Chartable gets certified; another company hijacks podcast feeds

• Podcast measurement company Chartable has achieved IAB Certification. Today’s announcement makes it the fourteenth company to achieve certified podcast measurement status from the IAB Tech Lab, and the third to achieve certification by prefix, after Podtrac and Blubrry. We’ve updated our podcast stats primer.

• Acast is to run a series of free workshops in the US to celebrate and amplify voices from underrepresented communities in podcasting. Called Aclass, the first event will be in New York NY on Feb 27; it follows similar workshops in the UK.

• How much did Spotify pay for The Ringer?: $250m, say Bloomberg - $200m now, $50m later.

• We’ve discovered that HubHopper, an Indian podcast app and website, is altering and republishing public podcast RSS feeds. This has the effect of spamming Google Podcasts (which is already listing these copies in preference to some official podcast feeds), and at least for our podcast, our full show notes have been removed, our category altered, links added to their website instead of ours, and an additional click-counter added to our audio links. Other companies have done similar things in the past, but quickly stopped. HubHopper have not responded to our emails for comment.

• Podcast Radio has launched in London, on DAB+ Digital Radio. If you’re in London and you can pick up either Radio Caroline or Atlantis, you should be able to find Podcast Radio too - do a rescan if you can’t. Excitingly, we’re on it, several times every weekday!

• SiriusXM, the owner of Pandora, has bought a minority stake in Soundcloud for $75m. Soundcloud is used by some podcasters as a podcast host: Pandora already sells advertising on SoundCloud in the US.

• If you’re in podcast sales or podcast sales management, Westwood One is seeking your expertise to take part in their latest study. Topics include podcast attribution, measurement, and dynamic ad insertion. Your insights and recommendations will help enhance podcast advertising, they say: and it’s all anonymous. Take the survey now

• Glow has published data about membership plans for podcasts, based on their own creators. Discounted annual memberships appear to be welcomed by audiences, bringing in up to 25% of money: the average revenue per member is just over $75 a year.

• Luminary is to expand its service to South Africa, Ireland and New Zealand. The company claims this doubles the number of international locations where Luminary is offered: it adds a further potential 66m listeners to the subscription service.

• Podcasting in Brazil is finally successful, writes Andrey Mattos.

• Today, we learnt that Google Podcasts has a different front page for French speakers.

• Podcast Brunch Club (“like book club but for podcasts”) has a special coronavirus playlist.

• Aidan Hornsby posts How to turn your podcast into a product listeners will want to pay for, giving examples from across podcasting.

• Evo Terra says that subscriber counts are pointless.

From the new book Make Noise by Eric Nuzum, available now

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Podcast News

The Radio Survivor podcast has an interview with Eric Nuzum - during which, Eric talks about how his college radio days informed his career. “It’s one of the best interviews about the art of radio and podcasting I’ve heard” says our tipster. (Blubrry)

There’s been a murder! True crime meets business in The Great Fail - a new podcast that launched this week, focusing on what killed some of the greatest companies and ideas. The first few episodes look at LA Gear and Google Glass. (Libsyn)