Podcast data from Saudi Arabia, plus Italy, BBC and ABC

• Data: In Saudi Arabia, Samawah Media published data on the Saudi podcast market. There are 573 podcasters in the fast-changing country, the company says: 33% make shows using video. Here’s a translated version of its initial findings.

  • Samawah is a podcast production and incubation company, and was exhibiting at Ignite the Sound, the first conference for international audio content creators in Saudi Arabia.

• Data: BBC Sounds, the corporation’s app for radio, music and podcasts, has posted a weekly average of 4.3m users, representing no growth from the previous quarter. It did, however, achieve a record audience of 4.53m people using it in the week following the UK government’s now-retracted 'mini-budget’.

  • The BBC posted 178m plays of “on-demand radio and podcasts” in the quarter, also flat; 392m plays of audio overall, also flat; and an additional 256m podcast downloads on third platforms, a decline of 3.1% quarter-on-quarter.

• Data: In Australia, the ABC’s Annual Report was published. The national broadcaster is seeing 33m downloads per month for its podcasts (p64), up 22% year-on-year. (ARN’s iHeartPodcast Network Australia, the #1 according to the Australian Podcast Ranker, got 18m downloads in Sep 2022). News shows got the highest increase (50% year-on-year); the ABC News Daily achieved 46% higher downloads than its predecessor, The Signal. Long-form interview podcast Conversations remains #1, with an 8% drop. /ht Oscar

• Data: In Italy, the results of the IPSOS Digital Audio Survey 2022 were announced. 36% of Italian adults (16-60) listen to podcasts (up from 31% last year). /ht Mirko at MDE

• Squadcast has received a patent for the company’s recording engine. The patent relates to “simultaneous recording and uploading of multiple files from the same conversation”, including drift normalisation tools. It’s unclear how this affects similar tools like Riverside or Zencastr.

• Sony Music has been accused of copying the name of a podcast to use for a new show with Emily Ratajkowski. High Low bears a strong similarity, says an IP lawyer, to The High Low, an Acast podcast which ran until 2020.

• Sounds Profitable has published a deep-dive of Triton Digital’s new advertising platform, TAP. The product is demonstrated by Advertising Strategy Manager Isabelle Lleres.

• On YouTube, Simon Owens interviewed a number of successful podcast creators including Brian McCullough, Nicco Mele, Jeremiah Staes, Kathy Doyle, Mignon Fogarty, Pete Davies, Stephanie Arakelian, Tameka Kee and Per Grankvist about building your podcast audience.

• The Earbuds Podcast Collective this week has five podcast episodes looking inside cults: from someone who grew up in one.

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To take advantage of the best pricing, apply for the 27th Annual Webby Awards by the Early Entry Deadline of October 28th, 2022.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• A group of podcast companies, RSS Buzzsprout Transistor Libsyn and Acast, are working on a project to promote open standards for podcasting. “The Podcast Standards Project” hopes to launch its website before January’s Podfest.

• Open podcast analytics service OP3 now returns Country, Continent, Region, Timezone, Metro and ASN. Here are some example requests for the Podnews Daily podcast.

• Podverse (on the web) now lets you export all your user data. It is also partially available in 14 languages, it says, using Weblate.

• And, ICYMI, open prefix analytics service OP3 h as added a setup page, added a prefix argument for a show’s GUID, and introduced API key management. Our OP3 useragent snapshot now uses our own API key; and the Podnews Daily podcast now includes the GUID.

Podcast News - with Lemonada Media

With Lemonada Media: TikTok superstar V Spehar sometimes needs more than a minute to bring you the news! The Under the Desk News creator offers funny, insightful commentary every Tuesday and Friday on V Interesting.

The Prima Donna Podcast has won the Oral History Award at the Victorian Community History Awards. The show brings to life the personal histories and creative work of Australian elder women artists.

Truss Issues is a podcast set up to document British Prime Minister Liz Truss’s first 100 days in office. It lasted longer than her period as Prime Minister.

Well…Adjusting is launched today - a new show to help young people laugh while figuring out life. The show is hosted by Robin Hopkins, and part of the editaudio Original Network.