A multilingual podcast in French and Mandarin

• Bonjour! 你好! The first multilingual podcast in French and Mandarin from Ghost Island Media has been launched: a celebration of culture and friendship, 法台漫遊 Balades Culturelles Franco-Taïwanaises talks with French artists who have worked in Taiwan. It’s a branded project with the Bureau Français De Taipei with the support of Institut Français; both French and Mandarin versions of each episode are in the same RSS feed. (Podcast consumption in France grew significantly last year).

• How do the Spotify team decide which podcasts to promote? Spotify for Podcasters describes what you can do to be considered.

• According to founder Scott Mathson, Plink, a service that makes smart podcast links to shows and episodes, is three years old today. Here is our page on the service.

• Libsyn, parent company to AdvertiseCast, has had trading in its shares suspended by the SEC. The company hasn’t filed financial reports for any period since Sep 30, 2020. The company appointed a new CFO at the end of last year to help sort things out.

  
  Sep 13 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Triton Digital has withdrawn its Webcast Metrics from MRC accreditation. Webcast Metrics measures live streams for radio stations, which Triton Digital does for broadcasters around the world; the Media Rating Council is a US-only body.

• Parcast has ratified its first union contract with the Writers Guild of America, East, meaning payrises for all employees as well as diversity commitments. They reached the agreement after staff threatened to strike.

Moves and hires

• Jonathan Peck has been hired as Senior Director of Broadcast and Podcast Marketing for PRX. He had been working at WAMU.

This link is no longer available, as at Sep 13 2023
• Evergreen Podcasts has made a number of leadership promotions, including new roles for Gerardo Orlando, Conor Standish and Brigid Coyne.

Tips and tricks

• Podcast transcripts need non-speech elements in order to be accessible to those who need them. Ma’ayan Plaut explains what they are, and what to add.
• Tips for Creating a Documentary Style Podcast gives examples and ideas.

Podcast News - with Acast

From Acast: Equity Mates, a financial and investing podcast network in Australia, says its seen a 45% year-on-year increase in listens since joining Acast. The company has launched a new “tri-weekly” podcast, The Dive.

Freakonomics Radio celebrates its 500th episode today: rather than looking back, the show kicks off a four-part series on the state of higher education. The staff for the network has tripled in the past two years, we’re told, and the network set a new record in downloads in 2021. Gabriel Roth joined the show as Editorial Director just last month.

Podnews’s Editor, James Cridland, was a guest on Monocle 24's The Globalist today - talking about YouTube, Facebook and Spotify. The daily news show is available on online radio as well as a podcast.

Trapital has Will Page, former Chief Economist at Spotify, as a guest this week. Page believes the music industry is transitioning from a “herbivore market” to a “carnivore” one: future growth will not come from brand-new customers — it’ll come from the streaming services eating into each other’s market share. There are parallels, too, with podcasting. Here’s a transcript

The Invisible Seam was launched today by Tommy Hilfiger, and focuses on the overlooked contributions of Black culture and communities to expand the narrative around the history of American fashion. The series has been developed through Tommy Hilfiger’s People’s Place Program in partnership with The Fashion and Race Database and Audacy’s Pineapple Street Studios.

WTOP has launched its first daily news podcast, DMV Download. The station, the top-rated news station in Washington DC, will update their twenty-minute podcast in time for the afternoon commute home, partially because of fierce competition in the morning. “I think a lot of people have their daily national podcasts set,” said co-host Luke Garrett in an interview.

Ukraine Stories is a the first podcast from Fearless Media, with journalist and former NPR host David Greene taking us to a new story from Ukraine every day. It is told in first-person narratives, by the people living through this war. The team plan a Russian-language version of the show shortly too.

Audio Long Reads is brand new from the New Statesman, featuring the best of its reported features, profiles and essays read aloud by the authors and voice actors. The first episodes published include Big Tech and the quest for eternal youth, and a look into the trial of those accused of toppling a statue of slave trader Edward Colston.