iHeart Podcast Awards winners and new UK podcast data

• The iHeart Podcast Awards winners were announced on Friday. The Dropout won the Podcast of the Year award. Joshua Dudley reports the event was head and shoulders above last year. Libsyn’s Rob Greenlee shared some video from the event on his Twitter feed; it was streamed on iHeart’s LiveXLive platform, visible in the US only.

• RAJAR, the audio measurement company in the UK, has released their MIDAS study for Q4 2019. It reports that 17% of all UK adults consume podcasts each week, and breaks podcast consumption down by age. 22% of all 25-34 year-olds listen to podcasts; and podcasts account for 8% of all audio listening for this age-group. There’s plenty more data in the research.

• Tom Webster shares Three Paths to Growth for Smart Speakers and Voice Technology, with data about how people in the US are using smart speakers. “To truly get into the average American home, smart speaker innovation can’t just be about the cool — it has to be about the boring”, he adds.

• Audioboom has released a trading update for 2019. Revenues increased 91% to US $22.2m; while eCPM - revenue per thousand listens - has increased: the company now gets US$29.60.

• Spotify is potentially buying The Ringer, which creates sports and pop-culture content, says the Wall Street Journal.

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• Resonate Recordings has announced Podcast Producer Services, featuring podcast assistance available both per episode and per podcast.

• Norway has launched Podtoppen, a ranker of Norwegian podcasts. Produced by research company Kantar, their 'about’ page contains details of how it works; it uses IAB v2 compliant data (but, unlike Triton Digital’s rankers for LATAM, Australia, and their forthcoming US ranker, is not IAB certified).

  • The #1 podcast, with 364,280 downloads over the week, is NRK’s Friminutt med Herman og Mikkel, a comedy podcast “where we talk about what we experience in everyday life, which we think is fun and interesting”. There are 5m Norwegian speakers in the world: that’s the equivalent of an English podcast doing 109 million downloads per week.

• Octopus, the hosting, distribution and monetisation product from French podcast company Saooti, has signed an agreement to enable one-click distribution of podcasts directly to Deezer. It also allows ad agencies of Octopus customers to insert advertisements in podcasts carried on Deezer.

• French podcast app Sybel says it now has one million active users. That’s quite some growth: it was only on 100,000 in July.

• Out Editor is in Paris, France, at the Salon de la Radio later this week. See a 30-minute keynote, ten things radio can learn from podcasting; and he’s on two panels: Making podcasting mainstream in Europe and The future of audio under Google, Apple, and Facebook. Go get some free tickets.

  
  Aug 20 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Apple Podcasts has a vacancy for someone in Business Planning. You’ll be based in Culver City CA.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 20 2023

Tips and tricks - with Acast Open

• Niche can be nicely profitable, says the Canadian Podcast Listener, diving into the demographics of listeners to investment podcasts as one example.

  
  Aug 20 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Tips and resources for how to use music and sound effects for your podcasts from Hannah Hethmon

Podcast News

Believe, a paranormal podcast from Australia, starts season six on Wednesday. It features “terrifying interviews with everyday Australians who have witnessed UFO’s, Bigfoot, Ghosts, Paranormal Experiences and everything in between.” In our experience, it’s probably just a possum. (Acast)

Date Fight is a daily podcast with Jake Yapp and Nat Tapley, arguing what today’s date should be best remembered for. Today, they decide whether Jan 20 should be remembered best for Simon de Montfort or the Cisco Kid. (Audioboom)