The Nod visits Johannesburg, South Africa; BBC Sounds resets ratings

• Wits University was the host for the quarterly “Podmeet” in Johannesburg. There was a market overview from iono·fm, an enterprise podcaster, which claims 2.5m people download their podcasts monthly.

  • Eric Eddings, host of Gimlet Media’s The Nod, and WNYC producer Veralyn Williams, were special guests. Asked by our Editor about their attitude to subscriptions and exclusives, Eddings said that subscription services (and services which offer exclusive windows) “offer podcasters the type of budget that they need to make great stories up front,” adding that he felt there was space for both business models. “Most people don’t know how much it costs to make something good,” added Williams. They also took part in a podcasting masterclass as part of Radio Days Africa.

• The BBC Sounds app has been upgraded to add CarPlay and Android Auto support. “We’ve also taken the opportunity to reset our rating in the Apple App Store as today’s BBC Sounds experience is very different from the one people would have had when we soft-launched it a year ago”, said James Purnell in an all-staff email, seen by Podnews. The rating for the app was just 2.1 stars before this reset, with the majority of reviews, 52%, only giving the app 1 star out of five. After the reset, the app had 4.3 stars at the time of going to press. You can’t reset Google Play ratings: the Android app there has 2.5 stars (ratings are weighted for recency).

• Podcast Brunch Club (like book club, but for podcasts) published its July listening list. The theme is Breaking the News and the playlist includes 4 episodes about media companies and news consumers breaking old habits and old business models.

• Captivate, a growth-oriented podcast host currently in beta, has just announced Captivate Sites for a podcast website that “looks like it was designed this decade”.

• Alitu, an app that helps assemble a podcast, has added noise reduction and improved audio levelling to its service. The service aims “to help podcasters spend less time on their audio, and more time creating great content”.

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• Here’s how to add your favourite podcast to Google Home routines, so you can wake up to your favourite podcast or trigger it as you cook dinner.

• South Africa: Podmeet Cape Town is taking place on Monday, at The Brewers Coop, 135 Albert Road, with the AfroQueer team, who were newly-selected for the Google Podcast Creators Program.

• WARC write about podcasts at Empire magazine, a UK-based movie magazine owned by Bauer Media.

• Netflix is adding director’s commentary using podcasts.

• Bespoke personalised audio advertising company AMillionAds has announced partnerships with Triton Digital and Adform.

• Advice: Patreon for podcasters - best practices (The Podcast Host)

Podcasts

Rough Translation is some of the finest journalism and reportage out there", says Camilla Bath, a journalism trainer, at Radio Days Africa 2019 in Johannesburg, playing a clip from this episode featuring “a lot of different size butts”.