Spotify gets a podcast redesign - and lets advertisers target listeners

• Spotify’s redesign, which gives music and podcasts equal parity in 'Your Library’, is now being promoted on YouTube. (We’re not seeing the feature yet.) They’ve also added Rob Riggle and Sarah Tiana, US comedians, to their roster.

  • The Drum notes that Spotify now lets advertisers target podcast listeners based on the genre of podcasting they listen-to. (Advertising is only served to Spotify Free listeners; there is no revenue share with podcasters.)

• The Brexitcast podcast will be aired on UK television, after the popular Question Time programme , it was announced at Podcast Day. The show will be relatively unchanged, being visualised by automated cameras in the radio studio where they record the show.

• Enterprise podcast host ART19 has made a number of updates to their service, including a setting that allows publishers to block their podcast from appearing in Google Podcasts. (We spoke with a few publishers at Podcast Day - and it sounds like some want to remove podcast play buttons from appearing within Google search, while still allowing them in Google Podcasts itself. This option, however, would entirely remove podcasts from all Google products).

• Gary Leland, a member of the Podcasters Hall of Fame, co-founder of Podcast Movement and owner of Podcast Pickle is rapidly increasing his cryptocurrency podcast footprint: he now has a network of five podcasts, and more to come, he tells us.

  • Our Ethereum and BTC wallet details are in our about page.

• Flick is a a group chat platform exclusively for podcasters, that enables you to create a community around your podcast. We’re grateful for their support.

  
  Aug 14 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Hubhopper is a podcast platform in New Delhi NCT, India, launched in 2015 and hoping to attract 5,000 new podcasters. It recently launched Hubhopper Studio, a service to make it easier to host and monetise podcasts. It has content across twelve Indian languages.

• Stephen Colbert has an exclusive preview of the Barack Obama podcast on Spotify. It’s… very… good.

Opinion

As part of a comment in a Facebook group about how many downloads a new podcast has got, Dave Jackson makes this great observation:

Keep in mind there are SO many other ways to measure success than downloads (engagement, opportunities, friendships).

Podcasts

The Media Podcast has, in the latest episode, Steve Ackerman from production company Somethin’Else, and our Editor, talking about the UK’s media news.

Fast Lane Podcast University has an excellently-produced interview in this episode with our Editor, discussing the changes that Google have made recently.

In Melbourne VIC, Australia, People Building Businesses has launched - the press release describes it as “a dual-platform podcast focusing on how companies grow” (it’s also released in video form on YouTube). It’s from YBF Ventures, a tech and innovation startup hub. (Omny Studio)

And…

• If you’re running dark mode on your Mac or iPhone, Podnews’s web pages now experimentally style themselves to match, if you’re running Safari, Firefox, or Chrome beta (and you don’t get a cached page).