Reese Witherspoon produces a new podcast

• Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine is producing a new podcast. How it is “will focus on first-person stories from women about their lived experiences”.

• The final part of the Google podcasting strategy posts from Pacific Content discusses Instant Translation, Lookahead Scrubbing, and More.

• Castbox, a podcast app for iOS and Android, has got $13.5m funding. Business Insider says that the founder, an ex-Googler, sold her home to initially finance the business.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 1 2023

• Ken Lagana has been brought on by podcast network Panoply as Vice President of Sales. Ken’s focus will be leading the team in growing the companies’ ad insertion technology. Prior to joining Panoply, Ken was Senior Vice President Global Sales and Marketing for CBS Digital Media.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 1 2023

• Radio Influence, a podcast and radio host network, launches Dark to Light with Frank & Beanz next Friday, May 4. It “seeks to transform how in depth reporting about complicated political topics reaches an audience who wishes they knew but can’t take the monotony of the mainstream media.”

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• Following the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal, MouthMedia has an interview with former Cambridge Analytica director Brittany Kaiser on American Enough. This is for you if you like data privacy, consumer rights and governance - and who doesn’t?

• Audioboom’s proposed acquisition of Triton Digital is continuing, according to a release. The company will 'make a further announcement' in 'the next three weeks’. Audioboom expect revenue to be around £4.7m for the twelve months 'till November, but lost £4.6m.

• Vulture reviews Gimlet’s The Habitat. “Charming.”

• DiscoverPods post about the growth of podcast networks, suggesting that this gives independent podcasts a new challenge.

• The Next Web claims that the podcast industry wants to befriend Alexa; but the story is really an interview with people from Acast. “Acast wants to be for audio what Netflix and Youtube are for videos”.

• Cameron Reilly from The Podcast Network spoke at Brisbane Podcasters last night. “We have a responsibility, as social animals, to tell stories to each other,” he said. “I wish, though, that podcasts weren’t so unidirectional - and that there was a way to make them more interactive,” he added. The Podcast Network makes premium podcasts; and Reilly spent much of the evening explaining how that worked.

• Listicle corner: 10 podcasts you can listen to in 10 minutes or less. Here’s another: ours, guaranteed to be two minutes or less apart from that one time when we left a bit in that we shouldn’t have.

Thank you to our new subscribers this week, including fine folk from Hindenburg Systems, FBI Radio, Castbox, Panoply, Wondery, Spotify, NPR, VOX Media, Storiyoh, ABC Australia, SBS Australia, Engle, the BBC, the Belgian Standaard and MTG Radio. You’re very welcome!