Maple Media buys the indie Castro app

• Exclusive: The Castro podcast app has been bought by Maple Media, according to its Apple App Store listing. Maple Media is a company that buys apps, and acquired Player FM in April 2020; acquired Podkicker in July 2020; and acquired Breaker in Feb 2022. Castro was acquired by Dustin Bluck in Jan 2024 from its previous owners, a VC company called Tiny. We’ve reached out to him for comment, but on a company blog, Bluck recently posted a reflective piece about independent podcast apps, which are - in his words - “dying”.

  • Indie podcast apps are part of what makes podcasting great; but they do appear to be in decline. For a keynote at The Podcast Show London, Podnews analysed downloads in the UK for the last three years. In 2024, 38% of downloads were to independent podcast apps; by 2025 that had fallen to 36%; and in 2026, just 31% were to indie podcast apps. A cut of podcast ad revenue in return for better analytics might help - otherwise, the only differentiator for an indie app might just be ad-skipping.

• It’s emerged that Apple acqui-hired some of the team behind Huxe, an AI “podcast” app, in June. Huxe has closed, but its website is still visible - the service made “podcasts” from your email, calendar and anything else you wanted, and you could ask it to generate you a personal “podcast” about anything. If you think it sounds similar to Google’s NotebookLM, you’d be right: Huxe was founded by former Google developers who worked on that project. Apple’s deal lets them make job offers to specific employees, and allows them a licence to use the technology.

• Former Guardian journalist Marina Hyde has partnered with Goalhanger’s Goalhanger X division to launch a new platform called Always On. She will host a YouTube show, and will write on Substack. While she will continue to host The Rest is Entertainment, the release doesn’t mention podcasting, other than suggesting that there may be “further audio formats” in the future. It’s the first launch from Goalhanger X, which describes itself as “building creator-led media businesses around distinctive personalities - spanning publishing, video, social, audio, membership, live and IP, rather than being tied to a single platform.”

• On the PodBiz podcast this week is Stacy Newhuis, SVP of Marketplace at SoundStack. The money in podcasting, she thinks, is in reach extension - allowing you to reach the right audience wherever they are and whatever they’re listening to, rather than only targeting business people by ads on business podcasts.

• The BBC announced a number of cuts, including cuts for sports podcasts and “the overall volume of the podcast slate on BBC Sounds will be reduced to make space for new formats”. The budget for BBC Sounds is reported to have been cut by at least 10%; although the budget has never been published in its annual report, so we’re not quite sure what that means in numbers.

• While You Were Out is a fully-automated, 90 second AI-anchored daily news podcast. It’s updated 6am and 5pm Central; it doesn’t disclose it’s AI in the audio, but does in the descriptions; it claims it’s “balanced” and “fact-checked”.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• RSS.com has added a free transcription tool, which works in your browser. It’s available to everyone.

• Filewhisk, an AI-encoded tool, lets you trim an audio file without re-encoding it. It points out that you can’t quite cut an MP3 (or an Opus file) wherever you want: the first 35 milliseconds won’t decode correctly, thanks to the way MP3 is encoded. The tool automatically adds enough frames to fix that.

• Documentation on how to produce HLS for Apple Podcasts has been published on the Apple Developer website. (It’s also got the contact details for how to get access to the proprietary Apple Podcasts Connect API).

  • In terms of audio, Apple Podcasts prefers 192kbps, 48kHz, AAC-LC - and supports 5.1 surround sound. That’s significantly better audio quality than a typical 128kbps MP3 podcast, and reflects that podcasts are now often watched on televisions and beefy audio systems.
  • m3u8s served to Apple Podcasts also support standard HTTP redirects. That indicates that tools like OP3, Podtrac, Magellan AI or Podscribe could work for additional analytics and/or attribution.
  • This page is helpful for how Apple Podcasts stores and plays back HLS-enabled episodes. Auto-downloads are audio-only by default - interestingly, if a user then turns video on, it will continue playing the audio track from the download, and only streams the video track (neat). There’s also a Scout/ useragent, which you shouldn’t be counting as part of a valid playback.
  • There’s more in this video from Ted Hosmann of Apple Podcasts, speaking at the IETF’s HLS Interest Day.

• Amazingly good thing from iOS and iPadOS: if you play a video and reduce the volume to zero, subtitles come up automatically. They disappear again the moment you increase the volume again. This feature doesn’t appear to be in Apple Podcasts yet - but this looks like a neat feature for any podcast app that has access to the transcripts in VTT format?

Tips and tricks - with Audiencelift

• Recording podcasts is the end product, but only about 20% of the work, according to Kate Hallstead - “the steps it take, expenses, resources, and how to sustain your episodes after recording.” She was speaking at Podcast Movement last month.

Podcast News - with Airwave

With Airwave: The Young Turks is Home of The Progressives. Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian and a host of progressive voices deliver the news and provocative commentary. Whether you are seeking a breakdown of current events, politics and the mainstream media or just a quick laugh, the TYT daily podcast will always keep you informed and entertained.

In B2B Podcasting Insights - B2B sales & audience engagement strategies for founders and brands Neal celebrates 50 episodes of the podcast, which has been publishing since the Covid era, but took regular breaks, before gradually progressing from monthly in January 2025 to weekly, since March 2026. In this latest episode, Neal explores the often complicated relationships B2B brands have in place between their podcasts and their email lists, and uses his own podcast as an example of 'eating his own dog food’.

Human x Intelligent explores what it means to be human in the AI era. 30 episodes, guests from operations, design, product and AI teams, and more. Season three is on its way: you’ll hear how people use AI while keeping the human judgment.

Miami’s former City Attorney disappeared without a trace in 1962. For 64 years, his family has wondered what happened. Now three-time Emmy-winning former TV reporter Dana Dean investigates the disappearance of her own grandfather in Miami Mystery: The Disappearance of Olavi Hendrickson. You’ll hear the clues she’s uncovered: a Kansas City lead, a letter mailed after he vanished, and forgotten newspaper headlines buried in a family suitcase.

Unmasked with Dr Basra is a new show aiming to challenge misconceptions around ADHD, autism and mental health. Released on World Mental Health Day, the podcast is hosted by child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr Jagdish Basra and brings together public figures, people with lived experience and clinical science.

Television insider Dylan Reeve dives into the history of Reality TV in New Zealand in RNZ’s new podast The Reality Machine. From Popstars to The Block, The Traitors and NZ’s Got Talent to Dream Home and Treasure Island, Dylan is pulling back the curtain on what makes Reality TV what it is.

A new season of Palace Intrigue Presents: King William is live: Caloroga Media’s popular speculative-fiction series imagines the British monarchy under King William. A leaked story sets the year in motion, a memoir from California lands with little impact, and a forgotten soldier in a foreign jail tests what a constitutional monarch can do when the system moves too slowly. A letter from Diana arrives, and the brothers edge toward a reunion neither can quite name. It is a story of family, duty, and the particular weight of a crown that never sits where you expect.

Podcasts in the wild

• Podnews reader David saw this in a local CVS in the United States. “Just for the record, I don’t think they should start a podcast,” he adds.