Podcasting: 'more trustworthy than traditional media'

• First look: Podcasting is seen as more trustworthy than traditional media coverage of the current pandemic, according to new research published by Media Monitors today. The research also suggests that the pandemic has meant many listeners now use podcasts for information as well as entertainment.

• Audible has unveiled new pricing for a new subscription podcast service. Audible Plus will offer access to exclusive Audible podcasts for US$7.95/month. (Luminary charges $4.99/month for their subscription service). Audible’s Rachel Ghiazza apparently clarifies to The Verge that the platform is developing podcast content, but isn’t pulling them in from third-party RSS feeds. Confusingly, Podnews reported that Audible, and Amazon Music, have emailed podcasters to get them to submit their RSS feeds for a forthcoming service.

• How accurate is geo-targeting by IP for podcasting? Bryan Barletta delves into the technology, and highlights that this is a big opportunity for Spotify to benefit from tighter targeting that’s unavailable to the rest of us.

• US culture website Vulture is to “double their podcast coverage” according to a release. HotPod will now be published in Vulture; Nick Quah will also produce a new weekly podcast recommendation newsletter 1.5x Speed.

• Quality beats quantity in podcast advertising, according to an article in Built In. Westwood One and Signal Hill Insights have released data showing podcast advertising drives brand equity.

• Podpraat reports that Podcastfestival in the Netherlands is now selling tickets for their “offline conference” - yes, an actual physical conference, in Amsterdam in September. One session is in English; the others are advertised in Dutch (though Wil Williams won’t be speaking Dutch, we presume - dat zou heel indrukwekkend zijn!).

  
  Aug 27 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• How has podcast listening has been affected by quarantine? Edison Research has a free webinar this Thursday.

• Привет! Bonjour! Apple is hiring for a Podcasts Editor in Moscow, and another in France. (More Podjobs)

• Super-exciting user-agent corner After we suggested it, Podlink is now correctly setting the useragent of its RSS crawler, greatly helping podcasters who use their universal links. PodTail has also set their own RSS crawler’s useragent, thus allowing better monitoring of their browser-based podcast player; and universal link supplier Podfollow is also correctly setting their RSS user-agent after Podnews got in touch. Google Podcasts is also fixing a bug in its Android app, which we spotted was not giving a correct useragent for automated downloads. If our traffic is anything to go by, that means an extra 20% of downloads correctly attributed to Google Podcasts. Find all the useragents in this Github repo.

Thank you to YaYa Podcasting's Carrie Caulfield Arick for becoming our latest personal supporter. “You create the sound,” they say, “we’ll take care of the noise.” We’re grateful to Carrie for her support: it’s helped us focus on some HTML tweaks to our website to continue speeding it up. Here’s how to support us.

Tips and tricks - with Spotify for Podcasters

• Why would anyone listen to your podcast? Denis Murphy has worked out why: after 115 podcast episodes.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 27 2023

• Podcast Expert Allyson Marino On What Makes A Good Show, How To Get Started And Much More (Forbes)

• Who’s app buttons should you put on your podcast’s website? - from February this year, some interesting data from our own pages.

Podcast News

The Communicate Influence Podcast speaks with Toronto podcast producer and journalist Kathleen Goldhar about how podcasting is now an essential part of journalism.

My Amazing Body, from Queensland Health, is back for a second season. The podcast explores interesting, unknown and misunderstood parts of your body, featuring interviews with medical experts and stories from Queensland in Australia.