75% of Americans are now familiar with podcasting

• More Americans know what a podcast is than ever. In a keynote at the RAIN Podcast Business Summit yesterday, Edison Research SVP Tom Webster announced that, in the upcoming Infinite Dial 2020, 75% of US population 12+ say they are familiar with podcasting - a figure up from 70% last year. That’s the equivalent of 212 million people. The new data is released on Mar 19 in a free webinar.

• Podcast Radio, the UK all-podcast station, has announced a content partnership with Radio New Zealand. The deal means RNZ podcasts will be heard on the station.

• Announced at the RAIN Podcast Business Summit, ABC Audio podcasts are to be represented by ESPN Audio for ad sales. The move is to grow podcasts across the Walt Disney Company, which owns both brands.

• Poland’s audio market is featured in an article for the country’s culture·pl, which goes into detail about what a słuchowisko is.

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

• Podfund have invested in two new companies: Revery Media, a premium scripted fiction audio company, and Dot Dot Dot, a podcast company founded by journalist Laurie Segall and media executive Derek Dodge.

• Music industry body IFPI has obtained an injunction against Followerschmiede, a website in Germany that allows musicians to purchase “plays”. Services like these are being used, so IFPI claim, to undermine the accuracy of charts, and increase royalty payments to music creators. (Podcasting has similar evidence of those who manipulate charts and operate clickfarms to add fake plays.)

• Matt Giovanisci is working on an experiment, kicked off by a tweet of a story from Podnews. The Money-Making Podcast Experiment is designed to answer: will a niche podcast in a category with low competition gain listeners, sell more products, and increase revenue?

• Be cautious of adding any old redirect or prepend service. Leo Laporte tried testing a new service which ad-blockers saw as an ad-tracker, according to a tweet, meaning that it didn’t download. Leo was trying Barometric’s click tracker, Adentifi, which is used for measuring clicks on web properties. It’s on EasyList, an ad blocking list that can be used by Pi-hole and other router-based ad-blocking services.

Podcast News

PM Mood is a new podcast hosted by Danielle Moodie-Mills, a TV political commentator. The podcast “will offer a weekly one-on-one sit down with leading activists, celebrities, academics, and artists who are successfully shifting cultural norms, and utilizing their platforms to maximize social impact.” (Acast)

Science Vs has a new episode about covid-19, the virus more commonly known as Coronavirus. They’ve also added a song to remind you to wash your hands, the most effective way of protecting yourself. (Megaphone)

No songs, but a special edition of Start Here from ABC News will post on Saturday Mar 7, focusing on covid-19.

There are already a number of dedicated podcasts about the virus. CNN’s Coronavirus: Fact or Fiction features CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta; but there are plenty others, from lesser-known media brands.

Down The Hill: The Delphi Murders has now had more than 4.3m downloads. They released a new part yesterday. (knit)

Teach me something new is a new podcast from iHeartMedia and Brit+Co, with “some particularly interesting and successful guests” including Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, and Instagram founder Adam Mosseri.
The Dating Game Killer, a new true-crime podcast from Wondery, premieres tomorrow.