National Lampoon first on Spotify; how popular is AAC audio in podcasts?

• National Lampoon has signed a partnership agreement with Spotify. Their Radio Hour podcast will have Spotify as “exclusive early release destination for all new episodes”, and Spotify users will also gain access to the original 1970s radio shows.

• 24% of all podcasts released in 2019 are in AAC/M4A format (the format Apple recommends). So says podcast host Blubrry, who have looked at MP3 vs AAC format files. However, the company points to M4A being the default for Anchor - and once you remove those, M4A format files only account for 4.3% of 2019's podcasts where podcasters have made a deliberate choice. One of those is ours.

• Google Assistant has added a new podcast discovery feature - listening to podcasts by topic. “OK, Google, find a podcast about podcasting news” is particularly good. It returns a list on displays, and plays podcasts on phones. This is an enhancement of a feature first launched in early August on the Google search engine.

  • 18 months after the launch of Google Podcasts, Google Play Music Podcasts, an unconnected and competing Google-branded podcast player, is still available.

• The Apple Podcasts app spent much of yesterday crashing, according to 9to5mac.

• Next Up is another podcast alarm clock app: this one apparently uses your Apple Podcasts lists (only).

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• The 3rd Annual Canadian Podcast Awards are open, and you’ve until Dec 29 to get your entries in. There are thirty categories to choose from; your podcast must be 55% Canadian. Good luck, eh.

• ListenApp has created a podcasting tools and resources website, and is launching it on ProductHunt today. They explain in a blog post that it’s a community-curated platform.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 19 2023

• Anchor has partnered with the Ad Council to support three US charities with free Sponsorship ads.

• Ride Home Media has announced $1m in seed funding from Tiny Capital, and the launch of its third podcast, Celeb News Ride Home.

• Reacting to David Pakman’s claims yesterday, Stitcher/Midroll tells us:

Omny Studio represents an exciting opportunity to explore new capabilities for Stitcher and its partners - improved content management, better data and insights, increased monetization and a growing suite of data-driven advertising solutions. Like Omny, Midroll and Stitcher adhere to strict privacy and data collection policies (published online), including those stipulated by GDPR. Our new sales products comply with these policies.

All partners were notified of this sales transformation for the first time in June, giving them 6 months to decide on the best course of action for their own shows. Our internal team has offered every partner the opportunity to connect with us directly with any concerns, questions or alternate solutions. And, it is very much at their discretion to continue contracting with our advertising services arm, Midroll. Our goal is always to keep the interests of our partners at the forefront and we look forward to serving them with the introduction of a new set of tools beginning next year.

• Podcast host Transistor now supports WebSub, to help get your episodes quicker to podcast apps. Captivate, Simplecast, Zencast, Transistor, Powerpress and Buzzsprout now all support the standard.

• “If privacy of listeners is important — as it should be — then why do very few podcast hosts have a clear, simple privacy policy for people who are listening to podcasts hosted on their platform?” - our Editor in an opinion piece yesterday. Congratulations to Buzzsprout, who have added a privacy policy for listeners to its website, joining Acast (and us).

• Thanks to the mystery Podnews reader at Apple. On December 3, we reported about “their New & Noteworthy section in Flanders, Belgium, which features podcasts from 2013, lectures from 2015, and podcasts in Turkish and Spanish - one promising to guide new students for the 2016-2017 year in a Mexican university.” As of today, it looks like this - most of the selections are shows from the last few months, and even three shows in Flemish! Nog ne ghoeien dagh!

• We’ve updated our how episode notes display article, adding support of content:encoded vs description to the full results and re-testing the top podcast apps. Only Stitcher is failing to follow the specification; though Spotify does not support HTML episode notes.

Tips and tricks - with Acast Open

• Off to do a podcast interview? Here’s a checklist of some tips from East Coast Studio.
• Here’s how to launch a podcast with impact, according to NEXT Canada.
• Jordan Harbinger gives advice in Forbes.