James Cridland and Sam Sethi discuss various topics related to podcasting, including new features from Buzzsprout, the importance of attention in the digital age, and the shift towards video content. The episode also includes an interview with Steve Pratt, author of the book "Earn It: Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers." Pratt discusses the importance of creating valuable content to earn attention and provides examples of companies that have successfully done so. The hosts also discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by the increasing use of video in podcasting.

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We chat with Mike Russell from Music Radio Creative; Dustin Bluck from Castro; and Russell Harrower from PodToo.

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The latest news and trends in the podcasting industry. In this episode, we discuss Spotify's growing video podcast platform, Buzzsprout's website redesign, the debate around the future of free podcasts, and the podcast landscape in Egypt as explored by guest Kim Fox, the "Podcast Professor" at the American University in Cairo. We also touch on developments in podcast monetization, translation tools, and upcoming industry events like Podcast Day Asia and Podcast Movement. This fast-paced, insider look at the world of podcasting provides valuable insights for both seasoned and aspiring creators.

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SPECIAL GUESTS:

• Morten Strunge - Podimo
• John Spurlock  - OP3.dev

SHOW NOTES & LINKS:

• Podcast companies are buying short podcast plays within mobile game apps, causing official downloads of shows no one may be playing longer than twenty seconds according to Bloomberg's Ashley Carman. Time has also published the story outside a paywall.
  
  
  • Players get game tokens if they listen to a podcast for just twenty seconds. (Carman posts a graphic). But, because more than 60 seconds of audio are downloaded by the player, as demonstrated in this article in Sounds Profitable, these plays count as an IAB-certified download from podcast hosts and in prefix services like Podtrac. That allows podcasts promoted in this way to charge for the ads delivered in the show, and for that traffic to be counted in rankers
• How many downloads per episode is “good”? Omny Studio publish their data.
• Podcast episodes are getting shorter, says Rephonic.
• September 15, 2022: Podimo, the European subscription podcast service, has raised €58.6m ($58.5m) in funding. It had previously raised more than $116m.
  
  
•  The Open Podcast Prefix Project has been quietly launched by John Spurlock. It’s a prefix analytics service committed to open data and listener privacy; and places listener data in the open. It could power trending and popularity data; or give independently-verified stats to advertisers.
  
  
• Open podcast analytics prefix service OP3 has added trailing wildcards to its API.
• Som

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Sponsors:

• Buzzsprout Ads can now Monetize Your Back Catalog, by finding insertion points in your entire back catalogue automatically. 
  
  
• SquadCast invites you to join their new Slack channel, DM @SquadCastFM if you want to join.

Notes & Links: 

• Spotify has launched audiobooks (in the US only). Audiobooks are an extra cost and you’ll be taken to a website to purchase them.
• Spotify has signed a deal with Wattpad to bring Indonesian and Filipino webnovel authors to podcasting.
• Spotify’s video podcasting service is apparently being used to pirate movies
• Spotify’s Chartable, an analytics and attribution service, is to lower its prices by 50%
• Acast is to lay off around 70 people (15% of its staff)
• The Open Podcast Prefix Project has been launched by John Spurlock. 
• INTERVIEW: JOHN SPURLOCK NEXT WEEK
• Transistor now supports the Open Podcast Prefix project 
• Apple Podcasts wants a website link for your podcast
• Podimo, the European subscription podcast service, has raised €58.6m ($58.5m) in funding. It had previously raised more than $116m.
• INTERVIEW: MORTEN CEO PODIMO NEXT WEEK
• Ivy.fm now supports transcripts, soundbites, and location from the Podcast Index namespace!
• Captivate has just announced v2 of their dynamic content and monetisation engine AMIE
• RSS Blue has added support for Alby and Fountain d

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Special Guests: 

• Dino Sofos  - Founder and CEO, Persephonica 
• Eric Nuzum - Co-founder, Magnificent Noise 
• Mike Kadin - Founder and CEO at RedCircle

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Guest Interviews:

• Eric Nuzum - Magnificent Noise
• Alex Newall - Rusty Quill Ltd

Show Notes:

1. Spotify

• Spotify is the top podcast network in the US based on reach, according to new data from Edison Research. 
  
  
• Spotify now has separate home feeds for Music and Podcasts & Shows! 
  
  
• Audiobooks are coming to Spotify “reasonably soon”, according to CFO Paul Vogel.

2. Alby

• Alby has launched an analytics website for Value 4 Value, the podcast funding method from the Podcast Index. The website, called SATurn, gives a full view of payments made on the Value 4 Value system and interfaces with your Alby wallet. It's free to use, and includes a live feed much like Helipad. 
  
  
• Now everyone with an Alby #Lightning Address can get their very own 'My Alby Page'. 
  • Sam Page: https://getalby.com/p/sam
  • James Page: https://getalby.com/p/james
• Alby also brought #bitcoin to Linktree in their latest release. 

3. Other

• Balcao claims it is a new decentralised podcast platform
  
  
• Podcast Index’s websites are no longer going to store any user’s email address. Emails will be stored hashed in future, according to Dave Jones
  
  
• iOS16 - new support for a useragent in AppleCoreMedia.  Podcast images are much larger on the lockscreen, including support for embedded chapter images.
  
  
• Gramrphone, a live music startup, has announced integration with TikTok. 
  
