What’s in the Podnews Report Card?

• Our Editor James Cridland shared the results of the Podnews Report Card at Podcast Movement. We’ll have this data in full in Monday’s Podnews; but overall, Apple has increased its lead over Spotify as the most favoured podcast platform used by podcast creators. YouTube is eagerly awaited by many publishers; and Google Podcasts saw a disappointing fall in ratings from those in the industry.

• A free podcast transcription tool has been launched. It runs entirely on your own local device (“for the highest privacy and security”), the company says; it uses whisper.cpp’s “tiny” model. It’s powered by Spreaker, though you don’t need to be a customer to use it. It hosts the SRT file itself, which is ideal to add it to your RSS feed.

• Acast spoke at Podcast Movement about how the company uses geo-targeting to safely serve ads for sports betting only in locations where it’s legal.

• Over the past 90 days, at least $25,778.46 has been paid out to podcasters using streaming sats and boosts. This data is available on a new stats page from the Podcast Index.

  • Here’s how streaming sats work.

• Reddit’s own Clubhouse clone, Reddit Talk, is to close. The system will wind down on March 21. It’s a casualty of the closure of a third-party tool that Reddit used for audio.

We’ll be back with our usual length Podnews on Monday.

Tips and tricks - with Phantom Producer

• Our article on how to understand podcast stats has been updated to remove retired analytics data from Google Podcasts, and to add OP3 data.

• In case you missed it, no, the number of new podcasts hasn’t “plummeted by 80%”.

Podcast News

The Podnews Weekly Review was recorded live at Podcast Movement. James and Sam’s guest was Jordan Blair from Buzzsprout. We talk about the new Spotify announcements in front of a live audience.

Need a new show to listen to on a long flight back from Podcast Movement? New Podcast Trailers is available in your favourite RSS podcast app, and contains trailers from lots of new shows.