'Stuff' rises to #2 in Podtrac chart, and a positive podcast for prisoners

• Podtrac have published their top 20 US podcasts for August 2019. Based on US unique audience, iHeart’s Stuff You Should Know rises to #2. Here’s what else you need to know today: The Daily remains #1. (The data is opt-in, and all publishers don’t take part; here’s more on podcast stats).

  
  Aug 17 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• How well will your audio ad work? Veritonic claims they’ve developed a scoring standard, to apparently predict whether it’ll be effective or not.

  
  Aug 17 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• 70 Million is looking for pitches for their next season about criminal justice reform. You’ve got until November 1st.

• The Video Show in Washington DC, USA on Dec 4-5, is covering podcasting this year in a track called The Podcasting Studio. They have opened a call for speakers.

• Speaking in a conference in Argentina, Fernando Subirats from Radio Nacional said that podcasts have helped the station attract a new, younger, audience. (via VíaPodcast)

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• Vivid, in private beta, produces “automatic podcast teasers for your podcast”.

• Jordan Harbinger speaks to the Digital Innovators’ Summit about how to build and maintain an audience. Meanwhile, Cathy Pearl writes how to be a good podcast guest, as does Bradley Metrock for EContent.

Podcast Revenue

• Podcast host RedCircle has unveiled new monetisation options - exclusive content and monthly donations. Their monthly donations product joins a one-off tipping service which they launched earlier in the year.

• Podfund have announced three new investments: DIVE Studios, Domino Sound, and Osiris Podcasts. They will be announcing additional investments in the coming weeks; Podfund GM Nicola Korzenko will be speaking at Hearing Voices in NYC this Friday, Werk It in LA next week, and She Podcasts Live the following week.

We’ve updated our popular article on understanding podcast stats, with more detail about Apple charts and some updates. Feedback is, as ever, welcome. Recognising Spotify’s growing traffic, we also have added their badge as a permanent, top-level listening option in our podcast pages, and fixed podcast names with accents and emojis appearing in our player and in podcast descriptions. Talk to us about UTF-8, we’re all ears.

Podcasts

Spreaker Prime: The Projection Booth Podcast is a premier film podcast recognized by The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly and Filmmaker Magazine. With over 400 episodes to-date, and an ever-growing fan base, the podcast features discussions of films from a wide variety of genres with in-depth critical analysis. They’re using Spreaker Prime to increase exposure and maximize monetization.

Life on the Outside is a podcast from ex-lifers, returning to society after decades of being in prison. Unusually, it’ll be available to prisoners throughout the Californian prison system, “providing incarcerated individuals a rare opportunity to hear successful reentry stories from their cells.” (Libsyn)

Mija is a new audio fiction podcast available in three languages - a short audio drama on one Colombian-American family’s immigration to the US. It’s the first multilingual podcast from Studio Ochenta. (Acast)

La Poudre, a French-language feminist podcast, has released three English-dubbed versions. The podcast has had over 60 episodes. (ART19)

After an accident, Sarah Allely was unable to read, write, watch TV or even listen to podcasts. Brain on Nature covers her recovery - with the aid of the natural environment. The story of how nature changed her brain, it’s released today. (Whooshkaa)

The Boston Globe’s Love Letters is launching their third season. Featuring relationship advice columnist Meredith Goldstein, the podcast has already achieved over a million downloads; the third season explores the question How do you know? - "How do you know when you’ve found the right person? How do you know when you’re with the wrong person? (Boston Globe / PRX)