  
• Podcast discovery tool Goodpods has launched a website
  
  
• Happy Birthday to Buzzsprout, which

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Guest Interviews

• Ian Forrester - BBC R&D - Adaptive Podcasting
• Rene Aaron - Alby - New Dashboard

Show Notes

• The BBC Global News Podcast's presenter Jackie Leonard, and producer Karen Martin, spoke at Radiodays Asia in Malaysia. The show, which is also recording a special edition at the event, is one of the top-rated shows in many Asian countries, with 33m downloads a month.
  
  
• In collaboration with the European Broadcasting Union and partners, BBC R&D has developed an open-source platform that allows the production of 'adaptive' podcasts. 
  
  
• Is podcast search broken? Justin Jackson took a tweet from Sounds Profitable’s Bryan Barletta as inspiration to test the search facilities in podcast apps.
  
  
• Podnews did some research on what podcast search engines actually index.
  
  
• Alby is a micropayment wallet that uses the lightning network.  They are working on a new Dashboard and their new WP plugin. Link: https://saturn.fly.dev
  
  
• August’s platform data for Buzzsprout
  
  
• Podverse, a podcast app, has launched searchable transcripts. Here’s an example from the Podland podcast.
  
  
• Wavvy – new web-based audio editor based on Audacity
  
  
• Trebble has launched an online audio editor
  
  
•  Podnews podcast pages now support the podcast:person tag
  
  
• Pod The North, a Canadian podcast newsletter, launches today. Run by Kattie Laur
  
  
• Radio France podcasts will be available on Amazon Music
  
  

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 James Cridland and Sam Sethi return for this week's show

NEWS: 

• Adam Curry, the “podfather”, spoke with Dave Jones at Podcast Movement 2022, explaining the history of open podcasting, the Podcast Index and the features available with the new podcast namespace
  
  
• Edison Research and Sounds Profitable issued reports at Podcast Movement, Dallas
   
• The Podcast Broker, a new service for buying and selling podcasts, was launched at Podcast Movement.  The service is the brainchild of TrueNativeMedia’s Heather Osgood
  
  
• YouTube has been rolling out YouTube Podcasts in the US. James broke the story of YouTube’s podcast ambitions in March.  Kai Chuk, YouTube’s Director of Podcasting, spoke at Podcast Movement on Thursday
  
  
• YouTuber (and podcaster) Bandrew Scott looks at YouTube’s entrance to podcasting
  
  
• Podcasts are coming to Twitter and Substack has added a podcast preview feature
  
  
• Spotify has put the company’s new podcast ad experience live in their app. Chris Messina has captured and posted what it looks like
  
  
• Apple Podcasts has announced a number of changes to the platform’s RSS feed requirements “in 2023”
  
  
• Alby has unveiled an API. The product is a simple-to-use Bitcoin wallet, used as a browser extension.  Alby has also unveiled a partnership with Podverse
  
  

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We're sponsored by Buzzsprout and SquadCast.

James Cridland joined Todd Cochrane from Blubrry, Rob Greenlee from Libsyn, Tangia Estrada from BIPOC Podcast Creators, and Heather Osgood from The Podcast Broker and True Native Media.
 
This week, the show is from the New Media Show, live on stage at Podcast Movement. This version has been lightly edited from the original. You can find the New Media Show in your favourite podcast app.

Want to watch? Here's the show as originally recorded. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6JAh25hIT0

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This week's stories discussed by James Cridland and Sam Sethi

• The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint against Huel and The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett.
  
  
• We asked Paul Chantler, one of the UK’s media law experts,  how should you keep your host-read podcast ad legal? 
  
  
• Oprah Winfrey’s company has filed a lawsuit against fan podcast Oprahdemics from Radiotopia. 
  
  
• Libsyn is expanding to Europe by acquiring German podcast company Julep Media.
  
  
• The Latino Podcast Listener Report 2022 was published by Edison Research and Elsie Escobar.
  
  
• Spotify is adding additional filter tabs in its app .
  
  
• Podcast hosting company Disctopia has launched its own mobile app.
  
  
• Spotify is testing a method of recording voice comments about a playlist.
  
  
• Edison Research has shared some data suggesting that a quarter of all podcasts are listened to between 6am-10 am
  
  
• In Sounds Profitable with Podsights this week, Tom Webster looks at the problem of churn.
  
  
• Listen Notes is to start its own free podcast host.
  
  
• Podverse mobile lets you connect your Alby wallet and send a boostagram di

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Evo Terra joins James Cridland this week, while Sam drinks wine in Europe somewhere. Evo's podcast is at podcast pontifications and he runs simpler.media

Special Guest: Dan Misener co-founder of Bumper. 

• Podcast guests are paying up to $50,000 to appear on popular shows, and the podcasts don’t disclose it, according to a piece from Ashley Carman in Bloomberg. It quotes a number of podcasts who charge more than $30,000 per interview… and they only added a full disclosure (an FTC requirement) after being contacted by Bloomberg for the story.
  
  
• Dan Misener and Jonas Woost launched Bumper, a new podcast growth agency. Bumper will work with organisations on audience development strategies, marketing and promotion.
  
  
• How many downloads get you into the Apple Podcasts charts? Tanner Campbell managed to get into the top 100 in the US Books category last Friday with just 10 listens and 24 followers.
  
