Women in Podcasting Awards winners

• The winners of the Women in Podcasting Awards were announced. Over 15,000 listeners participated in the voting process; and there were almost 400 nominees. Our analysis shows that Buzzsprout has the most amount of winning entries.

• Google’s NotebookLM has added a way to customise the tool’s “deep-dives”.

• Podcast app Metacast is dropping its price for premium - down from $4.99/month to $1.99/month. The premium service offers transcript search, playlists and bookmarks.

• “I, who was once a medium-sized fish in a very small pond, am now barely a bacteriophage in an ocean. And that, dear reader, is pretty great.” One of the first podcasters, Matthew Wayne Selznick has written reflections after 20 years of being a podcaster (his current podcast is Sonitotum).

• “I had the best experience at Spotify. Truly. “ Alex Cooper talks to The Hollywood Reporter.

• “Podcasts offer candidates an “affable, jovial hang.” And they reach voters.” Is 2024 the Podcast Election? asks The Week.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• Crafty: a musician is earning revenue (and notoriety) after calling some of his tracks after smart-speaker phrases. His most popular tracks: “My Liked Songs”, “Beatles Greatest Hits”, and “True Crime Podcast”.

• Weird: we used Wondercraft AI to translate a recent Podnews Daily podcast into Swedish (because that’s where we are today). Perhaps because it contains an English pre-roll, maybe because the RSS says it’s in English, or perhaps because our devices are in English, the automatically-generated Apple Podcasts transcript is… entirely translated into English. Have we stumbled on a new feature from Apple Podcasts?

• Podnews keeps an eye on shows moving from one podcast host to another, and it’s worth a peek every so often. Spotify for Podcasters gains a lot of shows, but has a high churn rate, losing around half the number of the shows it gains. In the last thirty days, Simplecast, Captivate and Acast are the other winners; Soundcloud, Omny Studio, Libsyn and Buzzsprout are the losers.

Tips and tricks - with Memberful

• NPR’s Emily Kwong had a number of hints and tips in her Podcast Day Asia session in early September - including “fixing a plane while flying it”. We’d advise against doing that literally.

• What does an international podcast launch look like? Podcast Discovery reminds us that there’s more to podcasting than Apple and Spotify - and than the US.

Podcast News

Australia’s number one daily news podcast for kids, Squiz Kids is marking Media Literacy Week with the launch of a new and improved version of Newshounds, its free classroom resource for primary school kids - which teaches them to spot misinformation when they come across it online.

In Stories & Sounds recently, a troubling story for content creators everywhere: Jonas Litton was blacklisted and banned by Facebook, along with a number of his client accounts, for seemingly confusing an AI algorithm. Thrown off the platform in mid September, it took two weeks (and 14 attempts) to reinstate his accounts. A paid account is useless for support if your account is automatically suspended. Worth a listen, and to lessen your reliance on social media.

The Opportunist returns for a new season today, looking at Tim Ballard. The show explores his rise as a celebrated anti-trafficking figure and the troubling accusation of sexual assault that have since emerged. It’s produced for PodcastOne by Kast Media.