Spotify launches in Russia, and launches podcast charts

• Spotify has launched a set of charts for Top Podcasts and Trending Podcasts, for 26 markets. The Spotify for Podcasters blog contains more detail on how they work (written by the excellent Wil Williams); you’ll be given alerts and custom artwork to share the news. Anchor has also shared more detail. Find the charts in the Spotify app - search > browse all > podcasts > categories > podcast charts

  • We took a look: the top podcasts are The Daily (US); Call her Daddy (Canada); Sh**ged Married Annoyed (UK); From The Newsroom (Aus); TED Talks Daily (NZ); and Sommar & Vinter i P1 (Sweden). Of these, none are Spotify exclusives.\

• Also just announced, Spotify is now available to another 241m people in 13 countries, including Russia, which gets a set of more than 100 local playlists.

  • Voxnest claimed earlier this month that in April/May, Spotify overtook Apple for total podcast downloads in, among other places, North Macedonia and Moldova. However, the 5m people in those two countries only got access to Spotify yesterday.

• Yesterday we reported on the Jones vs Gimlet class action lawsuit, which highlights the need for better accessibility for podcasts. Our Editor, writing personally, looks at the detail of what the lawsuit is asking for.

  • Of interest: Google Pixel phones have a “Live Caption” feature that enable closed-captions for every podcast app (this is a clip of The New Media Show). You can turn this on using Settings > Accessibility. Nowhere near as good as a transcript, though.

• First look: Podpage has released a free tier of their website service. “This free tier should be perfect for podcasters who want a more fully featured website than their podcast host, but don’t care about using their own domain name.” Here’s an example of a free website using the service.

  
  Aug 25 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• BMG, a record label and publisher, is now offering podcasts as a new service to its artists, through what’s described as a “new podcast business named Storyglass”. That business was launched in late 2018.

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• OneFinePlay posted a job ad for a Podcast Producer recently, and got 350 applications. What they learnt from the process was interesting: “only 50 of the 288 total candidates had ever been involved in the making of a podcast”. (Should have advertised in Podjobs!)

• Megaphone has passed two independent audits about security and effective controls.

• Google Podcasts has changed its error page on the web recently. We used to scrape for <title>Error 404 to programmatically see if the podcast wasn’t available; now, try scraping for ">This podcast is not available, including the closing portion of the HTML tag. We’ve updated our Google Podcasts FAQ.

Tips and tricks - with Podcorn

• Motivation and consistency are the key to audience growth, says James Griffin writing for DiscoverPods.

• Takeaways on adapting a kids podcast into Spanish (Núria Net)

• Forget SEO. For a podcaster, it’s all about ASEO says James Burt, discussing the benefits of writing good copy for your show notes and episode descriptions.

• Free training webinars from the UK’s Audiotrain have been posted on its website, including Essential Law for Podcasters; podcast marketing and all about clearances, copyright and contracts.

Podcast News

Edison Research’s Tom Webster is on The Feed, the official Libsyn podcast. He focuses on the Latino Podcast Listener Report. The episode also includes average downloads stats: if your podcast is doing more than 120 downloads per episode, you’re doing better than half the shows out there, says Libsyn VP Rob Walch.

Ever done a podcast where you’ve no idea what you’re talking about? Mind Canyon is an improvised documentary a bit like Radiolab. “We invite some of the best UK improvisers to take part. They don’t know the topic until we’re about to record - then they help us build the story on the spot. It’s then edited with the same passion as the documentary podcasts it’s emulating.”
This might be your first pandemic: but there have been many before. Quarantine Genius helps us understand how Shakespeare dealt with the theatres being shut because of the plague; and whether the theory of gravity was formulated because Isaac Newton couldn’t go down to the shops.