  In November last year, Steffan Garrero got into the top 50 using social media; but it had no effect on his overall downloads.
  
  
• Podtrac is to add a Sales Network Ranker report in Q3 this year, according to emails from ART19 to some of its customers.
  
  
• Tips and Tricks might be a waste of time, argues Evo Terra, in an article entitled Avoiding The Perils Of Un-aligned Podcast Advice
  
  
• The team at the Podcast Index have worked on a proposal for the podcast:verify tag, which would remove email addresses from RSS feeds, and instead use a simple one-click claiming process.
  
  It uses a simple token system, letting podcast hosting companies understand which services people are using, and avoiding the near-25% dropoff from email verification. It’s built to be simple to implement, and great for privacy.
  
  If you work for a podcast hosting company or a service like a directory or tool, they would appreciate your feedback on the proposal.
  
  
• A reminder that if you use Apple’s AppleCoreMedia SDK to playback audio in your app,

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Guest Interviews

• John Spurlock - Thread.land  
• Matt Medeiros - Castos

Show Notes

• Acast has released the company’s Q2/22 financial report.
  The Swedish company now hosts 66,000 podcasts (a record growth last quarter); the number of listens in the quarter increased 41% year-on-year. 
  
  The company lost $11m in the quarter, though now expects to make EBITDA profit in 2024, earlier than previously expected. 
  
  “The heavy investment phase is now over, " says CEO Ross Adams, noting that the advertising market has been cooling globally.
  
  
• Bloomberg's Ashley Carman’s newsletter launches next month. 
  
  
• Ashley wrote about the world of paid podcast appearances, or what some consider podcast payola. Guests are paying hosts up to $50K for an interview, and the disclosures around that exchange aren’t always clear or even existent.
  
  
• Skye Pillsbury (Frmr contributor, Hot Pod) has launched her newsletter called The Squeeze
  
  
• Want to support podcast:socialInteract with ActivityPub in your feed. Find your podcast on thread.land then DM @johnspurlock the unique prefix url .
  
  
• Congratulation to Josh Chen from JustCast for also adding Alby integration and enabling autofill in Value4Value tag to enable the Alby wallet. 
  
  
• Online studio Cleanfeed has won an Emmy Award for Engineering, Science & Technology.
  
  
• The BBC claims a new record number of weekly users for its audio app, BBC Sounds.
  
  
• All future @SoundsProfNews podcasts will be built with @spoolermedia.
  
  
• Publisher and broadcaster Audacy has bought podcast app Moonbeam.
  
  

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In this episode, hosts James Cridland and Sam Sethi discuss Buzzsprout's new Android app, the New York Times putting podcasts behind a paywall, the fate of Google Podcasts, and YouTube adding a podcasts page. They also interview Alban Brooke from Buzzsprout about the company's podcast hosting platform and new shows, and Russell Harrower from PodToo. Additionally, the hosts cover events in the podcasting world, including Podcast Movement and Podcast Asia, as well as discuss topics like podcast transcription, monetization, and the growing Podcasting 2.0 community. Throughout the conversation, the hosts provide insights, analysis, and commentary on the evolving podcast landscape.

(Description via kagi.com/fastgpt)

Interviews in full in our Podnews Extra podcast.

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Guest Interview

• Alberto Betella - CTO RSS.com

Show Notes

• Podcast host RSS.com is to announce integration with Alby this week: enabling value 4 value for thousands of podcasts. You’ll be able to activate and link your Alby account with your podcast in RSS.com’s dashboard.  RSS has produced a video showing how it works on their platform
  
  
• Monetize your @CastosHQ podcast with @getAlby and @PodcastindexOrg value4value tag!  Castos has produced a video showing how it works on their platform
  
  
• Full List of  New Podcast 2.0 Apps  
• Full List of Podcast Hosts
  
  
• Hot on the heels of last week's acquisition by Acast. Podchaser announced this week that developers can now pull episode transcripts from the Podchaser API.  In this beta release, developers can retrieve JSON transcript files of episodes from the top 5k podcasts.  
  
  
• Spotify published its Q2/21 financial report. which out-performed market expectations. Ignoring currency fluctuations, ad-supported revenue (including podcasting) is up 31%; the platform now has 4.4m podcasts. “The number of (monthly active users) that engaged with podcasts grew in the substantial double-digits Y/Y and per user podcast consumption rates continued to rise,” though no numbers were given.
  
  
• Does podcasting have a privacy problem? Writing on his personal blog, our Editor highlights what the GDPR actually says, whether you can do privacy-friendly geo-targeting, and where things might be an issue. 
  
  
• Was the much-loved comedian and actor Robin Williams the first podcaster? We’ve unearthed some compelling evidence that shows that yes, he might well have been.
  
  
• The British Podcast Awards 2022 winner’s ceremony took place on Saturday. Podcast of the year was

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Special Guests

• Moritz Kaminski - Alby
• Ross Adams -  Acast
• Bradley Davis - Podchaser

Show Notes

• Acast is to acquire Podchaser, the “world’s most comprehensive and authoritative podcast database” in a deal worth $34m. Podchaser, which is expected to make a profit next year, will continue to operate as a separate brand: it contains data of more than 4.5m million podcasts, including advertising information. The integration will bring additional data to Acast’s advertisers.
  
  
• The podcast landscape is ever shifting!
  
