This American Life comes to Spotify

Podcast News

First look: In the last few minutes, Spotify have announced that This American Life is now available to stream on Spotify. The top-rated podcast hadn’t, apparently, been there until now.
Aug 23 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

حروب الأعمال is the result of a new strategic partnership between Wondery and Al Jazeera - Business Wars, in Arabic. “Al Jazeera is committed to leading the way in Arabic podcasting and I am proud to bring Wondery’s visionary content to the Arab World” said Dr. Yaser Bishr, Executive Director of Digital at Al Jazeera.

No Stupid Questions is coming soon from Stitcher and Freakonomics Radio. The podcast will explore topics ranging from friendship and parenting to immortality and whether dogs are better than people.

What Was That Like, a podcast featuring conversations with people who’ve been through something unusual - like a mass shooting or a kidnapping - has a new episode with someone who, yes, got COVID-19. Not just “someone” - a doctor, with elderly parents who she could have infected.

Elsewhere

• Podcast Radio have announced The Pod 20, a weekly podcast chart show, which will be broadcast at 5pm every Friday and available as a podcast on Saturday. This week’s guest is Dom Joly; it’ll be presented by Graham Mack. Podcast Radio is available in London on DAB, and across the world online; it also broadcasts Podnews.

• The first speakers for Podcast Festival have been announced - a global online event focusing on the future of podcasting, on May 28. Kara Swisher from recode; Bradley Davis from Podchaser, and our Editor, James Cridland.

• Podshape, a new podcasts-for-brands company, has been launched in Australia. It’s being run by Jay Walkerden, who, until March, ran NOVA Entertainment’s Brisbane office and podcast division.

• Independent podcast network Relay FM has announced a supporters-only podcast, Backstage.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 23 2023

• Rate This Podcast reports that there are already 4,556 reviews within Podcast Addict, which released in-app reviews on Apr 13. Rate This Podcast now ingests new reviews from Podcast Addict into its alerting service. (Use Podcast Addict? Please give Podnews a review!)

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• In the US and UK, Spotify has added another curated mix of music and podcasts, called Daily Wellness.

• Podcast One is a new subscriber to Nielsen’s Podcast Listener Buying Power Service. The service allows clients to “capture results for specific programs and tie them back with over 2,000 retail/plan-to-buy categories and hundreds of advertisers with specific brand names such as insurance companies, automotive, quick-service restaurants, home improvement retailers and more.”

Tips and tricks

• Getting the most out of guests (Blubrry)

• How to network in just two minutes a day (Jordan Harbinger on The James Altucher Show, via Podcast Notes)

Changing times, changing consumption

• Podcast consumption is increasing, according to new figures from Podtrac. This is the first week that both downloads and users have grown since the first week of March, the company says.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 23 2023

• Spotify claims podcasting on its platform is growing, according to the Los Angeles Times.

• The Economist reports that Netflix has added another 15.8m subscribers in the first quarter, twice as many as had been expected. It claims this is an effect of the coronavirus, though most countries were relatively unaffected until late February.

• A month ago, Zoom had 200m daily users. It now has 300m. It’s been used for a while by podcasters for guest interviews.

• Common Thread posts a wealth of e-commerce data. Of note for podcasters: ad spend is down significantly (cost-per-thousands is down by 30%); however, sales are significantly higher in almost every category, with the exception of travel and automotive.