The UK’s top 25 podcasts

• Edison Research released the top 25 podcasts in the UK for Q1/24. The top BBC show is at #15; Acast is the biggest publisher, with eight of the top 25. Our list includes links, hosting companies and an OPML file to import the top 25 into your podcast player.

• Descript released “season 6” of its editing software. It includes an AI editing assistant called “Underlord” (because nobody wants an AI overlord); new groups of tools called “Sound Good” and “Look Good”, and many other enhancements. (There’s an interview with Descript’s Head of Product, Laura Burkhauser, in today’s Podnews Weekly Review.)

• Eddy’s Podcast Promo Pack, a tool from Headliner that exports key information about your show to help you get the word out, now supports fourteen languages.

• Libsyn is reporting an all-time low for Apple Podcasts and an all-time high for Spotify, in the company’s latest figures. (If you missed it, we broke out Spotify’s data per country a few weeks ago.)

• Libsyn’s stats were been down for over eighteen hours yesterday. They’re getting back to normal now though.

• Podcasting in Italy - does it pay? A session with Acast at the Salone Del Libro in Turin looked at why podcasts in Italy earn around three times less than in other countries - and what needs to happen to continue growing the medium.

• SAG-AFTRA has released a “Dynamic AI Audio Commercials Waiver”, setting rates for creating personalised ads and ensuring a voiceover earns from ads created with a voice-clone. It also adds safeguards for the voiceover. It has been welcomed by ad company Instreamatic.

Paid content

How many ads… are too many? Can you ruin a podcast with ads, or play the same ad too often? Those questions and many more are the focus of the next study from Sounds Profitable: Ad Nauseam: Frequency, Repetition, and Consumer Perceptions of Podcast Advertising, and you can be the first to see the answers in a free webinar on Wednesday, June 12th, at 3PM Eastern.

Join Sounds Profitable Partner Tom Webster as he reveals how listeners feel about ad quantity, variety, and even where they expect to hear ads in a podcast. Your audience is likely more tolerant of advertising than you think…but we all have our limits! Find out what they are by registering for Ad Nauseam: Frequency, Repetition, and Consumer Perceptions of Podcast Advertising today!

People News

• Chris Mottes has left Hindenburg, after what the company called “a mutual agreement due to differing visions for the future strategy of the company”. His new startup is called AC883 - we know little else other than that’s also a flight between Athens and Montreal.

Tips and tricks - with Memberful

• Want live captions for remote recordings you’re doing, in things like Riverside, Cleanfeed or Squadcast? Google Chrome can do that for you. Use the instructions here.

• Want a set of professionally-designed, crisp, consistent, podcast badges for every app out there? Nathan Gathright’s Podcast Badges are an excellent resource.

Podcast News

In the Media Roundtable, Amelia Coomber from Podscribe and our Editor, James Cridland, talk about The Podcast Show in London - and the differences between podcast markets across the world.

The Plot Thickens launches a new season today on the eightieth anniversary of D-Day. Host Ben Mankiewicz tells the story of America’s most influential filmmaker, John Ford - and goes on a search for his lost film shot on Normandy Beach during the operation. The series also contains never-before heard interviews with John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn, and Ford himself.

Baby, This is Keke Palmer returns for a new season this week - Amy Poehler is the first guest. The Wondery show has also launched a merch store - “housed in the Wondery Shop” - for the podcast. It’s an expansion of Keke’s existing relationship with Wondery, designed to further build deeper connections among her fans with new ways to celebrate and engage.