  
• Alby, a browser extension for cryptocurrency, has added its own podcaster wallet. The service allows you to earn from your listeners as they listen. The company has written a full guide to enabling your podcast.
  
  
• Audioboom’s H1/22 financials were released, showing revenue was up 79% on the same period last year. Profit was $2m, up from last year’s $0.2m, and the company’s doing 124m downloads a month (up 35%).
  
  
• Pushkin Industries has purchased podcast creator Transmitter Media. Transmitter’s founder and CEO, Gretta Cohn, will join Pushkin’s senior leadership team. 
  
  
• Auphonic and Hindenburg have announced an integration
  
  
• Which company is sending the most unsolicited commercial email to podcasters, by scraping your RSS feed to gather your email? We have been running a spamtrap on our podcast feed for the last three months, and today, we reveal the podcast industry’s biggest spammer. (No, it doesn’t start with an “A”).
  
  
• British Podcast Awards: Jul 23 · London, England, UK
  
  

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Special Guests:

• Mitch Downey - Podverse
• Mike Mignano - Angel Investor and ex-Spotify

Show Notes:

• Michael Mignano, has written a piece about what he calls The Standards Innovation Paradox.
  
  
• In response, James Cridland wrote a long article that basically points out that Apple took the RSS standard and enhanced it. The thing that Mike Mignano says is impossible.
  
  
• Adam Curry said: Spotify is the shitcoin of podcasting.
  
  
• Spotify is expanding the ability to post video podcasts for creators in six new countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Brazil and Mexico. This marks the first time the audio streaming company is making this feature available in non-English speaking countries.
  
  
• Spotify has purchased Heardle.
  
  
• Overcast, Marco Arment, describes “cheap, sloppy dynamic ad insertion in podcasts” as something that “continues to degrade the experience for listeners” in a tweet.
  
  
• Reddit is to start live audio Talks says Arielle Nissenblatt in a Twitter thread.
  
  
• Message Heard has signed an audio partnership with The Kyiv Independent.
  
  
• Descript launched Storyboard.
  
  
• Eddy, the audio editor that works like a word processor, now lets you edit video.

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Special Guests

• Harry Duran -  Full Cast
• Oscar Merry - Fountain App

Show Notes

• Podverse adds support for LIT and Video Support. 
• Podcast Host Ranking from John Spurlock 
• Fountain rewards users for listening to podcasts
• Blubrry has launched 'podcast media kits’ that update daily 
• Libsyn Studio
• Anchor podcast fraud.  Here’s a link with details on how to report them
• Alby, a browser extension for cryptocurrency, has added its own podcaster wallet. The service allows you to earn from your listeners as they listen. The company has written a full guide to enabling your podcast.

Events

• The British Podcast Awards, powered by Audible, Ceremony- Kennington Park, London - Saturday 23rd July - Tickets on Sale: Monday 20th June. 

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Special Guests

• Tom Webster- Sounds Profitable
• Zachariah Moreno & Rock Felder - Squadcast
• Sophie Hind & Jim Salveson - VoiceWorks

Show Notes

• Sounds Profitable released The Creators, a study of the people who create podcasts. Tom Webster revealed that US podcast creators are more diverse than the US population, but are significantly younger and more male. Most own both Android and iOS devices, though more than four in ten podcast creators have been listening to podcasts for under a year. 
  
  
• You can download the full report here.
  
  
• Bloomberg Businessweek posts Spotify’s Billion-Dollar Bet on Podcasting Has Yet to Pay Off. The piece, originally titled “Spotify’s Joe Rogan-Powered Podcast Bet Hasn’t Paid Off”, suggests that the company’s investments haven’t yet yielded a major hit, and contains criticism of Dawn Ostroff’s growth strategy.
  
  
• Spotify and Anchor have debuted RADAR Podcasters, a podcast-creator version of the Spotify program designed to spotlight emerging voices worldwide. The companies start by highlighting more than 40 creators around the world.
  
  
• The number of open video podcasts are on the rise. In November last year, Podcast Index listed 39,194 video podcasts. As of June this year, Podnews can reveal the number had grown by over a quarter to 50,863. We measured these by looking for enclosure files with the extension mov, mp4 or m4v, the three filetypes Apple Podcasts supports. Apple has recently put video podcasts in the spotlight again; Spotify launched its own proprietary video podcasts tool in April (which we can’t measure).

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Special Guests

• Carlos Diaz - Uncut.fm is a new podcast platform that lets you "mint, share and sell your content as NFTs".
  
  
• Jake Warren  - UK podcast production company Message Heard has signed with CAA

Show Notes

• Breaking: Acast+ has announced an integration with Facebook. It allows Acast+ subscribers to offer members-only Facebook groups, as a launch partner of new Facebook functionality. 
  
  
• Fountain is now rewarding people for listening to shows with Bitcoin, which they can then share with their favourite podcasters as “value4value”. The more people listen, the more they get  (like this for Podland).
  
  
• The Creators FREE webinar from Soundsprofitable. register here
  
  
• Spotify is testing a tool to record a podcast directly into the Spotify app 
  
  
• Spotify to make streaming more social on new ‘community’ mobile app 

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Special Guest

• Ken Miller - CTO Fathom 
  
  
• New podcast app Fathom, designed for better podcast discovery, has been launched on iOS and in-browser.  It promises you can “ask any question and hear answers from your favourite podcasters and their guests.”
  
