A new show for NAIDOC Week

A new show for NAIDOC week in Australia - below in our Podcasting News section. Podnews would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land where we live and work, the Turrbal and Jagera people, and pay our respects to their elders: past, present and emerging.

• In Atlanta GA, USA, Spotify opened a new podcast studio in a Black-owned plant shop, called Nourish Botanica. Part of Spotify’s Making Space initiative, it’s the third free podcast studio kitted out with professional-quality podcast equipment to encourage more creators from diverse backgrounds to try out podcasting; the others are Saverign in Greenville SC and Curia On The Drag, a coffee shop in Gainesville, FL.

• The 18th Annual People’s Choice Podcast Awards nomination voting is now open: you can vote for nominations in each category.

• Lava For Good, and the project’s co-founders Jason Flom and Jeff Kempler, were honored with the Champion of Justice Award by the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project.

• Congratulations to Stak, which has reached a milestone of 300 million all-time podcast downloads.

• Descript announced a set of new tools, including AI imagery, colour pickers, new captions, video flipping, visual layers, better font control, etc. The product’s clear focus is on video these days.

• Audion, a French podcast monetisation company, has signed two new partners: Initial Studio, a Paris-based documentary and fiction podcast production company, and scientific publisher Futura, based in Provence.

• Spotify for Podcasters, formerly Anchor, saw a big drop in share of new podcast episodes in June, according to Livewire. Omny Studio overtook Libsyn to gain the #4 slot. For tracking services, Podtrac increased its lead over Spotify’s various tracking tools.

• AdNews in Australia published a “long read” about podcast advertising in the market, with many from the podcast industry in the country interviewed.

Moves and hires

• Ruth Todd has been named Executive Vice President and Chief Content Officer at Bonneville International. She will oversee the content vision and execution across Bonneville International’s portfolio of top-rated radio and television stations, chart topping podcasts, and digital platforms.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS․com

• With Apple no longer requiring email addresses in RSS feeds, many podcast hosting companies have removed them for enhanced privacy - but that comes with added complication for claiming podcasts on other services - leading to increased support tickets and frustrated podcasters. This is a priority to fix for the next podcast namespace work, and podcast hosting companies should take part in the discussion.

• Amazon Cloudfront saw its lowest market share in podcast delivery for over a year. Squarespace switched their traffic from Akamai to Fastly. Highwinds was the highest climber: it’s used by Spotify’s Megaphone and by Captivate, among others.

• Cash app is working on payment via Lightning. “ Team ran a hackathon on LNURL and it’s in active dev,” said Cash app’s Rocky Medure. That would allow the app, which is one of the largest mobile payment services in the US and UK, to be part of podcasting’s 'value4value’ service.

Podcast News

It’s NAIDOC Week in Australia, and A Yarn with our Elders is new today from Bendigo Bank and The Peers Project. The new podcast teaches us to listen more intently and understand more deeply the ways of the world’s oldest living culture. The Peers Project is Australia’s only BIPOC female-led podcast agency.

The Gossip Gays has become the first ever podcast to become an Official Media Partner for the Manchester Pride event. The event this year will be held on the holiday weekend of 25-28 Aug. The show is an Audio Always Original; the company is based in Manchester.

For the second consecutive year, Big Brains won the Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s Grand Gold award - it’s the only podcast in the Grand Gold category. There were more than 4,000 entries to the awards this year, from 22 different countries.

Elvis has not left the podcast building - he’s made his own network. Thinking Out Loud With Elvis Duran is a brand new show from Elvis Duran, one of the biggest names in US radio, and marks the establishment of his own podcast network with a number of different shows.

A lonely space station astronaut witnesses a nuclear catastrophe on Earth. Commander Kelly’s audio logs are all that’s left. Man In Space is new from Realm - with an original score and a journey that takes place both out across the stars and inward into oneself.

Cover Up: The Pill Plot is new from Sony Music Entertainment today - the story behind the battle to bring the abortion pill to the US. The Pill Plot is the second season of the Cover Up series, which tells stories that expose deceit, deception, and the abuse of power.