The iHeart Podcast Awards 2024 winners

• The iHeartPodcast Awards took place at SXSW in Austin, TX. Podcast of the Year went to New Heights; iHeart won seven of the thirty awards (including the international winner from iHeartPodcasts Australia); SiriusXM’s Simplecast hosted nine of the winners; iHeart’s Omny Studio hosted eight. We’ve a full list of the winners here, and video of the event.

• The top shows in the UK for Q4/23 were announced by Edison Research. The data, from Edison Podcast Metrics UK, says that the BBC has no shows in the top 10; and there’s only one US show in the top 10, too. Acast hosts the most shows in the list.

• Rooster Teeth is to close. The company’s Roost podcast network will continue to operate, while owners Warner Bros Discovery finds a buyer. It has 150 full-time employees.

• Blubrry’s statistics for this month has added a new category showing places with the largest growth of listening in February. South Korea seems to be having a moment, with growth of 700%; though the Pope’s getting his fair share of podcasts too, with a 524% growth from listeners in the Vatican City.

• It’s Spotify’s fifth year in India, the country with the biggest population on Earth. Last year, four of the top 10 podcasts on Spotify in India were in the mythology/spirituality genre.

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• In Australia, people listen to podcasts for as long each week as they listen to FM radio. That’s according to ACMA, the Australian media regulator, in their new report “how we watch and listen to content”. The weekly radio audience has declined over the last six years by 25-33%.

• Libsyn has added support for podcast transcripts. Users can upload a transcript in SRT or VTT format. Need one making? Libsyn’s competitor Spreaker offers a website (and desktop app) offering free podcast transcription for everyone.

• Embedded players by Podverse, Podfriend and JustCast are being excluded from OP3 stats after downloading audio when the page is loaded, rather than when the listener presses play.

• After Auddia announced it was to purchase the Radio FM app on Feb 27, detailed why it wanted to buy it on Feb 29, and how it fit into its overall M&A user acquisition strategy on Mar 4, it’s decided not to purchase Radio FM after all. The company had announced it was building a feature that skips ads in podcasts, scheduled to launch Jan 15 in the company’s faidr app; that feature hasn’t yet launched.

• Food for thought from Siobhan McHugh - even avid podcast listeners have never heard of Serial.

Moves and hires

• Amazon Music has made Megan Bradshaw the Head of Podcasts, Europe, Australia and New Zealand; and Ana Karina Quiroz is Head of Podcasts for North America, LATAM and Spain.

Tips and tricks - with Memberful

• We Edit Podcasts looks at podcast monetization in the company’s latest podcast.

• How does Courtney Carthy make Hit Different? (We’d love articles from you, too, detailing your workflow and tools.)

Podcast News - with Airwave

From Airwave - This Day in History does what you might expect. Today, it looks at the discovery of oil in Alaska on this day in 1968. It’s from The HISTORY Channel.

Choiceology with Katy Milkman has returned for a new season. The podcast launched in 2018 and has been tackling how we make decisions ever since. The show starts with an episode that uncovers why we are more likely to believe things the more they are repeated: and with election season well underway in much of the world, it’s a worthwhile listen. It’s from Pacific Content.