Podcast downloads by country; and the Peabody Awards

• Radio and podcasting winners from The Peabody Awards have been announced (and they’re all podcasts): they are Believed from NPR; Buried Truths from WABE; Caliphate from the New York Times; and two episodes of Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX.

• Libsyn’s The Feed usually contains some nice stats. In the latest show, for March, 62% of Libsyn’s podcasts were downloaded from Apple Podcasts; 9.6% from Spotify, and 2.8% from Overcast (with Google Podcasts at #8, with 1.2%). (Fewer than 40% of Libsyn shows are available on Spotify).

  • In terms of countries, the US downloaded 63.5% of all Libsyn podcasts; then Canada 5.3%, the UK 5.1%, Australia 3.7%, and Sweden 3.1%.

• More stats, this time from Podtrac (not everyone’s signed up to it; its methods are proprietary; it’s US only; etc) - the top 20 podcasts for March 2019. The company has also quietly revised their top 10 podcast publishers for the same period, correcting Wondery stats.

  
  Aug 12 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Oh, you want more stats? Try these statistics for the French podcasting market, showing that Pippa is the #4 podcast host in the country, and SoundCloud #3. Ausha is the most popular podcast host - a French company.

• Michael Barbaro from The Daily is at an event in London on June 6. He’ll be joined by NYT journalists, exploring “the uncertainty caused by Brexit and the global implications of the nationalist undercurrent currently sweeping across both Europe and the United States”. The event will be recorded by Intelligence Squared.

  
  Aug 12 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.
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• Gimlet now has a formally recognised union.

• “We’re giving our art away and then complaining about being broke.” A challenging read, Tanner Campbell suggests that we redefine how podcasting works to fix what he calls podcasting’s monetisation problem: calling on us to “create a singular publishing platform that podcast directories like Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeart, and all the rest have to pay to access and make available on their platforms.”

  
  Aug 12 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• PODX is a new podcast convention “for fans, creators and professionals like”, which will be held in Nashville TN, USA, May 31–June 2. It’s being run by the company behind BroadwayCon, LeakyCon, and Con of Thrones. Rabia Chaudry and Aaron Mahnke are on the lengthy list of announced speakers.

• Liz Nelson has joined Vox Media as Editorial Director, Vox Podcasts. “Liz will push Vox and Recode’s current and future podcasts to the next level,” we’re told. She joins from Gannett, where she was VP of Content Development.

• If you’re in the US (and on mobile), Podnews is now on Pandora. We’ve added this link - and the link to add yours - in our list of podcast directories.

• Spotify’s Global Head of Advertising, Brian Benedik, talks about Spotify’s monetisation plans in an interview in the Australian Marketing magazine.

• Luminary’s iOS app is not fully accessible to blind users, with unlabeled elements and buttons. The company says this is work in progress. Meanwhile, the Android app for Luminary - still officially unreleased - had an update to fix a critical bug in Luminary’s first 24 hours of launch. We also note media coverage from Fast Company, who have listened to some of the exclusive podcasts available; and Kevin Goldberg from DiscoverPods writes why Luminary is bound to fail.

  
  Aug 12 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

Podcasts

The Daily Talk Show bills itself as “a conversation sometimes worth recording”, with two business owners Josh and Tommy (who own Melbourne’s Big Media Company). Recording every weekday for over a year, they’ve already done over 330 episodes. They’re new Podnews supporters today: thank you. (Simplecast)

I, Survivor returns for season two, along with six new stories of resilience and survival. This season is all about finding empowerment through sharing. (Wondery / ART19)

Correspondence

Following our coverage of Luminary launching without some major podcasts yesterday, Jamie asks:

Luminary is a podcast subscription service, but also a podcatcher. Presumably some shows are behind the paywall and ordinary podcasts are not. So what is keeping it from reading RSS feeds of The Daily and Gimlet shows, like any other podcatcher?