SmartLess jumps into the Podtrac top 20

• Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett’s podcast SmartLess is a new entry at #9 in the Podtrac top US podcasts list for August. The show was bought by Amazon’s Wondery at the end of June. Podtrac contains participating publishers only.

  
  Sep 6 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.
  • Earlier this year, SmartLess was also the second-highest new entry in the top 50 US podcasts from Edison Research’s Podcast Consumer Tracking Report.

• Magellan AI has partnered with Ad Alliance to analyse over a hundred podcasts in the German-language podcast market of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Ad revenue for the market has increased 220% in a year.

• Writing for The Fix, David Tvrdon covers the different paid audio strategies from European publishers, including Germany’s Der Spiegel, Poland’s TOK FM, Denmark’s Zetland and others.

• Acast Sweden is the latest company to run a podcast competition. Poddnästet gives podcasters the opportunity to win a high-quality podcast production and marketing package worth 250,000 SEK (US $30,000). You’ve until Oct 29. Lycka till! Kom ihåg oss när du är rik och känd.

• Erick Erickson, a radio broadcaster and podcaster in Atlanta GA, has partnered with BG AD GROUP and BG PODCAST NETWORKS.

• StreamGuys has incorporated Google Actions to their services, allowing custom actions on Google smart speakers, connected headphones and in-car.

• Congratulations to Tiffany Dimmack who becomes a Podcast Editor for Australia’s News Corp later this month (after spotting the job in Podjobs!) Elsewhere, Steph Freeland-Small has been made Head of Digital Audio Commercial in Melbourne at NOVA Entertainment, and also for NOVA, Liz Maplestone has been made Head of Digital Audio Commercial for Adelaide, Perth and, intruigingly, “International”. NOVA is owned by Lachlan Murdoch; News Corp owned by his father Rupert.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Sep 6 2023

• Joe Rogan has “lost his contract with Spotify”, said a website called Patheos last Friday. The story quotes “Andrew Canard” as Spotify CEO: Andrew is also quoted by Patheos in other stories as a vet, a land-owner, an attorney, a researcher, a catholic teacher, a pastor, a reporter, a judge, CEO of Fox News, and PM of The Netherlands. Mr Canard isn’t any of those either.

Tips and tricks

• How to Create a Silent Home Podcast Studio says that acoustic tiles do nothing to stop noise coming into a room from outside.

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