Spotify to sunset in Uruguay

• As threatened earlier this year, Spotify is to close in Uruguay by February. It’s a reaction to a new copyright law in the country which would, Spotify says, mean it would effectively pay twice for music use in the country. (It means that Spotify won’t offer podcasts there either.)

• If you want to speak at The Podcast Show in London (May next year), speaker submissions are open.

• Defector, a sports blog and media company, posted its annual report. It switched from SiriusXM to Multitude for ad sales and live events in early 2023.

• One Podnews reader points out that the decrease in podcast downloads seen by most rankers and hosts over the past few months may have a knock-on effect: more makegoods, as advertisers don’t hit the numbers they were expecting. Makegoods - free spots to make up for lower than expected numbers - tie up future inventory. “This drop is not-nothing”, our reader points out.

• Another Podnews reader, based in the Netherlands and working for one of the largest distributors of podcasts in the country, reports that, comparing August to October, Apple Podcasts downloads are up 4%.

• Podpage, the website tool for podcasts: “I decided really early that we would do the immense amount of work that it takes to support the embedded player for any host. So, if you have a Buzzsprout RSS feed, we’ll automatically put your episode in a Buzzsprout episode player. That seems like it’s simple, but it’s an enormous file that’s hard to keep up-to-date because of the number of hosts.” - the creator of Podpage, Brenden Mulligan, is a guest in today’s Podnews Weekly Review. We also speak with AdResults Media’s Lisa Jacobs on brand safety.

Podcast News - with Airwave

From Airwave: Historical Blindness is a podcast about history’s myths, mysteries, and misconceptions. By examining cases of outrageous hoaxes, pernicious conspiracy theory, mass delusion, baffling mysteries and unreliable historiography, host Nathaniel Lloyd searches for insights into modern religious belief and political culture.

The latest in quiz show podcasts, Guestimators is a new quiz, hosted by Absolute Radio’s Andy Bush, on Keep It Light Media. It’s described as ‘Family Fortunes meets Only Connect’ (Only Connect is a deliberately difficult British television quiz). The first show featured comedian and TV presenter Mel Giedroyc.

The Guardian’s Today in Focus is celebrating five years and 250 million downloads. The flagship daily news podcast from the UK paper has around 50% of its audience listening from outside the UK, the company says.

Build a Prince: A Royal Christmas Love Story is new today, starring Spencer Grammer and Billy Flynn. The fiercely independent Princess Adelaide discovers she MUST be married by Christmas in order to be crowned queen of Alpinoa. But who will she choose - when none of her royal suitors will do?

In Canada, Actors and Ancestors launches today - a brand new podcast that aims to create a space for Indigenous actors to tell their own stories on their own terms, push back against old stereotypes, and inspire positive change in the broader film and TV industry. It’s hosted by Rocky Cree actor Joel D. Montgrand.

Most podcasts are celebrities talking sh*t, claims UK comedian Joe Lycett, so Joe Lycett’s Turdcast which launches today plans to make that official. The show is a safe space for your favourite celebrities to flush out their most satisfying, horrifying and frankly awful toilet stories.

What will the day be like when artificial intelligence controls the world, and all the human beings who inhabit it? FOOM is an audio fiction podcast written by Julio Rojas (Case 63) and made by Emisor Podcasting, Sonoro, El Extraordinario, Anfibia and La No Ficción. It says it’s the first series produced and released simultaneously by the most important podcast platforms in Latin America.

The Saudi Project attempts to try to understand Saudi Arabia’s pursuit of global power and why the country is investing so much money in sport and culture. It’s new from Intelligence2, and launched yesterday.

Podcast promotion in the wild

Stak’s Football Ramble was spotted by Podnews reader Becca, while on a Bakerloo train. The train itself was built in 1972, which makes this line run the oldest trains in passenger service in Britain, and they won’t be replaced until the late 2030s because of a lack of funding. Football Ramble is also really very old - one of the oldest podcasts still in service in Britain: it began in April 2007, recorded in a kitchen in Harlesden, using a minidisc player.

Spot some marketing for podcasts in the real world? Hit reply and send us a (landscape) photograph.