Dave Jackson announces his Podcast of the Year

• Happy Christmas to Dave Jackson from The School of Podcasting, who announces today his podcast of the year - and why. “You know the show, you get notified in your app, and you immediately stop listening to whatever show and IMMEDIATELY go to theirs.”

  • Thanks, too, to Harris from Calm History who likes the Podnews Daily. Thanks, Harris!
  • Dave has been a long-term supporter of Podnews, too: he’s a great speaker and excellent at helping anyone understand the world of podcasting. Happy Christmas, Dave!

• Happy Christmas from Voxalyze, which has decided to give its users just ten days notice - over a holiday period - to remove its analytics prefix from podcasts. The company sent an email to customers on Dec 21, saying it plans to discontinue the service and you should remove your analytics prefix by 31 Dec “to avoid any issue with delivery”. You didn’t have plans, did you?

  • OP3 is a great option if you want open analytics.

• Jenny Hermanson has left Spotify - she was Managing Director for Spotify Nordics. “This decision to move on has been carefully considered”, she wrote on LinkedIn. The post appears to coincide with Spotify’s announced redundancies.

• Dear Clementine has been cancelled by NOVA Entertainment. “All good things must come to an end - especially award winning podcasts presented by women who have strong opinions on genocide,” Clementine Ford posted. She has announced a new podcast, Untethered, will launch in January.

• Happy Christmas from Spotify, which has reacted to a proposed new tax in France aimed at streaming services by stopping its sponsorship of two music festivals in the country. France wants a tax of 1.2% of all income; Spotify’s profit margin is -5.7%, so this effectively makes Spotify 20% more loss-making in the country.

This is our first Christmas Day newsletter since 2020, thanks to the way calendars work. We hope you have a good day. They say Christmas is a time for joy and happiness: but if things become too much, there are plenty of people who can help. A problem shared is often a problem helped. Here’s a list of helpful numbers and online chat services.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS․com

• Blubrry has announced that it will support the alternateEnclosure tag, in a limited way, to help link to YouTube videos. That way, explains Todd Cochrane in the New Media Show, podcasters can link to YouTube videos directly (and use their bandwidth), while supporting SAT streaming, boosts and other things. This sounds fun - we might play with an example in our RSS feed.

• Have you forgotten a gift for your favourite relative/friend? Why not give them the gift of podcasting with an RSS.com gift card? It’ll be delivered instantly. They’ve sponsored this section of our newsletter for years now: we’re grateful for their support.