The New York Times buys Serial Productions

• The New York Times has bought Serial Productions, the production company behind Serial and S-Town, for a reported $25m. The publisher is also entering into an “ongoing creative and strategic alliance” with This American Life “to develop ideas for stand-alone podcasts that can run under the Serial banner”.

  • “With this acquisition, The Times is uniquely positioned to be the home for the best of audio news and storytelling,” says a note from management. The company also promoted a new CEO, Meredith Kopit Levien, who takes over from Mark Thompson in September.
  • The press announcement also includes an updated figure for downloads of Serial: 20m per episode on average for season one (300m in total, including the bonus episodes). That’s nearly doubled since March 2017, when Variety reported that number was 175m. The season was released between October and December 2014. The power of the archive.

• Media Matters for America, a journalism “conservative misinformation” pressure group, highlights comments on a recent Joe Rogan podcast against transgender people. The outlet has previously reported on Rogan’s misinformation about COVID-19 (as did Podnews, on June 30); earlier, other commentators called out Rogan’s racist, transphobic and homophobic comments. Spotify starts streaming the Joe Rogan podcast from September 1, and has clear rules prohibiting this content. 🍿

  
  Aug 26 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• We published Amazon Music/Audible’s content license agreement for their upcoming podcast service yesterday. Kristofor Lawson points out that one clause says you can’t say anything mean about Amazon in your podcast if you want to be on their platform. We’ve added this to our list of unusual terms and conditions from podcast hosts.

• MediaRadar claims that the number of advertisers in podcasts so far this year has increased by 10%.

• We hear that recently there have been a lot of takedown requests to podcast hosts from record companies discovering unauthorised use of music. David Oxenford writes a long article about using commercial music in podcasts. “The bottom line: don’t use music in podcasts without getting permission directly from the copyright holders.” (We’ve added to to our guide on how to use commercial music, which contains the word “no” eighteen times).

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• Blubrry has released a secure Private Internal Podcasting app for iPhone.

• AudioUK has released guidelines for those working with audio during COVID-19, including in studios.

• Heads-up: Podchaser is soon to launch a feature that lets you find podcasts based on who you already follow on Twitter and Facebook. They suggest ensuring your Podchaser listing includes your Twitter and Facebook account.

• Spotify has confirmed to us that their video podcast feature is proprietary to Spotify, and doesn’t use standard RSS.

• Indie podcast network Rusty Quill has signed with talent agency WME.

• Podcast ad agency Ad Results Media has a new board member, Mainardo de Nardis. He was former CEO of OMD Worldwide and Aegis Media, and was the Executive Vice-Chairman of Omnicom Media Group.

• If 2020 wasn’t rubbish enough, Skye Pillsbury is stepping down as writer of the Inside Podcasting newsletter next week. We’ll miss her fun, bright, positive attitude in the podcast space.

Tips and tricks

• So, you want to start a fiction podcast? Multitude has released a 50-page PDF, from auditions to production, editing to marketing, and what they learnt when they produced Next Stop.

Aug 26 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.
• Using Instagram to Reach and Grow Your Podcast’s Audience (DiscoverPods)
• 11 lessons from 100 podcast episodes (Denis Murphy, The Happy Mindset)

This link is no longer available, as at Aug 26 2023

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