RSS.com launches chapter-aware YouTube uploads

• First look: Podcast hosting company RSS.com has launched PodViz, an in-house visualisation tool to produce videos from audio podcasts for services like YouTube. The service supports chapter art and YouTube metadata; an example is here. It’s not limited to the company’s hosting customers: any podcaster can try it here.

• The first show-and-tell networking event for podcasting from Podnews, Podnews Live comes to MediaCityUK in Salford tomorrow. Some tickets are still available.

• Podcasters wanting to buy a “Blue Yeti”? Owner Logitech is retiring the “Blue” brand for hardware. The microphones don’t go away though - they’re now simply called Yeti.

• Spotify is selling its music and podcast creation tool Soundtrap back to its original founders. No terms were given.

• In the past few weeks, more than three hundred podcasters have created “five best podcasts for…” lists on podcast listening app Goodpods.

• Above - watching our podcast host migration tool, you’ll often see shows migrating to Spotify’s Megaphone. Working with an investor, we’ve learnt that since early 2021, Podnews’s sample data shows that Spotify’s Megaphone has migrated at least 2,428 shows to its network from other hosting companies: representing shows with a total of 131 million listeners. The number of shows being migrated in our sample continues to increase; though the shows transferring recently have fewer listeners.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS․com

• 6 features have been formalised into the new podcast namespace. They’re now fully documented in the tag specification document. Of the new features, the Podnews Daily podcast supports podping and podroll.

• The Livewire Podcast Validator now supports the new podcast namespace features for phase 6.

• Nathan Gathright is working on a transcription service to produce word-by-word JSON transcripts.

Podcast News

New Podcast Trailers is there for everyone wanting to find a new show to listen to, from the pages of Podnews and updated daily.

The Economics of Everyday Things is a brand new show from Freakonomics Radio, which launched last night after a successful pilot. What happens to used hotel soap? How do pop songs make their money? The show’s first episode looks at the economics of professional sports mascots.

Some big deals change the world. The Closer is new today, with stories that are everything you want in a good drama: tales of failure, betrayal, high stakes and big risks. Every episode, financial journalist Aimee Keane reveals how a deal made in a boardroom somewhere has an impact on our everyday lives. It’s new from Project Brazen and PRX.

Around 170,000 people are reported missing every year in the UK. That’s one disappearance every 90 seconds. The Missing returns for a new season today, telling the story of a long-term missing person who has never been traced. Produced by charities Locate International and Missing People, perhaps you can help solve some of these real-life searches for missing family members.