  
• https://fathom.fm/podcast/podland-news

Show Notes

• Breaking: Apple Podcasts has published details of how search in its app works. The post includes clarification that ratings and reviews aren’t factored into search results; and that the search function searches the show name, channel name, and episode title. 
  
  
• In July last year, Podnews published data showing what metadata different podcast apps use: noting that Apple Podcasts does not search podcast (or episode) descriptions.
  
  
• During Pride Month, Google Podcasts is blocking and hiding some podcast episodes apparently because they use the word 'lesbian’. 
  
  
• Transistor’s Justin Jackson has reported Acast to Canadian law enforcement after the company targeted Transistor customers. 
  
  
• Acast recently targeted customers from Podbean, Captivate, Blubrry and others, using competitor’s logos, and sending multiple follow-up messages to each podcaster. 
  
  
• International Women’s Podcast Festival in London is on Sat Jun 18.
  
  
• The British Podcast Awards, Ceremony- Kennington Park, London - Saturday 23rd July - Tickets on Sale: Monday 20th June. 

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Special Guest

• Alban Brooke - Head of Marketing at Buzzsprout. Buzzsprout the world’s second largest podcast host, has just formally announced Buzzsprout Ads, letting podcasters buy adverts for their shows (and other podcasters to earn revenue).
  
  We’re using them - automatically inserted by Buzzsprout Ads.

Show Notes & Links

• Spotify had an Investor Day last Wednesday.

“Spotify share price slid 55% this year. Daniel Ek said Spotify would grow beyond music, increasing creator tools and moving into audiobooks. This growth, Ek predicted, would take the company to 10 times its current size, with an aim to reach one billion listeners by 2030 and generate US$100 billion in revenue.”

• Maya Prohovnik said Spotify brought in around €200m ($215m) in podcast revenue last year. Podcasting lost the company €103m ($110m), though is expected to turn a profit within two years.
  
  
• Maya Prohovnik described RSS as “outdated technology”, and said they have been able to replace it for their on-platform distribution. She also claimed that every new Anchor show brings 2.5 new monthly active users to the Spotify platform.
  
  
• iHeart’s Conal Byrne writes for Forbes, promoting the benefit of RSS, which was soundly denigrated by Spotify in their presentation.
  
  
• Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman noted in an entertaining Twitter thread that Joe Rogan was missing from their presentation.
  
  
• Blubrry has emailed its podcast hosting customers that the company is ready to launch programmatic advertising.
  
  
• AVURLAssetHTTPUserAgentKey has just appeared in Apple’s documentation for the next version of iOS, allowing all podcast apps to correctly state their user agent. Developers can adopt this today; there will be a public beta in July, and this will roll out for everyone in Q3. Expect Podnews to grumpily highlight apps that don’t bother with it.
  
  
• Headliner now supports direct sharing to TikTok
  
  
• Kara

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Sponsors

• Buzzsprout - last week, 3,210 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout 
• Squadcast - Create high-quality audio and video content just using your browser and using Dolby Enhanced Audio Mastering, they’ll sound better than ever.

Special Guest

• Dave Jones - Pod Sage from Podcast Index talks about ...
  • Value 4 Value 
  • Lightning Network
  • WebLN
  • Alby 
  • Hive's Podping
  • Podcast Index new tags <podcast:liveItem> and <podcast:block>

Show Notes & Links

• One of podcasting’s largest hosting companies, Megaphone, was down for more than nine hours. All the Spotify-owned company’s audio and RSS feeds disappeared at 8pm Eastern on Monday after a certificate expired. 
  
  
• Spotify is conducting research within its app on new features. The company appears to be testing the ability to pay to promote your show, as well as automatically place ads in shows to earn revenue.
  
  
• Descript now supports new workflows that will let you jump to editing in Descript with one click - when recording in @RiversidedotFM or @SquadCastFM, live streaming in @Restreamio, or hosting in @CaptivateAudio 
  
  
• EditEddy was launched on Product Hunt. The service makes audio editing simple - upload your spoken-word audio, get a transcript, and then edit your audio by editing the text. Here’s a video demo.
  
  
• Podverse enables searchable transcripts.  

#podcasting 

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Show notes are coming soon for this episode.

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Libsyn's integrated with YouTube's API - what does that mean? Plus, Kendall from Riverside spills the beans on the new features, and interviews with Theo Gadd from PodLife Events and Nathan Gathright from episodes.fm

Longer interviews are in the Podnews Extra podcast feed, if you want to learn more.

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Sponsors

• Buzzsprout - last week, 3,282 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout 
• Squadcast - Create high-quality audio and video content just using your browser and using Dolby Enhanced Audio Mastering, they’ll sound better than ever.

Special Guest

• Ashley Carman  - Bloomberg

Show Notes & Links

• James Cridland Radio Days Europe - Roundup
  
  
• Selling paid subscriptions through Apple Podcasts? Until now, you’ve had to upload that audio separately to Apple; but Apple Podcasts Delegated Delivery was announced yesterday, allowing creators to upload and manage that audio through selected podcast hosting companies when this feature launches in Q3.
  
  
  • A number of initial podcast hosting companies have been announced including RSS·com, Libsyn and Buzzsprout; but if you run a podcast hosting company and wish to participate in Delegated Delivery, you’re encouraged to fill out this form.  (Memo to Apple: here’s a list).
    
