Podnews acquires Podcast Business Journal

• Podnews has acquired Podcast Business Journal, a well-respected podcast newsletter. Podcast Business Journal will publish a weekly roundup of news, podcast business data, and a long-form interview every week. You can sign up for free here.

• Lemonada Media and Apple Books have launched an audio book club. The companies will select audiobooks and foster conversations about them across Lemonada’s podcast network.

• Correction: iHeart’s figures from Podtrac were up in March, not down as we reported here on Friday. Apologies to our friends at iHeart; we’ve corrected the original story. Sorry. #awkward

• SquadCast v5.3 has been released. The new release offers PCM audio, revamped metering, stats for nerds, and other enhancements.

• YouTube Music, which gets podcasting (in the US only) soon, is adding a sleep timer in readiness.

• Chatham House focuses on the rise in popularity of podcasts in Kenya.

• We’ve a copy of the email announcing the closure of Starburns Audio.

• Popular podcast app Pocket Casts has increased its optional 'Plus’ subscription cost to $39.99/year. Only four months ago, the company raised the price to $14.99/year, from its Sep 2019 launch price of $9.99/year.

• In the Netherlands, all thirteen Dutch regional public broadcasters have agreed to remove personally-targeted, cookie-based advertising from their websites and apps, in favour of contextual advertising. The companies join national broadcaster NPO, who did similar in 2020 - with a result of increased revenue. Contextual advertising is increasingly used in podcasting by companies like Acast and Soundstack.

• Independent podcast networks say they aren’t pivoting to video, reports Ashley Carman in her newsletter.

• Separate stories criticise male podcasters for derogatory comments about women: Pakistani podcaster Nadir Ali and British podcasters Shxts N Gigs.

Twitter: After, well, everything - and following the lead from Eric Johnson, we will no longer link directly to Twitter from our newsletter stories. All links in our archive now redirect to Nitter, a privacy-respecting, non-censored alternative.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com and The Podcast Standards Project

• The podcast:podroll element has been proposed - a way to signal to podcast apps a list of other shows that this podcaster wishes to recommend.

  • Podnews supports this proposal, and you’ll find an example of it in our own RSS feed.

• Partially to support the podroll element, Podnews now displays a podcast GUID - the unique identification for every podcast - in our podcast pages. Find it under “Information for podcasters”.

• In the Podcasting 2.0 “board meeting” this week (transcript), a long discussion about what format to use for transcriptions, plus a heated discussion about Nostr. Guests are Kevin Finn and Tom Rossi from Buzzsprout.

• Thank you to those who send us boosts and boostagrams as they listen using new podcast apps like Fountain - it’s much appreciated.

Tips and tricks

• Five things indie podcasters want to know when pitching sponsors (Podcast Marketing Magic)

• Amit Doshi writes for the Financial Express about premium podcasts, and how to choose a strategy.

• Spotify for Podcasters tells us why every podcast should have a podcast trailer. Ensure, though, that it’s marked as a trailer with your podcast host, so every app and service, like our New Podcast Trailers podcast, can see them too.

Podcast News

In the latest edition of Slate Money, Felix Salmon, Emily Peck and Elizabeth Spiers talk about the podcasting economy and if the bubble has burst—or if it will soon.

Who Smarted? has been acquired by Glassbox Media. The show says it’s one of the top ranked, most downloaded and highest rated Kids & Family and Education for Kids’ shows in the world, and comes out three times a week.

There’s a crisis in the veterinary industry in Australia - a crisis that is killing the people who care for our animals. Sick As A Dog examines the mental health crisis in the vet profession. It shines a spotlight on the many challenges, but also explores the potential solutions that exist. The podcast was part funded through the Meta and the Walkley Foundation’s public interest journalism fund.