Episode images: the apps that use them

Episode images - what gets used where? Blubrry’s Mike Dell has done an excellent job of testing as many different podcast apps for episode artwork as possible. The results would tend to suggest that episode images aren’t used much; but where they are used, RSS <item> images are used by the majority of apps, with one exception - Overcast. (We use an RSS image only for our podcast)

• Rachel Corbett, Mamamia’s Head of Podcasts, has resigned. Bridget Northeast has replaced her at the women’s publisher: she previously worked with the ABC and SCA, and has been working at Mamamia for the last year. Corbett is “moving on to new adventures”; she also runs online course PodSchool.

• Meltwater, a “media inteliigence provider”, has added podcast monitoring into its product suite. Meltwater customers can now monitor mentions of their brand or keywords on over 25,000 podcasts: they say they’re adding 3,000 new podcasts a day.

• Podfest Cairo took place last Saturday in Egypt - billed as Egypt’s first podcasting conference, it included a number of different speakers including NPR.

• Publishers Daily posts Jonathan Gill, Backtracks CEO, on why the podcast advertising market has not yet reached its full potential. In short: measurement.

• Spotify is a “frenemy” to podcasters, said News Corp Australia’s head of audio Del Fordham at a conference last week. Triton Digital’s Sharon Taylor also acknowledged that publishers are in a “weird position”, given Spotify is both a successful platform and a content producer.

• Storyboard, a private podcast host for business, has launched Storyboard Groups, a way of making different shows for different teams and job functions within an organisation.

• On Twitter, podcast producer Tom Green plots the growth of Coronavirus podcasts.

• The Podcast Host highlights how to engage podcast listeners.

Podcast News

EPIDEMIC is a weekly podcast on the coronavirus. This week, a doctor infected with Ebola and a nurse who worked in an AIDS ward; next week, the history of anti-Chinese xenophobia. (Just Human Productions / Backtracks)

A captive audience? Female podcasters are producing shows from a Darwin prison, according to The Guardian, highlighting Birds Eye View, which went live this week. (Omny Studio)

Google is podcasting. Apps, Games and Insights is a new podcast for developers and software companies. It went live on March 4th. (Libsyn)

You get a car! You get a car! Everybody gets a car! The Oprah Winfrey Show is back - as a podcast of archive material, hand-picked by Oprah. (Omny Studio)

Updates

• Thanks to our personal supporters like Mike Rapin, we did some additional work on our podcast pages today to properly check Google Podcasts for the multiple RSS feeds that Libsyn produces. If you find Podnews helpful to you, we’re on Patreon. And thank you, Mike!