    
  • "Interesting that both of Spotify's hosting platforms, megaphone and anchor, arent participating at launch."- Ashley C
    
    
  • "Spotify works with third parties to support its subscription offering, too. the only overlap is acast, at least according to the initial partner list. curious if this means there's now additional stratification in podcast world: team Spotify or team Apple "- Ashley C
• iOS 15.5, iPadOS 15.5, and macOS 12.4 were made available yesterday. This brings annual paid subscriptions within the Apple Podcasts app. We told you last month; you can add an annual plan now.
  
  
• With the new iOS, the Apple Podcasts app has had a welcome tweak for automatic download settings, with per-show customisation. You’ll find the new settings in your Settings app on iPhone and iPad. The app will now also recommend removing old downloads when necessary.
  
  
• And one more thing -

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Sponsors

• Buzzsprout - last week, 3,437 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout 
• Squadcast - Create high-quality audio and video content just using your browser and using Dolby Enhanced Audio Mastering, they’ll sound better than ever.

Special Guest

• Tom Webster -  Sounds Profitable

Show Notes & Links

• Tom Webster has announced he is to join Sounds Profitable as Partner.  
  Writing in Sounds Profitable, he outlines the future for Sounds Profitable - to share content, research,  run events and advisory services to help set the course for the future of the audio business. 
  
  
• Todd Cochrane’s Geek News Central hits episode 1,600 this week. One of the first podcasts in the world, its first episode was Oct 9, 2004 - just a few weeks after the word “podcast” began to be used. This was the first podcast Tom Webster listened to.  
  
  
• Wondery is streaming some shows in Dolby Atmos. You’ll need to be a Wondery+ subscriber to listen because there aren’t any standard podcast apps that playback the format yet.
  
  
• The sixth annual IAB US Podcast Advertising Revenue study was published. It shows US podcast ad revenue growth increasing dramatically during 2021, hitting $1.4bn. Revenues are forecast to hit $4.2bn in 2024.
  
  
• iHeartMedia’s podcast business brought in $69m during the first quarter - 12% of total revenue; its radio business brought in $416m. The company posted a net loss of $48.7m, though, for the quarter. 
  
  
• Spotify is to close Spotify Stations, a lean-back music radio experience.
  
  
• Spotify is testing a new homepage layout that allows a toggle between music and podcasts. h/t Chris Messina.
  
  
• Spotify has published its

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Sponsors

• Buzzsprout - last week, 3,549 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout 
• NEW: Squadcast - Create high-quality audio and video content just using your browser: and, using Dolby Enhanced Audio Mastering, they’ll sound better than ever.

Special Guest

• Steve Jones -  Content Director at Crowd Network

Show Notes & Links: 

• Facebook is pulling out of podcasts and will close the service starting Jun 3. The company will stop creators adding podcasts to the service this week. They don’t plan to communicate the closure to Facebook users.
  
  
• Facebook was responsible for just 0.3% of all podcast downloads last month, says Buzzsprout. It had reached 0.5% in February, making it the 17th largest podcast app.
  
  
• More than a quarter of new podcast episodes published in April were on Anchor, according to data from John Spurlock: 
  
  
• The world’s largest podcast host, Anchor was down for much of yesterday
  
  
• Spotify is hiring for a podcast moderation team in Dublin Ireland.
  
  
• Michael Mignano is to leave Spotify. He’s said to have given his resignation last week and leaves at the end of June. 
  
  
• Chartable has clarified its future, in an email to users. 
  
  
• In the UK, The Radio Academy’s ARIAS took place last night. 
  
  
• Headliner has added an integration with Hindenburg (build 2434).  They've also added export to LinkedIn.
  
  
• Tom Webster has announced he is to leave Edison Research.  He is our guest on next week's show. 
  
  
• Fount

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Sponsor

• Buzzsprout - last week, 3,448 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout 

Guests

• Tom Billington - Content Director for The Podcast Show
• Neil Mody - CEO & Co-Founder Headliner 

Show Notes & Links: 

• Spotify’s Anchor has rolled out proprietary video podcasts to all Anchor users in the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK. 
  
  
• Paid subscriptions will be available for these shows, too; additionally, Anchor has integrated with Riverside.
  
  
• Remote recording tool Riverside has just raised $35m in Series B funding.
  
  
• A better future alternative (perhaps) is to support the alternateEnclosure tag. 
  
  
• Podbean appears to be seeing a large number of migrations away from the service.
  
  
• Spotify has just released its financial results for Q1/22. Spotify stock reached its lowest point ever! 
  
  
• Spotify is launching a fund to support open source software. 
  
  
• Apple has launched three new Apple Podcast Collections, Apple Podcasts has also launched new listening reports for paid subscriptions.
  
  
• Fountain is giving away free money for podcast listeners. The Lightning-enabled podcast app is giving every new user 1,000 sats in their account - for them to share with podcasts they enjoy 

 Quick News

• Twitter has bee

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Sponsor

• Buzzsprout - last week, 3,684 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout 

Notes & Links: 

1. Spotify Selling Vapourware Again!?

• In June 2021, Spotify announced the Spotify Greenroom Creator Fund for US creators to “support and reward creators for the communities they build and the experiences they create”, as part of the launch of Spotify Greenroom. However, the fund never launched; and yesterday, Spotify emailed applicants, admitting that the program had been cancelled.

