The oldest podcaster in the world? And how can we hit $2bn?

• What’s needed to help podcasting hit $2bn in podcast revenue? The results of a survey (including from Podnews readers) from Westwood One points to a need for better attribution and data; a more robust idea of a 'test buy’, and a monthly reach of 44%. (That current figure is 32%; but new data is out later this month.)

• BBC Studios has invested into podcast app Pocket Casts. NPR, WNYC Studios and WBEZ Chicago have also added new investment: terms weren’t disclosed. BBC Studios is the commercial arm of the BBC, which, almost a year ago, blocked its podcasts from Google Podcasts.

• It’s a busy week in podcasting: the RAIN Podcast Business Summit is on Wednesday morning in New York NY; the HotPod Summit on Thursday in Brooklyn NY (we tried for tickets, dear reader, but weren’t successful); and, until Sunday, PodFest in Orlando FL and onair fest in Brooklyn NY.

• What is the music copyright business actually worth? In Billboard, economist Will Page says the global value of music copyright passed $30bn in 2018 - the highest it’s ever been, and 9.3% up on 2017. Labels get 61% of that; publishing 39%. We’d add that unlocking revenue from podcasting would benefit the industry further.

• Joshua Dudley profiles Sarah Rhea Warner, “whose level of giving back in her field seems to be approaching sainthood”.

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• Blue Wire, a new sports podcast company, has raised $1.2m in a seed round. The company will relocate to New York City as part of the plan.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 21 2023

• In Australia, Steve Ahern notes improvement to flash briefings from ABC Australia on his smart speaker; and we’re delighted to note that Podnews is also on his news briefing setup.

  
  Aug 21 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Radiodays Asia, a radio and podcast event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, has announced its first speakers, which include Edison Research’s Tom Webster, radio and podcast consultant Valerie Geller, and Mae Mariyam Thomas from the Maed In India podcast.

• Podchaser has a new advisor. Abbie Sheppard works at personalised video company Cameo as Head of International Business. Reviews have also been integrated into MyPodcastReviews and also into Podrover.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 21 2023

Podcast News

Cover story: At 101, is Ida Schuster the oldest podcaster in the world? The actor is hosting Old School, with her life story of growing up in a Jewish immigrant family in the Gorbals area of Glasgow, and a journey through her childhood, the war years, and her long career on stage and screen. (The Big Light / Acast)

And is the oldest podcast in the world in Spanish? The team at En Caso de que el Mundo Se Desintegre thinks it’s the longest-running Spanish-language podcast, being first published in February 1999 (with audio files on the web via Internet Explorer Channels) and 2003 (via RSS). Do you know different?
• Correction: Yesterday, we mentioned that the “Obsessed with…” podcast series was growing. In fact, the new podcast we mention, a new companion podcast to a Netflix TV show, is unconnected to previous “Obsessed with…” podcasts, which are companion podcasts to BBC TV shows. Sorry.

From our readers

Our note that there are now more than 900,000 podcasts in Apple’s directory brought some comment from readers.

“Podcast Creator / Listener” says: Directories make it look as if the top 200 podcasts are the only podcasts worthy of listening-to: when in fact, if your show is in the top 9,000 you’re still in the top ONE PERCENT of all podcasts, right?! Why would they not expand the ranking lists?? It’s common sense really.

Cody Gough says: The “here’s how many shows are on Apple Podcasts” stat is always widely reported on by your publication and several other outlets. But I wonder, what is the point? I ask specifically because of the moment I realized the stat doesn’t really mean anything: my wife (a college professor) had her students produce a couple of podcast episodes on Anchor as an assignment in their Spanish class. So assuming they published it or Anchor submitted it to Apple Podcasts, that means that at least 20 or so of those 900,000 podcast are literally student assignments that just ended up on the directory. And that’s the thing: people post audio for a myriad of reasons. Who knows how many of those 900k pods are literally some corporate marketing person uploading 2 minutes of audio with the file labeled “test,” or a proof of concept that the CMO made them post just to see how podcast feeds work? I searched for “test” and found a “podcast” that is 3 seconds of audio, uploaded once, in 2017. Yet under Daniel J Lewis’ definition, this is “a podcast.” To me, saying that every piece of audio on Apple Podcasts is a “podcast” is like saying that every PowerPoint presentation is a sales deck, or inferring that Hollywood is being pitched more scripts because more people are using Microsoft Word. I wonder if it might be worth noting the lack of qualitative information this stat actually contains. Lewis is certainly doing a clever job of getting some free press out of what is a virtually meaningless statistic, but I wonder what value it really provides.

(In terms of their value: we think a headline number helps podcasters talk up the industry, and you can guess that we’ll probably highlight when the number gets to above a million. However, yes, the stat is relatively meaningless by itself - and, given there are more than a million self-published books published each year in the US alone, there’s plenty of space to grow.)

Beer tomorrow night in New York

Our Editor is hosting the RAIN Podcast Business Summit tomorrow morning, Wednesday Mar 4. So, from 6pm on Wednesday night, we’ll be inside the Beer Authority, on 300 W 40th St, and will swap you a cheap laptop sticker for a pint of foaming beer. (We’ve not booked a space, so find out what James looks like on the RAIN website).