The Peers Project to launch in US

• From down under to the Big Apple, BIPOC-led, women-owned podcast agency The Peers Project has raised investment to launch into the US market. The company will open offices in New York later this month.

• Wondery+ and Law&Crime have signed an exclusive content distribution deal for six upcoming Law&Crime shows. The shows will be exclusive on Wondery+ for 90 days before a wider release on open RSS.

• NPR’s podcasting strategy SVP, Collin Campbell, is interviewed by Current. He suggests that Apple might consider recognition for nonprofits when it comes to taking 30% revenue from podcast subscriptions; and says that “the overlap between podcast and broadcast [audiences] is almost in single digits now”.

• Apple Podcasts servers stopped checking for new episodes late Friday, meaning latest episodes didn’t show up in the app for users. The bug’s been fixed; though transcripts for the developer beta are not being generated or imported currently.

• A site built to connect podcast freelancers with businesses and creators, Podworks.io is celebrating its second anniversary.

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• In France, the third edition of the 180-page Podcast Magazine has published, including an interview with John Spurlock of OP3, Podnews’s Editor, James Cridland, and Greg Pouy, a French pioneer of podcasting. The glossy publication is available for around US$25 including postage. Vous devrez parler français pour le lire – mais bonne nouvelle, vous le savez!

Our /listen pages are changing

After the launch of Google Podcasts in 2018, there was a reliable way of opening an app that was pre-loaded in iOS and in Android. Unfortunately, while YouTube Music does play RSS feeds and is normally a pre-loaded app on Android, there is no way to link to an RSS feed within that player: so no way to give an Android user a URL that opens their podcast player.

Listen pages, like this link for Up First, will continue to automatically open Apple Podcasts for iOS users, but now open your podcast page on Podnews for anyone else. We’ve removed the links and code to set one up.

We also had episode-by-episode “magic links” ; they will all link to your podcast page from early March.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• The chat tag is to make it to the next round of Podcasting 2.0 features. It supports IRC, XMPP, Nostr and Matrix, and is designed to link to live chat services. (Should we set up a chat server on one of those?)

• RSSBlue has launched its RSS Music Charts, showing the most widely-played music tracks in podcasts over the last sixty days. The company has also launched [Cupid](https://rssblue.com/cupid, a subscriber-only tool that shows which podcasts are playing which tracks.

• For fans of podcasting history - the ABC has restored the audio of a documentary about podcasting from October 2004. Adam Curry, Dave Winer and plenty more - and the beginnings of our industry.

Tips and tricks - with Podpage

• Building a Podcast Community (Golden Goose Creative)

• Podcast Guest-iquette - we see what you did there, RedCircle

• Accessibility matters in your marketing, says Wil Williams

Podcast News

Camp Counselors with Zachariah Porter and Jonathan Carson has signed with Podcast One for sales and distribution. It’s the 25th show added this year, and PodcastOne now has 182 shows on its slate.

How I Became … has signed a landmark deal with Uber. The show will be sponsored by Uber for the next six months. In the first episode under the new partnership, Karen Blackett OBE shares her compelling journey to becoming the UK President of WPP, intertwined with her personal experiences as a single mother striving to provide for her son.

In 2012, a mysterious challenge appeared on 4chan: the first step in one of the most complex and mind-boggling puzzles to rock the internet age – later known as Cicada 3301. From riddles to impenetrable codes and QR codes in the outside world, one thing became clear: Cicada 3301 was no ordinary puzzle. Theories emerged that was the work of recruiters for a US intelligence service. The World’s Hardest Puzzle looks at who was behind it - and why it ended in silence. It’s new from Stak today.

From the Daily Mail, Straight to the Comments! looks at the passionate, hilarious, outraged and bizarre comments left under MailOnline stories. Archie Manners and Joh Pieters invite celebrities into the studio to read the comments left under their own stories.

BEEF with Bridget Todd is back for a new season - a “funny yet educational” look at rivalries across industries, getting to the heart of what comes before, during, and after two entities go after each other with all their might.