2. Gaming the Spotify Algorithm?

• There’s a new global #1 - the Brazilian artist Anitta’s Envolver. How did Anitta do it? By apparently asking her fans to game the Spotify algorithms  - https://charts.spotify.com

3.  Spotify Moderation ?

• Spotify has quietly rolled-out a new misinformation policy that says it may hide shows, or in their words “restrict content’s discoverability”. NiemanLab has discovered the company’s new rules, which Spotify have yet to announce: and nor have they added them to their public Platform Rules page.
  
  
• The Brookings Institution has written a new document that highlights current platform policies, describes how Spotify and Apple allow listeners to report shows, and suggests areas that policy-makers might focus on.

4.  Spotify Curation?

• How do the Spotify team decide which podcasts to promote? Spotify for Podcasters describes what you can do to be considered.
  
  
• Higher Ground, Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, is to leave Spotify, says Ashley Carman at Bloomberg

5. Goodbye Facebook Podcasts?

• A year after it

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Sponsor

• Buzzsprout - last week, 3,686 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout 

Special Guest

• Lauren Passell - CEO TinkMedia talks about why she has launched a podcast swap database for podcasters interested in setting up a promo swap for their podcast.

Notes & Links: 

• An Anchor podcast called Soldier of Misfortune has been accused of being a shameless rip-off by Brendan I Koerner, a journalist for The Atlantic . He accuses the podcaster, Jesse Rapaport, of knowingly stealing his work. 
  
  
• Spotify says that they’ll continue losing money from their podcast acquisitions in 2022, but podcasting should begin to make a profit at a time “not too far away”.
  
  
• Podcast host Anchor’s creator interface is now available in 35 different languages. Of the top five podcast hosts, Omny Studio is in six languages, Spreaker is available in four; Buzzsprout and Libsyn only offer English, though YouTube is in 82 different languages
  
  
• Apple Podcasts has now added follower metrics for all your shows in Apple Podcasts Connect
  
  
• Advertisers should move money away from podcasts that don’t provide transcripts, says Bryan Barletta in Sounds Profitable 
  
  
• Spo

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Sponsor

• Buzzsprout - last week, 3,847 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout 

Special Guest

• Harry Duran talks about how he found a sponsor for his new podcast, raising $9k before launching  

SubStack

• Substack is moving into podcasting - “but better”. The platform also lets you podcast for free

YouTube

• YouTube is the third most popular podcast platform in America
  
  
• Should your podcast be on YouTube? Rephonic crunch the data: revealing that for English-language shows, it could well be worthwhile. The Podfather thinks it's a waste of time.
  
  
• Dan Misener analyses the different types of podcast on YouTube
  
  
• Jeff Vidler from Signal Hill Insights calls YouTube “the elephant in the podcasting room"

Acast

• Acast published its annual report. The company saw net ad sales grow by 73%; while it almost doubled the loss of last year
  
  
• Alberto Betella has suggested a podcast:verify tag, designed to removed the need for podcasters to expose/spam their email addresses in RSS feeds.

BBC

• The hosts of one of the UK’s biggest podcasts, Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo are to take their film review podcast to Sony Music Entertainment
  
  
• Worth Reading Is talent in control - Matt Deegan

Other

• Podmachine has been launched - a tool to grow and edit your podcast for you
• Headliner has launched Eddy
• Dave Jones writes

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SPECIAL GUEST:  Chris Messina

NEWS:

YouTube:

• Exclusive: YouTube is planning tighter integration, monetisation and analytics for podcasts.  Despite no announcement from YouTube’s director of podcasting, Kai Chuk, at Podcast Movement Evolutions last week
  
  
• YouTube is looking at ingesting podcast RSS feeds directly with a new podcasts homepage to be at youtube.com/podcasts (a URL that doesn’t work, yet)

 Spotify: 

• Spotify is working on a brand new podcast interface. Spotted by Chris Messina, who posted a screen recording archived by Podnews here, the new interface adds a dedicated Podcasts tab, vertical scrolling, and live captions for all shows. 
  
  
• Want to play with the new Spotify interface for podcasting? It’s already on your phone. On an iPhone or iPad, open Safari, visit spotify:internal:podcastclips and you’ll go straight there. /via @chrismessina

SiriusXM:

• Freakonomics Radio is to become a radio station on SiriusXM. 
  
  
• RØDE has launched its first-ever set of headphones. i.e the NTH-100s 
  
  
• Podimo has bought Dag en Nacht, the largest podcast publisher in the Netherlands. 
  
  
• Sonnant has launched new AI-powered tools for audio and video monetisation. 
  
  
• Dave Jones from the Podcast Index has posted about WebSub, and why “it doesn’t scale well”. The Podcast Index is using a system called PodPing.
  
  
• There has been an update to the socialInteract tag.
  
