Fyre Festival fraudster produces podcast from prison

*Our cover story:** the convicted fraudster behind the Fyre Festival is to launch his own podcast. More in our Podcast News section below.

• Google Podcasts is now the third-biggest podcast app. Libsyn’s Rob Walch unveiled the company’s download statistics in The Feed. It is, though, still five times smaller than Spotify, the #2. According to Libsyn, which gets 62% of its downloads from the US, total downloads to Pocket Casts dropped below 1%.

• Spotify removed four QAnon-related podcasts, after Insider contacted the company. QAnon is an unfounded conspiracy theory.

• Launched yesterday, Quake is a new subscription podcast company with $2.5m in seed funding. It launches with six exclusive shows; and will sell access for $4.99 a month.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 28 2023

• Loop Media has acquired Spkr, a podcast app that plays short clips of podcasts to help you discover new ones. They’ve also announced their own podcast studio.

• Podcast Movement Virtual kicked off yesterday with a keynote from Edison Research’s Tom Webster. He unveiled the slide above - showing that podcasting’s share of all audio listening is now 6% of all consumption. Fittingly, it was also World Statistics Day yesterday.

“Podcasting has become the greatest companion medium. Not only can you take it with you while you do other things, but we also see people turning to podcasts for a sense of community and connection during a very stressful time.” — Tom Webster at Podcast Movement Virtual

• The second keynote session at Podcast Movement Virtual looked at emerging podcast markets across the world. Our Editor hosted it; panelists were Norman Chella from Malaysia, who hosts the Podlovers Asia podcast; Paula Rogo from Kenya, who runs the Pods4Africans newsletter; and Núria Net from Spain, from the boutique podcast publisher La Coctelera Music, currently in the middle of several productions for Podimo, Audible and others.

• Todd Cochrane and Rob Greenlee’s New Media Show will be recorded later today at Podcast Movement Virtual. They’ll be joined by, among others, Podnews Editor James Cridland, and Sounds Profitable Editor, Bryan Barletta.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 28 2023

• We’ve a nice page all about embedded players for your podcast. Olli contacted us with an interesting note - if you use the embedded Spotify player, if the listener isn’t logged into Spotify, that play won’t appear within Spotify for Podcasters, which just measures logged-in users. No worries, though - for podcast hosts with passthrough (which is most of the big ones) it’ll still count there. We’ve updated the article.

Tips and tricks - with True Crime Reporter from PAR

• Glimpse into Liz Keen’s podcast editing process. Podcasts are like building a house, she thinks.
• All you need is LUFS? Nope, says Tanner Campbell - “loud enough” doesn’t always mean “clear enough”.

Aug 28 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

Podcast News

Remember Billy McFarland, the convicted fraudster from the Fyre Festival? He’s been in the Elkton Federal Correctional Institution for the past 29 months - but with Jordan Harbinger, he’s done a podcast from prison called Dumpster Fyre - promising to 'set the record straight'. Here’s a short clip. (And catch Good Morning America this morning for more.)

The Joe Rogan Experience is on pause until at least next week, after Jamie Vernon, a show producer, tested positive for COVID-19. Nobody else has tested positive, and Rogan himself hasn’t been in the studio for the past nine days. Plans to restart the show may be to avoid using the tube train tanning salon new studio for a bit.

Guardian Australia has launched The Wait, a new podcast series telling the story of the forgotten refugees indefinitely stranded in Indonesia as a result of Australia’s border crackdown. Find it within their Full Story feed.

Case Closed has returned for season three - focusing on an intriguing crime within the Amish community in Ohio. It’s based on the book A Killing in Amish Country.