Podmachine launches: produce, grow, manage

• Podmachine has been launched - a tool to grow and edit your podcast for you (and even manage guests). It takes 48 hours to edit a show, and and starts from $49/month for four weekly shows. Uniquely, the tool also includes advertising in other podcasts. You can try the service for free; we understand it can be white-labelled.

• The hosts of one of the UK’s biggest podcasts, Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo are to take their film review podcast to Sony Music Entertainment. The new show, Kermode and Mayo’s Take, launches in early May. There’ll also be an additional, paid, show on Apple Podcasts.

  • Fun fact: The last BBC podcast, on Apr 1, marked Mayo’s last employment with the BBC. After 40 years with the broadcaster on some of the biggest shows, HR cancelled his security pass while he was still in the building, forcing him to ask for help to get out.
  • For those wondering whether the RSS feed from the duo’s previous show on the BBC would redirect, the answer appears to be: no.

• When That Peter Crouch Podcast moved from the BBC to Acast last week, the RSS feed didn’t forward either, but the BBC did allow them to promote the new feed in a special 20-minute advertisement in the old feed, as Matt Deegan notes.

• The Parcast Union has threatened to strike, reports Bloomberg in a paid article, claiming no agreement has been reached with management. Parcast is owned by Spotify; we reported their stalled union negotiations last month.

• BlueWire is projecting $10m in podcast revenue this year. They’re predicting 124 million downloads.

  
  Sep 13 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• What is Podcasting 2.0 all about? As Dave Jones writes, our report card shows that there’s some confusion out there; but it’s a vision: and the standards to achieve it.

• The Personalised Podcast Planner has been launched by The Podcast Host: a free tool to help kick-start a new podcast, offering a set of resources tailored to you, your goals, and your budget.

• Commercial Radio Australia and Triton Digital have signed a three-year extension of the Australian Podcast Ranker.

  
  Sep 13 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Trouble searching for a podcast on Spotify? According to a Spotify support person, “search results in Spotify are based on a mix of current and all-time popularity, but vary from user to user … the more streams and followers you have, the higher up you’ll appear in search.” Try putting a title in quotes if it’s hard to find a podcast you’re looking for. /thnx Simon!

  • In our experience, removing the word “Podcast” also helps in Spotify searches. Hardly surprisingly: there are 705,000 podcasts with the word “Podcast” in the title.

• Wordpress plugin PowerPress v9.0 has been released, with improved onboarding. It’s produced by Blubrry, though you can host your podcast anywhere with the tool.

• If you’re hosting your show with them, Transistor’s podcast website builder now lets you add extra pages - great for sponsors, “about” pages, or other things.

Moves and hires

• Serita Wesley has been hired as Head of US Entertainment Podcasts at Sony Music Entertainment’s Global Podcast Division. She will spearhead the Division’s entertainment podcast strategy; and joins from Fresh Produce Media.

This link is no longer available, as at Sep 13 2023
• Manoush Zomorodi is the subject of a RAIN Podcast Business Lunch tomorrow at 12pm Eastern.

This link is no longer available, as at Sep 13 2023

Tips and tricks

• Should your podcast be on YouTube? Rephonic crunch the data: revealing that for English-language shows, it could well be worthwhile.

Podcast News - with Acast

With Acast: FT Tech Tonic - the Financial Times podcast investigating the promises and perils of this new technological age — has begun publishing a new six-part series, covering stories from the frontlines of the battle between the US and China for global technological supremacy.

Today, Explained is now on the radio, with more than twelve public radio stations in the US taking the show. The story from Current highlights some of the reasons some stations aren’t taking the show: fear of competition, or “not made here”.