New Hollywood podcast forced to change name by indie

Ever seen someone else launch a podcast with the same name as yours? Kristen Bell and Monica Padman launched a new podcast (within the Armchair Expert feed) initially called Shattered Glass. However, Shattered Glass already existed: an indie podcast that’s been around since January 2017. After a legal letter, Bell and Padman’s show has been renamed We Are Supported By. The original podcast producers registered Shattered Glass℠ last month as a service mark in class 41 for an application fee of $250.

• Thinking of using Fireside Chat? In his blog, Adam Curry spotted an unusual clause in Fireside’s terms on Saturday. We’ve taken a closer look at them: Fireside can copy your best ideas, sell your stuff with your name on, and ignore you if you don’t like that. See you in court! (Except, no, you can’t do that either.)

• A new tool called EpisodeCheck is a feedback and approval tool for podcast producers - allowing people to share audio in advance, comment on specific timestamps within each show, and to sign off the final result. The tool has a free tier, but is AUD$24 (US$17.50) a year.

• Alex Cooper wants Call Her Daddy to be the Biggest Podcast in the World, according to the Wall Street Journal. Good luck - the show became an exclusive on Spotify last week, which we suggest shuts out about 80% of podcast listeners.

  
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• Tanzina Vega, the host of WNYC’s The Takeaway is the latest to leave the station amid claims she shouted at staff. On The Media's Bob Garfield was fired in May; in April the station laid off 14 people.

• Chartable is removing integrations with Apple Podcasts and Spotify from its free analytics plan.

• Mikaela Lancaster is highlighted as “the woman driving Spotify Australia’s push into podcasts” in the Sydney Morning Herald today. She confirms that podcast listening hasn’t impacted music listening on the platform. 2020 tax returns suggest Spotify Australia earnt US $18.2m in revenue from its free service; but earnt $0 from premium subscribers - that money is funnelled to Sweden, and it pays no tax on that estimated US $290m revenue in Australia.

  
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• Rachel Fountain, formerly of ABC Audio Studios, has joined Deadset Studios as Executive Producer (Podcast Development). Deadset is run by Kellie Riordan, ABC Audio Studios’ former Managing Editor.

  
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• Laurence Henuzet is the new Operations Director at podcast adtech company TargetSpot. She’s worked in digital advertising for eleven years.

  
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• Marc Raco has been hired as Head of Audio for Linktree. He co-founded and led programming/content and business development for MouthMedia Network.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Sep 5 2023

Thank you to those who sent testimonials - you’ll see some on our front page, rotating regularly.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS․com

• Podcast Index now lists an “active within 90 days” metric on its stats page, aligning with the common definition of an 'active’ podcast. 698,909 podcasts in the index are 'active’.

• Transistor has added full support for transcripts, including support for the <podcast:transcript> tag.

• Podcast Index is working on cross-app comments; Podfriend has some test code. The tests use the ActivityPub standard.

• Also under consideration by Podcast Index - how to get better stats for your podcast. More details next week.

Tips and tricks

• Are you really sure you need to ask 'that’ question? Martin Franklin has a question you probably shouldn’t ever ask.

• Do you need to edit your podcast? Rachel Corbett says “hell yes”. (She’s guest host on Podland this week).