Subscriptions and Channels go live in Apple Podcasts

• Apple Podcasts is launching their paid subscriptions and channels service this morning. Look for the Podcast industry news channel to find Podnews and Podland. To take a look at paid subscriptions, try channels from Radiotopia, Luminary, Lemonada Media or QCODE+.

• In future, Anchor will only make RSS feeds for new podcasts if you specifically ask for one, it has announced. The company will also no longer submit new podcasts to Apple Podcasts under its own account, leaving you to do that yourself. Spotify distribution is unaffected. Last week, Podnews discovered that only 19% of shows on Anchor are still being made.

• Melon is a new livestreaming service for video, allowing you to stream on Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and LinkedIn simultaneously.

• The release of the Smart Audio Report for Australia has been rescheduled to July 13. The study will explore Australians’ attitudes, adoption and usage of smart speakers and other voice-enabled devices. (Unlike the US, Google is the market leader for smart speakers in the country).

• Libsyn announced that it owes $2.6m in unpaid income taxes, including penalties, for 2017-2019. They also announced John Busshaus, the CFO of Libsyn at the time, has reached agreement with the company after he was fired. He will receive $990,000 plus legal costs, but loses unvested shares in the company that could have been worth $4.3m. The company has also said it owes $2m in unpaid VAT/GST and penalties. A law firm is investigating a class action against the podcast host.

  
  Sep 4 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Studio71 reopens its Burbank CA, USA studio space today. They film Waveform, the MKBHD Podcast, in there (among many others).

• Congratulations to PodLP, a KaiOS app, on your one year anniversary of being available.

Hints and tips

• Anna Rubanova, EP at Forever Dog, explains how she makes Left Handed Radio. “There’s no point in doing something “correctly” in podcasting. It’s like trying to make the perfect sandwich. Anyone who thinks there’s one way to podcast or do radio or utilize two slices of bread is a fraud or a solipsist.”

• Should you podcast anonymously?

• Omny Studio posts the best way to create promos for your podcast, after researching how they worked across a number of different shows. “You don’t need to worry about saying specific podcast apps in your promo”.

Podcast News

First look: Land of the Giants releases a new season today from Vox Media, Recode and food blog Eater: Delivery Wars, examining how food delivery became a multi-billion dollar industry, and the effects it has had on restaurants, workers, and consumers.

First look: LAist Studios announces WILD today, a time capsule of stories about how a global pandemic transformed our views of home, as the outside world thaws from an extended moment of pause.

Is This Seat Open? celebrates fifty years of Southwest Airlines, with first-hand stories from the people who lived through some of the wildest and most memorable moments in the airline’s history. It’s produced by LA Times Studios.

Congratulations to My Time Capsule, from Mike Fenton Stevens, which has just published episode 100. It asks guests for five things they’d like to put in their time capsule; guests have included Stephen Fry, Bonnie Langford and Clive Anderson.

People’s Party with Talib Kweli is to become a Luminary exclusive from July 5.

No Place Like Home is new from Audacy’s C13Originals: the heist of a pair of Dorothy’s ruby red slippers from The Wizard of Oz and their mysterious return.

Comfort Eating with Grace Dent is new from The Guardian's restaurant critic Grace Dent, inviting famous guests to spill the beans on the comfort foods that have seen them through their lives. It’s sponsored by UK supermarket Ocado, and launches today.

The C Word is a new podcast from Podshape, hosted by Lee - a 40-something Aussie bloke who keeps fit, has a wife, two young boys, and six weeks ago was diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer.

Decoder Ring returns for a new season today. Willa Paskin takes on a cultural question, object, idea, or habit and speaks with experts, historians, and obsessives to try and figure out where it comes from, what it means, and why it matters. Slate Plus members get the whole season; the rest of us get a new show each week.