Patreon removes “per-creation” memberships: goes monthly only

• Patreon is removing a legacy “per-creation” membership, forcing creators to move to charging a per-month fee instead. A “per-creation” membership was particularly useful for some podcasters, especially audio drama producers, who don’t make “always-on” material. Paolo from GrowthMasteryHub takes a closer look - and notes that the hard part isn’t just choosing your new price.

• Congratulations to Jack Laurence, who has just passed 1.5 million downloads for his (audio-only) podcast What I Survived. He shares his download breakdown in a LinkedIn post.

• Apple spent thousands on a front-cover wraparound of London newspaper Metro to promote its new Apple Music Hall in London. Not to sound cranky, but we’re unaware of any money spent promoting Apple Podcasts over the last five years.

• Podcasting is global: research should be too argues Paul Riismandel in the Triton Digital blog. Paul highlights that YouTube isn’t the #1 podcast app in many countries, and to be cautious about extrapolating US-only data. (Podnews is edited in Australia by a Brit, so hopefully we’ll help with that).

• This American Life notes that some NPR shows are getting mysterious comments on Spotify. It turns out that kids, banned from social media, are using podcast comments instead as a place to chat. They picked NPR shows because “they didn’t seem very popular”.

• The BBC may be forced to close television channels and radio stations, according to its new incoming boss. Ex-Googler Matt Brittin also says that he would allow a programme to be made and presented by AI “within guardrails”.

• Further reading: Guang Jin Yeo writes “what Asia should take from the global podcast playbook” … the IAB writes a recap of the IAB Podcast Upfront …

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• What’s Apple up to? We’ve found four feeds at podfeed.apple.com including Testing Follow, RSS show for prod, Artwork Error Test and Claim a show manual test. The audio for these shows are all almost identical - a strange set of words being read by a text-to-speech system. We see you, Cupertino.

• Using XSLT to make a podcast feed look nicer? It’s going away in most browsers, and Chrome-based browsers have started adding a message saying so. You can use a stylesheet to help inadvertent clicks into your RSS feed - like we do - but the best plan is to a) have a website, and b) let people copy but not click the RSS feed, like Buzzsprout does.

• “The ultimate tool for turning podcasts into text”, PodcastsToText transcribes podcasts and produces show notes, chapters, translations and plenty more.

• Polyglot is a new translation tool for WebVTT and SRT, allowing translations in subtitles/captions for podcasts.

• Outputting QR codes on your website? It turns out that lossless WEBP is about a quarter of the size of a lossy one for this use. Our podcast pages are now 3KB smaller. Every little helps. We’ve also updated our llms.txt file in line with the latest recommendations; and added a few optimisations to the code to get it back into the green in Lighthouse scores.

Tips and tricks - with Audiencelift

• Want to get more podcast listeners? How about… pens?

Podcast News - with Airwave

With Airwave: Biohacking podcast The Human Upgrade explores cutting-edge science, advanced technology, and proven biohacks to help you upgrade your energy, focus, metabolism, and resilience. You’ll learn from world-class scientists, doctors, innovators, and thinkers leading breakthroughs in mitochondrial health, peptides, hormones, fasting, sleep, neuroplasticity, and more.

Podcasting 2.0 this week has Sam Sethi from TrueFans as a guest.

The New Media Show this week has our Editor, James Cridland, as a guest.

The Podnews Weekly Review this week is in video on supported podcast players.

Designed in California, a new podcast series from Relay about the 50-year history of Apple, was released. It got more than $310,000 in Kickstarter money earlier this year.

High Energy Planet is back for Season 5, and host Katie Auth is posing the hard questions to some of the smartest thinkers in climate, energy, and development. What is the United States’ role in global energy and climate investment right now? What is happening with US foreign policy when it comes to energy? And how do we reinvent energy and climate diplomacy for a world that has fundamentally changed?

The goblins and ghouls have taken over Caloroga Media. The creaky gates have been flung open as the company’s limited-time Halloween Pop-Up Channel gathers some of its eeriest, strangest, and most delightfully unsettling podcasts in one place. Whether you like your chills gentle or your goosebumps on edge, the lineup has something lurking for everyone.