The podcast app that's eight times bigger than you thought

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• If you check your podcast stats, you’ll see that TuneIn - if it appears at all - is pretty small as a podcast app. However, today Podnews research can share that, because TuneIn’s many apps don’t correctly tell podcast hosting companies what they are, TuneIn could be eight times larger than the figures show. (Not listed there? Find TuneIn in our list of podcast directories).

• Ximalaya FM (“shee ma lai ya”), the most popular Chinese free podcast hosting company, have unveiled significant restrictions to podcasts taking advertising. Ximalaya FM now requires podcasters to inform them of details of every advertising deal, and the company will now take an unspecified commission on all deals worth more than US$4,250.

  • Ximalaya FM, doesn’t use RSS and operates closer to a YouTube model. It also operates a separate product for overseas markets, called Himalaya, which is unaffected.

• The first awards show to celebrate black podcasters has been revealed. The Black Podcasting Awards has announced entry details including twenty categories. The winners will be announced in a virtual ceremony on September 27.

• Podcasting’s bigger than ever. ARN’s iHeartPodcast Network Australia says that podcast listening is 22% larger than even before the coronavirus pandemic in the country. The company has published detailed stats for categories, and has also announced commercial partnerships with Audioboom and Kast Media.

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• Podcast Radio, the all-podcast radio station in the UK, is now broadcasting in Glasgow, Scotland. The station’s also available on DAB+ in Manchester, London and Surrey; and on the Radioplayer app.

• Google and Microsoft engineers have agreed to remove the phrases “blacklist/whitelist” from their code, replacing it with “blocklist/allowlist”. We think this seems a good idea for our industry, too.

• Sonnet is a new, “easy to use, simple” podcast app for Android. One of the developers writes about his motivation to make something simpler. (Of possible interest: it’s the first podcast app in a long time that doesn’t have Podnews in it. We’re not sure why, or where their directory is sourced from.)

• AudioWow appears to be a pocket-sized microphone and call-recorder which can be connected via Bluetooth or USB-C to your mobile phone as a portable podcast recorder.

• Developers: want a ton of podcast review data for analysis? Here’s a million podcast reviews as an SQLite file.

Tips and tricks

• In his weekly newsletter, Tom Webster asks How can podcasts create 'events’? - suggesting that we make them special, scarce and involving.\

• Adonde Media give tips on a DIY home-recording kit involving a smartphone and a roll of toilet paper. (THIS is why toilet paper has been so scarce!)

• How to Create a Bingeable Hybrid Podcast (Matt Hooper, Tracy Hazzard)

Podcast News - with The Jordan Harbinger Show

On The Jordan Harbinger Show One of your fellow medical students is openly racist, misogynistic, and homophobic. Do you have a duty to report this terrible person in hopes it prevents him from ever becoming a doctor with marginalized patients whose lives may depend on him? Listen now

Unholier than thou is a new podcast from Crooked Media that went live on Friday, which tackles the difficult, and often conflicting, journey of exploring religion and spirituality in the modern era.

Arianna Huffington is the first guest on The Combustion Chronicles, a new podcast that launches next week from the founder of the Man on Fire movement.