Spotify adds podcast discovery to the home screen

• Spotify launched enhanced podcast discovery tools to its app, including recommendations on the home screen “for users who love podcasts”. It’s unclear how the recommendations are chosen. The company has also added a threaded view to its proprietary comments, and a new “following” view within the app.

• Sports betting website FanDuel was the #1 podcast advertiser in April, says Magellan AI. Corporate advertising for Google makes it to #13, the highest spend increase last month.

• The Independent Podcast Forum, planned for Jun 16, has been postponed.

• 39% of UK adults consume podcasts every week, according to the Infinite Dial UK, which was released in full yesterday by Edison Research.

• Headliner has added a “chapters” field for its app, so you can ensure that chapters appear in full-length YouTube videos. You can see it working in the Podnews Weekly Review this week, along with newly-added captions as well.

• Audio magazine Good Tape has issued a call for pitches for issue 3: the threats issue.

• Podcast host Transistor has introduced a new podcast website theme called Beacon, designed specifically for churches and faith-based organisations.

• In the week that Pocket Casts added support for creator recommendations through open RSS using podcast:podroll, Spotify has launched its own proprietary creator recommendation tool, which they call “linked content”.

  • Spotify has also launched limited control of its own proprietary tool for managing guest information - it ignores the podcast:people open RSS specification, and only lets you remove false positives.
  • Spotify scored the lowest for its support of open standards in the Podnews Report Card earlier this year.

Moves and hires

• Good Tape magazine has a new Editor, Phoebe Lett, who joins from an eleven-year career at The New York Times. The founding editor, Alana Hope Levinson, has moved on.

Tips and tricks - with The Podcast Show London

• How do YouTube stats work for podcasters? Are they in your podcast host? And why not?

Podcast News - with Airwave

With Airwave: Queens Podcast features Katy and Nathan pair cocktails with amazing women of history. Currently, the show is looking at Catherine Parr, the last wife of Henry VIII - who survived the King, and gets married again. We learn the legacy she left.

On the Secret Life of Books this week, the secrets behind literary history’s favorite dandy, wit and jailbird, Oscar Wilde - and a special guest, happiness expert Gretchen Rubin who is a veteran podcaster herself and author of recent New York Times bestseller The Secrets of Adulthood. With hosts Sophie and Jonty, she’ll chat about The Portrait of Dorian Gray, one of the darkest and most brilliant novels of "adulting”, and how it can help us in light of our modern times.

The Copper Connection Podcast is celebrating its first birthday. Hosted by Chris Bailey, it’s the go-to revision resource for students navigating the world of construction qualifications - for aspiring builders, plumbers, electricians, and all who make up the future of the built environment. The show offers valuable support right where you need it — in your ears, at your pace.

On the Podnews Weekly Review this week, we chat with Acast about the company’s new Smart Recommendations tool, and talk HLS video as a potential way forward for video over open RSS.