Tig Notaro to host The Ambies

• The Podcast Academy has announced the nominees for the fifth annual ceremony of The Ambies. The show will be on Monday Mar 31 in Chicago, and will be hosted by comedian and podcaster Tig Notaro.

• It’s our chance to see one of Spotify’s new Creator Milestone Awards (Jan 28) close-up. Rusty Quill’s audio drama series The Magnus Archives surpassed 100 million downloads, and the team picked up the award from Spotify London last week.

• Podcast app Castro, which celebrates one year this month with its new owner, has posted a “state of the app” looking at achievements made in the last twelve months.

• John McDermott asks “should we push the word ‘vodcasting’ to save the meaning of podcasting”?

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

Are we closer to cross-app comments?

Last week, Transistor added support for auto-posting to the social media platform Bluesky: when publishing each new episode, a message is posted to the Bluesky platform, and any replies to that message are pulled back into the podcast’s website. Here’s an example of those comments on a Transistor podcast episode page.

Today, Transistor has added support for the podcast:socialInteract tag, viewable within the RSS feed for the show. That allows podcast apps to link directly to the root message for each episode.

And - Bluesky has a simple, open API to fetch the entire comment thread as JSON - no need for authentication. Here it is for the example thread. So, any podcast app can pull in the comments and display them however they’d like, without any hassle, just by using the data held within the socialInteract tag for this episode.

For a listener to leave a comment, podcast apps can link to the Bluesky app or website. Or, podcast apps can implement the full AT protocol, and allow Bluesky users to log in via their podcast app, using OAuth, to post a reply direct from the app itself.

Comment moderation, user accounts, bans and reporting messages etc, can all be dealt with by Bluesky.

We liked it as a concept, and wondered how hard it would be to code for. It took us an hour or so; in today’s website version of this newsletter, you’ll see comments pulled from Bluesky (via a proxy for privacy); and the socialInteract tag is in our RSS feed, allowing any podcast app to do the same. And we post every new newsletter to Bluesky.

It’s not perfect; but it’s a simple, straightforward method to do comments for shows that want them. So is this, finally, an easy way in to do cross-app comments?

Tips and tricks - with Pod Predictor by Coleman Insights

• If your podcast is a registered trademark, then it’s relatively simple to get other shows using your name taken down. We’d especially like to thank the two Brazilian girls who recorded their podcast, called it Podnews, and updated it to Spotify complete with our logo.

Podcast News - with Memberful

Using Memberful: Comedy Bang Bang: The Podcast Join host Scott Aukerman (“Mr. Show” & “Between Two Ferns: The Movie ”) as he interviews celebrity guests like Jon Hamm, Bob Odenkirk, Tatiana Maslany, Allison Williams, and more. Plus, the show’s open-door policy brings an assortment of eccentric oddballs and characters who pop by at any moment to chat, compete in games, and engage in comic revelry. Now entering its 15th year, this podcast has led to multiple spin-off podcasts, a New York Times best-selling book, a beloved television series on IFC, and a successful membership program, CBB World.

The host of Where There’s A Will, There’s A Wake, Kathy Burke, has announced she is to step down as host. She has hosted over a hundred episodes as well as a live stage show. A new host will be appointed soon.

Kentucky Hidden Wonders is brand new from ShelbyKY Tourism, with insider tips, intriguing stories and travel inspiration about the Bluegrass State. The show goes beyond the usual tourist attractions and into the heart of Kentucky’s hidden gems.

You’ll Hear It is back for a new series - revealing the musical secrets behind the greatest albums of all time. The show begins with an opening section featuring a live band; and leading hosts Peter Martin and Adam Maness (both highly accomplished pianists and musicians) play on keyboards to demonstrate the different techniques used in the albums they discuss. It’s from Open Studio.

Having a bad DAI

A new section where we regrettably highlight bad dynamic audio insertion so we all get better at it

The trailer for ART19-hosted Handsome starts with just over 60” of a host-read ad, at the super-quiet -26 LUFS. Then the trailer itself, which is around -13 LUFS (at least four times louder). Then two promos for other podcasts, at -18 LUFS.

Podcasts should be at -16 LUFS - not more, not less. Ads should be at the same loudness: the difference in loudness here would be unsafe to listen to in a car. And… ads in your trailers really shouldn’t be a thing.

Found someone having a bad DAI? Let us know.