The Messengers: free podcast documentary movie to celebrate International Podcast Day

Happy International Podcast Day 2019! There’s a set of live presentations until 9.30 Pacific Time tonight.

• The Messengers: A Podcast Documentary is now available, for everyone to watch, for free. The documentary was originally released in March 2017, starring a number of familiar faces, and produced by Chris Krimitsos who has now released the movie for everyone. We’ve put the hour-long documentary here on YouTube; and you can also watch and share via Chris’s page on Facebook.

• The winners of the Podcast Awards 2019 have been announced. The awards - the first podcast awards - were first held in 2005. Congratulations to the winners - Podnews was, once more, a proud sponsor.

• A major new audio production company has launched in the UK. Listen has acquired the content production business of Wisebuddah, responsible for many chart-topping podcasts and radio programmes, instantly making the company a major production powerhouse. “The world of audio is booming right now”, says Content Director Adam Uytman in a press release.

• The CEO of Audioboom, Robert Proctor, has resigned. The company’s COO Stuart Last has been appointed Interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent replacement. The resignation comes a week before the company’s third-quarter trading update.

• In Germany, YouGov have released some (free) podcast research. The most popular places to consume podcasts (for people aged below 44) are YouTube and Spotify, the research says, and highlights differences in genre by gender.

• Spotify are advertising podcasting heavily on social media. We saw this in Australia on Facebook, with some Australian as well as international podcasts being highlighted. Jason Hirschhorn saw some significant marketing on Twitter: “the best new shows aren’t on TV”.

• YouTube Music is to be preinstalled on all new Android phones. This means that Google Play Music will no longer be, and gives a further reason to stop promoting the dormant service for podcast use. The (different) Google Podcasts player is pre-installed in all phones, but the app itself still doesn’t, it seems, come as standard.

• The Podcast Festival in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, was on over the weekend. We’d recommend catching up via the #podcastfestival hashtag on Twitter.

• David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder of Basecamp and host of Rework, has reacted angrily to ART19's video, which we shared last week. “I abhor person-targeted advertisement(s),” he writes, “we will ditch ART19 for another provider for @reworkpodcast immediately,” noting that he is “never making the mistake of using a provider URL again”. He’s chosen to move to Transistor.

• The Podboxer newsletter, a recommendation service for business podcasts, has closed.

Podcast Revenue

• Bell Media and Stingray, two large Canadian media companies, have partnered to launch Audio360, a multi-platform audio sales solution for advertisers. It will include sales of podcasts on the iHeartRadio Canada app.

• Magellan report that Spotify bought three times as many podcast ads in August as they did in July. ZipRecruiter remains the #1 podcast advertiser in the US.

• The former head of global sales at SoundCloud, Chris Blackburn, has joined DAX in their New York NY, USA team as EVP Sales and Business Development.

Thank you to Glisten Media Podcast Production, “helping you make media that people listen to”. They’re based in Reading UK and are our latest Patreon supporter. You should be like Glisten Media too.

Podcasts

Spreaker Prime: Nature vs Narcissism is a true crime/comedy podcast where host Heather and her guests discuss true crimes and the narcissists who commit them. Sometimes with alcohol in-hand, they delve into whether they think nature makes criminals commit heinous acts or if it’s simply their narcissism getting the best of them. Heather’s using Spreaker Prime to host for free and make more money.

Mark Egan, a video trainer, notes that it “looks like “The Office” is no longer the most epic media production to come out of the Slough Trading Estate”, linking to this picture and the EstateLife Podcast. (Anchor)

The final season of Gimlet’s StartUp focuses on Spotify’s acquisition of the business. It starts October 4th.