Research gives insight into how people listen to podcasts

• People are most engaged with the podcasts they listen to when they’re at home, in the warm, on weekday evenings. That’s the suggestion from new research from the University of York, helped by BBC R&D. The data also looks at how people listen - 71% headphones, just 29% speakers - and how they find new podcasts: 71% of people discover podcasts by talking to their friends and family; 69% from listening to other podcasts; and 49% from internet searches. Including responses from our readers, the detailed research paper by Jay Harrison is available in full here.

• Acast has partnered with podcast production company Tonny Media in the Netherlands.

• Audioboom has renewed a slate of shows including top 40 show The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe.

• On Air Fest has announced its second wave of speakers and headliners. The event is in Brooklyn NY on Feb 23-25.

• The Dreamcast Podcast Pitch contest has been announced, designed to provide participants with the tools, resources, and guidance they need to launch a successful podcast and achieve their goals. A panel of expert judges, including Podnews’s Editor, James Cridland, will award prizes of up to $20,000.

• Spreaker is the latest podcast hosting company to support transcripts. Using the podcast:transcript tag, it allows podcasts to publish transcripts and captions which are shown by a growing number of podcast apps.

• Remote recording tool Zencastr’s crowd-funding round is now public. The company has already raised $388,606 from 644 investors.

• Further reading: Acast’s Lizzy Pollott writes about how podcasting’s intentionality has allowed it to become a routine and ritual in people’s lives (plus what that means for advertisers) … Robin Sloan from AdLarge is optimistic about audio in 2023

Thank you to Gilded Audio, who have become our latest supporter today. The only award-winning podcast production studio to ever send us a picture of their logo in cheese, they describe themselves as good-natured and trustworthy, producing shows for Spotify, Audible, Accenture and Chobani (so we assume a picture of their logo in greek yoghurt is coming soon). You can be like them - not the cheese but the support - by following this link.

Moves and hires

• Chartable co-founder Dave Zohrob is now Product Director for Spotify’s enterprise podcast tools - leading the product team for Megaphone, the Spotify Audience Network, and Chartable.

• The former CEO of Wondery, Hernan Lopez, appeared in court this week, charged with wire fraud and money laundering, which he denies; the charges relate to his time at 21st Century Fox.

• Jonquilyn Hill has been announced as the host of Vox’s policy podcast The Weeds. She’d been working as interim host since September.

• Avery Trufelman and Jody Avirgan have been announced as the ongoing hosts of Hark Daily, a round-up of podcast moments on the day’s most relevant topics.

• Multiple sales and product hires have been made at Veritonic. Lindsay Beach (ex iHeart), Kate Judge (ex SpokenLayer), and Casey Hartigan (ex Nativo) join as Sales Directors. Madeline Ngo joins as Head of Product; she was previously at Career·io/Talent Inc.

Tips and tricks - with Podcast Movement Evolutions

• 36% of podcasts are discovered on social media, suggests new research in an infographic from podcast hosting company Ausha and social media analytics company Iconosquare.

Podcast News - with editaudio

From editaudio: Ozarks True Crime How do three women vanish without a trace? In Season One, Journalist Anne Roderique-Jones investigates the 1992 disappearance of three women from a single-family home in her hometown of Springfield, Missouri.

In the Podnews Weekly Review this week - Bumper’s Jonas Woost talks more about why Listen Time should be the universal measurement of podcasts; Lex Friedman talks about life after Amazon; and we hear more from Sam Sethi about Podfans.

True-crime podcast The Fall Line is in the middle of a three-part podcast miniseries on the nearly two decade long cold case of Chairo Garibay Ferreyra. The miniseries aims to bring attention to Chairo’s cold case and encourage new media focus that could lead to tips and even resolution. It’s from Glassbox Media.

Edit Your Life has joined Adalyst Media, which connects brands seeking to reach mom and female demographics with podcasters with dedicated all-female audiences.

CBC’s The Vinyl Cafe might be Canada’s most beloved radio show; and Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe features stories about Dave, Morley and the kids; and stories from the much-missed show with producer Jess Milton. It’s hosted by Acast and launches this week.

Relationship and dating advice isn’t just for young folk. Just launched - Dear Nelly, with Aussie comedian Nelly Thomas, brings guests and advice from the other side of 40. It also explores break-ups, parenting, marriage, and programming the remote.

City of the Rails is new from iHeartPodcasts. Journalist Danelle Morton wonders why her daughter has dropped out of school to hop trains; and immerses herself into the hidden world of railroads, their historical roots within the labor movement, homelessness and more.

New this week, Mind Set Win features amazing people from the world of sport talking frankly about the mental tactics behind their success – followed by practical tips for listeners to build a winning mentality. Initial guests include cricketer Ben Stokes, tennis star Stefanos Tsitsipas, Olympic gold medallists Mondo Duplantis and Mutaz Barshim, triathlete Lucy Charles-Barclay, football great Mario Gomez, and big wave surfer Justine Dupont.

Life Out Loud with LZ Granderson returns for a new season today from ABC News. An award-winning podcast focusing on LGBTQ+ issues, the new season contains more vulnerability and more from the community.