Spotify continues to gain on Apple: even in California

• Spotify’s continuing to increase its hold on podcasting. In February, Spotify was more popular than Apple for podcasts in Apple’s home state of California, according to new data from Voxnest. Spotify’s also continuing to overtake Apple in many countries, including Ireland and Australia, according to the data.

  
  Aug 23 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.
  • For interest: based on global listeners/devices, over the last 60 days Podnews’s podcast is 54% Apple, 46% Spotify.

• Edison Research and NPR have released their Smart Audio Report 2020 showing how smart speakers are being used; the full report is on NPR’s site. Podcasts don’t get mentioned in the report by name (they’re typically not listened-to on smart speakers) though the data does show an increase in people who want “the news” from their smart speaker.

• Podcast equipment manufacturer RØDE have announced the return of My RØDE Cast, an annual podcasting competition to win up to $150,000's worth of podcasting gear. You’ve until mid-June to enter.

• It looks like the Apple Podcasts go-slow issue we reported earlier this week has been fixed. Apple’s second quarter results show a revenue increase in 1% year-on-year in spite of the coronavirus.

• Facebook has announced it will allow us to charge for Facebook Live events in future. “To support creators and small businesses, we plan to add the ability for Pages to charge for access to events with Live videos on Facebook – anything from online performances to classes to professional conferences.”. Meanwhile, Digiday reports that Facebook is a really cheap place to advertise right now.

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• Dear Media, which calls itself “the largest podcast network focused on strong female voices and audiences”, has announced $8m in funding from an investment company called Magnet Companies.

• Are you a podcast editor by trade? Tanner Campbell says that podcast editing will need to grow in scope, to something he calls Accountability As A Service. “Your value cannot be in getting a task done, it has to be in more than that.”

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 23 2023

Changing times, changing consumption

• Josh Swartz, a podcast producer at WBUR, highlights his changed working day, which appears to include sitting in a car near a ski club that offers free internet.

• And here’s the BBC, explaining how things are working in Broadcasting House in London. If you’ve ever done work with the BBC, you won’t be astonished to know that, yes, it involves red tape.

• Edison Research says, in a peek into their Podcast Consumer Tracker during a recent AdResults webinar, that podcast listening is holding steady, at about 6.5 hours a week; though news podcasts have had a significant increase in the past few months.

• Magellan AI have a fancy new logo, and also a free report into how coronavirus has impacted podcast advertising. Changes in advertising spots have been minimal, the company says - noting a significant decline in the last week of March, before jumping back up again in April.

• Nielsen say that kids and teens are watching a lot more TV and streaming video.

• In the UK, The Evening Standard, The Telegraph and Laudable have all pivoted to coronavirus podcasts. A piece in What’s New In Publishing highlights what they did, and how they did it.

Podcast News

Dream Job Ready is new from Dane Sharp, a marketing, digital and communications expert. The podcast “seeks to help, excite, inspire and ready the next generation of young professionals to get their dream job”.

It turns out that presidential races in the past were just as mad as the one we’re currently in. Nixon planted evidence; and the first woman who ran for president, in 1872, did it even before women could vote. Long Shots launched yesterday, with eight episodes focusing on eight candidates who’ve shaped where we are today.

Our email is overflowing so apologies if we’re slow to respond. We hope to get to it over the weekend. (Home-schooling is hard!)