Fiction podcasting: growing by more than 300 percent

• Listening to fiction podcasts have grown by as much as 338% in Sweden in the past year, according to Karin Bäckmark, Spotify’s Nordic podcast manager (pictured, left). The company has announced a new audio drama, called De Fria, which will start recording on location near Nynäshamn in September. It’ll be released in 2022, and will be directed by award-winning director Peter Grönlund (pictured, right), produced by Munck Media.

• The social podcasting app GoodPods has received an update this week, with good news for indie podcasters. The leaderboards (hit search, then scroll down) have an “indie only” switch, which filters out the corporate shows. There’s also a “your friends listened-to” view, also to help discover new shows. You should claim your podcast (edit your profile), too.

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• The June 2021 US Podcast Report is out from Triton Digital. Stitcher are #1 for a second month, beating NPR (though iH eartRadio isn’t measured). Average weekly downloads for the top 10 publishers were up by 5% year-on-year, in spite of an Apple Podcasts auto-download bug and a shift to IAB v2.1. (One investment analyst recently used figures from the competing Podtrac ranker to claim podcasting was in negative growth).

• Luminary has partnered with Times of India investment arm Times Bridge to launch in the country; we’re promised Indian original content, and the press release claims India has a monthly podcast listenership of 58m people.

• Radio is making way for podcasts - in Cleveland, quite literally. Evergreen Podcasts has purchased the former radio station complex of WDOK-FM. The building is six times larger than Evergreen’s current offices; the company will employ 25 people by the end of the year. The building is in “Radio Lane”, but that name’s unlikely to change for now. WDOK-FM, better known as Cleveland’s Star 102, moved in to the Halle Building with other Audacy stations in 2012.

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• Digital Music News suggests that Meghan Markle and Prince Harry got $25m from Spotify last year, but so far have only made one, 35-minute, show.

Tips and tricks

• An oldie but a goodie: how to add your podcast to every podcast directory

• Want to make your episode notes work well in all the podcast players?

Podcast News

Podland News this week with James Cridland and Sam Sethi talks to Nick Hilton about his new podcast, Jemily Rime talks about the future of podcasting, and Zach and Rock from Squadcast talk about their new release, which’ll go down well with one of the sponsors, Riverside FM. Also sponsored by Buzzsprout.

Jools and Jim’s Joyride is back for a new season: musician Jools Holland and surreal comedian Jim Moir have a relaxed, rambling chat with celebrity friends about transport, travel, trips and tittle tattle. The first guest is Rob Brydon.