackson reports that 38% of people he surveyed do. (His survey responses appears to have been exclusively from podcasters, though).

Scout FM, a personalised podcast service, has launched a service for Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. The product includes editorially-focused “stations”, vocal introductions before podcasts, and a “commute mode” that tailors the content to your normal commute time.

A long interview with Patrick Kicken, a podcaster and former radio presenter from the Netherlands. He advises that podcasting isn’t radio, so don’t try to sound like the radio.

“Publisher and media maven” Judith Regan has launched My Side of the Story With Judith Regan on Westwood One Podcast Network. In the press release, she says: “There are three sides to every story. Your side, my side, and the truth.”

Yesterday, we reported that Anna Faris is Unqualified is being turned into a radio show on iHeart stations. We should have made it clear that, of course, the podcast continues to be produced in all the usual places; PMM continue to represent the podcast for sponsorship.

Listicle corner: Five true-crime podcasts for the armchair detective in you (The Conversation); 7 Reasons to Seek Out a Podcast Mentor (WeEditPodcasts); 4 Podcasts That Will Wrap You in a Blanket of Good Vibes While the World Crumbles Around You (The Mary Sue); The 7 Best Soccer (or Football) Podcasts To Listen to for the 2018 World Cup (DiscoverPods)