Spotify add Q&A and polls; Clubhouse to enable recording

• “We believe the future of podcasting is interactive”, says Spotify. The answer, it suggests, is through proprietary Q&A and Polls, which it has launched through Anchor - here’s a video of the process. Q&A and Polls are “only available in select markets”, and, it goes without saying, only work in Spotify.

• Spotify also launched a quiz to help you find your perfect podcast, for users in US, UK, Germany and Australia. We were given Healthy-ish (which shows there’s some geo-targeting in the algorithm).

• Released during International Podcast Day, growth podcast host Captivate announced a guest booking and interview management system. The system allows capture of guest information, diary management and import to episode notes, and is integrated with remote recording tool SquadCast. Podnews’s Editor is an advisor.

• Clubhouse has announced a forthcoming feature that will let you record your Clubhouse rooms. “Replays” will allow you to download your audio, as well as make it available on-demand in the app. The company also added three new features - a search engine (it’s in the explore tab for now); a clip creator; and the release of spatial audio for Android users.

• Dan Savage, host of the Savage Lovecast, has signed with Supporting Cast. One of the first shows to offer a paid version, it transitioned from a homegrown solution to Supporting Cast and has already achieved a 20% increase in revenue.

• Libsyn’s AdvertiseCast has released its average CPM figures for September. The average CPM for a 60-second podcast ad within AdvertiseCast’s marketplace dropped slightly to $23.12 (-1.8%) - it’s up 9.7% year-on-year.

• Surprisingly, Joe Rogan has been knocked off the top of the Spotify podcast charts. Banter with Sapnap and Karl Jacobs, from a pair of gamers, is the new #1 - hosted on Anchor and available everywhere.

• A new social podcasting app, Podopolo, sent tweets to many podcasters yesterday including Aaron Mahnke that the CEO Melinda Wittstock admits were “poorly worded”. The tweets suggested that podcasts should claim their show on the app to “receive shared earnings from listens”. Wittstock confirms, in common with other apps, they do not make money from unclaimed podcasts on the platform. (They don’t otherwise alter podcasts, and do not cache your audio, either - all is good).

  • Testing the app, however, we discover that it sets a useragent of YourApplicationName on Android, so plays from the app will appear in your podcast host as simply “Unknown”: we’ve reported that as a bug. We’ve also discovered that the company had copy/pasted at least part of its terms and conditions from Dribbble, a design website that Wittstock says she has never heard of. That’s now fixed.

• The Southern Poverty Law Center has published a four-part series on “Inside the Far-right Podcast Ecosystem”. (For the archives, here’s part 2, part 3, and part 4.) It reports that shows are more consistently-available for those that self-host.

• Casted has launched Casted Video, allowing marketers to manage their video as well as audio assets in one place. CEO Lindsay Tjepkema says the move closes the loop between audio, video, and text.

• We Edit Podcasts, RØDE Microphones and Spreaker have produced an all-inclusive starter bundle available in select Staples stores. The start-to-finish package includes the RØDE NT-USB mini mic, a free editing only trial episode from We Edit Podcasts, and 1 free year of Spreaker podcast hosting services.

• Lulu Garcia-Navarro has joined the New York Times’s Opinion Audio team, to anchor a new podcast. She was host of NPR’s Weekend Edition.

• Sean Carter has joined the Washington Post as its first full-time audio engineer-composer. He’s worked with a number of large brands including Vogue and the United Nations.

• The Podnews Ranker, keeping tabs of companies and people we mention in our news, shows that Apple Podcasts was the company we’ve written about the most over the past three months.

Tips and tricks - with Muck Rack's State of Podcasting Survey

• You can add Podnews to your morning news briefing routine on Google Assistant, Siri or Alexa. Find us in the news section. Alternatively, we’ve also got a podcast.

• Should you put your guest’s name in your episode title or your episode description? In the title - otherwise you won’t appear in search, according to our research.

Podcast News

The winners of the People’s Choice Podcast Awards were announced. The Adam Curry People’s Choice Award went to Tell Em Steve-Dave, a comedy podcast.

The winner of the PodcastOne 'Self Made Podcast Edition’ talent competition was announced as Knock Knock, a true crime podcast hosted by Jason B Jones. Jones wins a contract and prize worth $100,000.

For International Podcast Day, A Kids Book About: The Podcast released an episode “just for you” - a version 'made by artificial intelligence’, and different for every listener.

In the latest edition of Podland, Ross Adams and Johan Billgren from Acast highlight why they see the future of podcasting as being open.

The most recent episode of Freakonomics Radio looks into “that’s a great question”, and why Americans use it in interviews (and it is a peculiarly American thing).