Using music in podcasting moves a step closer

Today, Podcast Music are covering the announcement that “everything about using music in podcasts is about to change” (3.45pm in the Broadcasters Meet Podcasters track at Podcast Movement). The press release sounds exciting; it’s massively welcome, but a little more complicated: notably it’s for US podcasters only, it’ll start next year, and there are no agreements yet with any record labels. We have the full details of what has been agreed.

It’s now easier to be listed in Pandora - the company has launched Pandora for Podcasters, a tool that the company calls a new self-service hub, where anyone can submit their podcast for listing. The Pandora Blog has more details. (Of note: European podcasters aren’t allowed to submit podcasts).

Auxbus, end-to-end podcast creation software, has launched at Podcast Movement. The service assembles podcasts and distributes them automatically to a variety of podcast hosts.

Podcast host Libsyn has released the company’s latest financial reports. In the first six months of 2019, Libsyn’s podcasting business made $6.9m in revenue, up from $5.9m for the same time last year. Shares were down 3%, but remain close to a record high.

Pikast is a new podcast app for book lovers: helping you find conversations with authors about books. The app contains details of over 100,000 books in podcasts .

More podcasts are going premium, and asking their audience to pay. The blog of the app Flick contains a series of posts on that decision, and how podcasters are doing it.

Your Editor is speaking in two sessions today at Podcast Movement - a session about podcast newsletters at 11.30am (Gatlin E1); and moderating Podcasts in emerging markets at 2.45pm (Gatlin E1). He’s also speaking today in Oslo, Norway, at the NRK Podcast Day.