Podcast downloads were up in 2022 - by 20%

• Podcast downloads increased by 20% last year, says Triton Digital in the company’s first US Year-End Podcast Report (pdf). Listeners downloaded 5.6 episodes a week on average, representing 3.8 hours of content.

• Podcasts are doing just fine, says Acast’s Podchaser. “While the biggest players in the podcast industry have expanded and contracted wildly over the past few years, the podcasting middle class has quietly and consistently grown.” Yesterday, we highlighted that the “80% drop in new podcasts” headlines were wide of the mark.

• The fast-growing Everything Everywhere Daily podcast, hosted by Gary Arndt, has been acquired by Glassbox Media. That brings Glassbox’s listenership to over ten million downloads a month.

• City, University of London has announced the UK’s first dedicated MA in Podcasting and a Centre of Podcasting Excellence. Students will be taught by podcast professionals who’ve worked at The Guardian, the BBC, Bauer Media, the New York Times and 6foot6 Productions.

• The full schedule for Podcast Movement Evolutions is now live; the event is in Las Vegas in early March. Meanwhile, The Podcast Show 2023 in London is selling passes at an early bird price, saving 35% for May’s event.

• Podcast hosting company Blubrry has released support for “value4value”, a way to accept online payments from podcast listeners in apps like Fountain, Castamatic and Podverse. The company has partnered with Alby. With more than 100,000 shows using Blubrry, this is the biggest podcast host so far to natively support value4value. The company will release further support for the new podcast namespace next week.

• Behind a paywall, The Information posts an article about Patreon, used by many podcasters (including Podnews) for support. All is not well, the article suggests: bits of it are readable via the author’s twitter.

• Pinecast founder Matt Basta writes a piece accusing Apple Podcasts of “trapping” creators, based on one podcaster who apparently used Apple Podcasts as a hosting platform.

• Edison Research has highlighted the “most efficient” podcasts in different regions of the US.

• Thinking of tweeting an affiliate link or some form of paid partnership? An email tell us that Twitter’s updated rules now require you to add an #ad hashtag.

Moves and hires

• Mike Joachim is no longer working in Senior Sales at Supporting Cast, and is looking for a new role in sales in the podcasting industry.

If you’ve been affected by recent changes in the job market, we’d love to sing your praises to more than 25,000 subscribers here. Please email editor@podnews.net with an updated LinkedIn link, and tell us what kind of role you’re looking for.

Tips and tricks - with Podcast Movement Evolutions

• How to Make a Discord Podcast Channel & Record in High-Quality - Riverside says that Discord is more interactive than other social media tools.

Podcast News - with editaudio

From editaudio: Mina AF with Mina Starsiak Hawk Mina Starsiak-Hawke of HGTV’s Good Bones answers listener questions and hosts candid chats with guests about the things we’re often embarrassed to think about or feel.

Latina to Latina is celebrating reaching 2 million downloads. Since its launch in 2018, the podcast has released nearly 250 episodes of conversations with luminaries in the arts, politics, business and technology.

Only 2% of general contractors in the construction business are women; GirlFlip is a new podcast launching today with entrepeneur Erica Anenberg which highlights the stories of influential women in traditional ‘male’ roles or workplaces. It’s produced by UBNGo.

What happens when the watchdog tasked with overseeing the most powerful law enforcement agency in the country doesn’t do its job? Bad Watchdog is new today from the Project On Government Oversight in the US, uncovering a a shocking pattern of misconduct at the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General.

Almost everyone who has taken a vacation or a trip knows that things don’t always go exactly as planned. In Welcome to Paradise (It Sucks), Andrew Tate interviews real people about their harrowing vacation stories. If you’ve ever missed a flight, or got on the wrong train, or wound up in a sleazy motel room that wasn’t the one you booked, this is the podcast for you.

The War on Drugs has been launched by Lava for Good Podcasts. The podcast examines the true cost of five decades of the failed US “War on Drugs,” which culminated in a staggering 101,000 drug overdose deaths in the past year alone.

A critically-acclaimed, pioneering dual-language podcast La Brega returns today for a new season, looking at the music of Puerto Rico. The series employs a variety of formats: personal essays, storytelling, documentary reportage — to show how the themes and lyrics used in each composition reflect the resonance of those ideas today: colonialism, race, feminism, immigration, LGBTQ+ issues, and more.

Former CNN anchor and journalist Carol Costello is working with Evergreen Podcasts for Carol Costello Presents: Blind Rage - focusing this season on the attack of Phyllis Cottle, who was blinded by her assailant. Costello says: “Her story is tragic, but that’s not her full story. Her life in her words, ‘had a purpose’ after she escaped her attacker.”

Podcast ads in the wild

As part of a collaboration with magazine publisher Future, Stories of Men Podcast is regularly being featured in their magazines: FourFourTwo, Cycling Weekly & Rugby World. The podcast looks to reach a wider audience of men that can relate to their stories.