Next Radio conference, podcasting to come to Google, and Ira Glass talks

Next Radio, the radio ideas conference, has announced its first speakers for this year. It’s in London on September 18th. Items of interest for podcasters include US consultant Valerie Geller (currently working with podcasts in LA), and the BBC sharing research on effective thumbnails (and by extension, effective podcast artwork). Early-bird tickets 'till end June. Disclosure: I’m one of the organisers.

Speech from Ira Glass in Cannes: “If you give people narratives that is the same quality as TV, then they will come to radio in TV numbers”. Lots of stats here.

USA TODAY is hiring Robin Amer to produce investigative podcasts for the USA TODAY NETWORK (which apparently needs to be SHOUTED). Interesting use of local journalists to find stories, and Amer to help produce and present them.

PodCon the crowd-funded convention for fans of podcasts is a go, having raised $243,000 from 3,000 backers. It’s Dec 9-10 in Seattle, Washington.

Also, ShoutOutLive is a podcast festival in London, August 5th.

The podcasting experience in Android is about to get simpler: the new Google app (pre-installed in every Android phone) is prepping for podcast subscriptions. Probably also good for Google Home. Google typically does a good job of synching data between devices, but still has a way to go to match Apple’s ease of use.

Trouble at SoundCloud, according to an anonymous source. This website asks how much longer SoundCloud can continue to operate; but then, this isn’t a new refrain.