Moments defining podcasting in 2024

• Nick Quah posts The 10 Moments That Defined Podcasting in 2024. In the list, Haliey “Hawk Tuah” Welch, Donald Trump, and Mark Zuckerberg in Acquired. And others, too.

• Podcasters using affiliate marketing to earn revenue should know about PayPal’s Honey browser extension - which is rewriting your affiliate codes to theirs, so even if you successfully promote a product, if Honey is installed on a user’s machine, PayPal get the commission, not your podcast.

• Justin Baldoni’s Man Enough podcast has lost Liz Plank, the show’s co-host, who has announced she is to step away from the show, in a statement. Baldoni has been accused of sexual harassment and a smear campaign, by Blake Lively. The show, which started in 2021, is additionally co-hosted by Wayfarer Studios CEO Jamey Heath, who is also named in Lively’s complaint.

• How many podcasts still have the Chartable prefix in them? As of last weekend, there were still 14,241 (not including shows hosted on Megaphone). Omny Studio has the most, at 1,665 (down by 15% since Dec 1), Libsyn has 1,192 (down by 57%) and Simplecast 973 (down by 37%). Chartable prefixes still work - but they won’t for much longer.

There’s a lot of pressure to have a time of joy and happiness right now: but if things become too much, there are plenty of people who can help talk things out - and they’re available today. Here’s a list of helpful numbers and online chat services.

Tips and tricks - with Memberful

• You wanted free transcriptions for your podcast as your Christmas present this year? We link to two types of free software: one fancy website or desktop app from Spreaker; and one terminal command piece of software that you can include in your automations. The latter one, whisper-cpp, has been upgraded to work significantly faster and more accurately using a new model.

Podcast News - with Becoming You

Audio fiction is hard to produce as an “always-on” podcast (with all the benefits that brings), but Josie’s Lonely Hearts Club has succeeded, publishing an episode a week in 2024. It’s partially done by making the show a hybrid of scripted and improvised - giving the show both narrative arcs, but also what the makers call “the electric energy of live comedy”. It’s a neat method of making a show, and must work - it’s just picked up an award!

Some beer names are so ridiculous, they would make a good movie. (Our Editor’s beer advent calendar makes that clear). The show Beer Me That Movie finds silly beer names and makes movies from them; and to keep the feed alive over the holiday period, here’s a neat idea - they’re getting Google NotebookLM to analyse past episodes, too. Cheers!