  
• RSS.com have proposed a new <verification> tag to remove the need for the iTunes: email tag used to spam po

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Special Guest

• Alban Brooke - Head of Marketing at Buzzsprout

News: 

• Kai Chuk from YouTube presented but said nothing about their future plans
  
  
  • Matt Deegan writes more about podcasters using video in his newsletter
    
    
  • By the end of the year, it’s going to be essential that podcasters are creating proper video versions of their shows. - Matt Deegan
    
    
  • It’s also why nearly 20% of podcast listeners regard YouTube as their main podcast app.  - Tom Webster
    
    
  • Tom Webster from Edison Research, warns podcasters to be careful saying “get this wherever you get your podcasts” if they don’t put their show on YouTube
    
    
  • Adori announced a new YouTube integration to help grow your podcast audience
• The results of the Podnews Report Card were announced at Podcast Movement Evolution by our Editor, James Cridland. Selections from the 750 comments captured are on the Podnews website
  
  
• Edison Research unveiled the Infinite Dial 2022
  
  
• The Ambies, the awards from The Podcast Academy that celebrate excellence in podcasting, took place last night. The winners are here: 9/12, from Amazon Music, Pineapple Studios and Wondery was the podcast of the year; the podcast’s host Dan Taberski accepted the award in the award ceremony in Los Angeles CA, USA
  
  
• Apple Podcasts will add follower numbers to Apple Podcasts Connect, starting next month. You’ll be able to view followers per show and easily measure followers across shows
  
  
• Writing in Variety, Jem Aswad is highly critical of Spotify’s $310m sponsorship of FC Barcelona, which they announced on Tuesday
  
  
•  

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MONTY PYTHON: Spam Sketch

SPECIAL GUEST:

Marty Michael - CEO & Co-Founder Gumball 

• Gumball has raised $10 million to expand its podcasting host-read advertising platform. The company was built by the team behind the Headgum Podcast Network. 

NEWS: 

• Podcast host Acast is still spamming podcasters, even co-founders of rival podcast networks, or hosts of shows that ended three years ago. Libsyn's Rob Walch correctly notes "Friends don't send emails starting 'hello friend' (as Acast's do), and they don't spam". 
  
  
• Hypocritically, Acast actually offers its customers a tool to obfuscate your email address in your RSS feed, so that it will "help our podcasters avoid unwanted spam". It's a problem the company is more than aware of, then. "Email marketing is one part of our marketing strategy", said Ross Adams, the company's CEO, when we last asked.
  
  
• Oscar Merry has suggested Lightning Comments as a potential solution for cross-app commenting: using "boostagrams" as a method of sending comments. We like this idea; and the spec is simple enough for us to code it; so, you'll find a "comments" section on every update in Podnews's web version. You can also see those comments in the Fountain app.
  
  
• Podnews are also, as of today, permanently supporting the socialInteract tag for Twitter (and will probably pull in those comments to the page, too, at some stage). 
  
  
• A new version is up: 1.0.0-beta. This release comes with bug fixes and an exciting feature: WebSub! From now on, Castopod will push your newly published episodes directly to open subscription hubs, meaning that they will get broadcasted instantly after publication.
  
  
• A gateway from WebSub to PodPing. WebSub.watch allows any WebSub-enabled podcast to push notificat

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We speak with Kevin Y Brown and Jon Savage about the podcast landscape in Africa. Those interviews are in full in the Podnews Extra feed. Also, Spotify's video ambitions, and Alby's removal of support for users in the US causes some concern for the future of streaming sats.

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GUESTS:  

• James O. Boggs
• Andy Bowers

NEWS: 

• Spooler's "dynamic, real-time audio" publishing system launched last week. According to an analysis by John Spurlock, on its first day, Spooler helped The Refresh from Insider to produce five editions of their podcast. 
  
  
• A new podcast platform, Spooler, has launched. It's founded by a who's who of podcasting, including CEO James O. Boggs, formerly Head of Podcasts at Apple; CCO Andy Bowers, co-founder of Slate Audio and Megaphone; CTO Dan Benjamin, founder of Fireside·fm and the 5by5 podcast network, and Exec Producer Kerry Donahue, former EP at WNYC. 
  
  
•  Amazon has released Amp, a “live radio app” seen as their version of Clubhouse or TwitterSpaces. 
  
  
• It’s available in the US for iOS users only in a waitlist; it’ll enable you to DJ your own music show (with “tens of millions of licensed songs” they say), and you can take callers, too. Amp’s website is live, and you can download the app to join the waitlist.
  
  
• YouTube is offering podcasters up to $50,000 to film their shows and paying podcast networks up to $300,000, according to Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman.
  
  
• TikTok on the clock, but the party don’t stop: except, says Rephonic, podcasters are ignoring TikTok. Twitter is significantly over-represented across all podcasts, the company summarises; but TikTok has by far the highest average number of followers.
  
  
• Is TikTok getting into podcasting? TikTok is hiring for someone to work in their “Podcast Operation” in Sydney NSW, Australia.
  
  
• TikTok is launching its own music marketing and distribution platform, SoundOn

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Special Guest: 

• Laura Ivey - Director of Research at Edison Research

News:

• Will we see a podcast player in Twitter? Alessandro Paluzzi has spotted a podcasts option in the latest Twitter code, and Jane Manchun Wong has also unearthed a Podcasts tab. Nathan Gathright has brainstormed some ideas about what he hopes Twitter is up to - let’s hope it’s not just reruns of Twitter Spaces.
  
  
• A new podcast platform, Spooler, has launched. It’s founded by a who’s who of podcasting, including CEO James O. Boggs, formerly Head of Podcasts at Apple; CCO Andy Bowers, co-founder of Slate Audio and Megaphone; CTO Dan Benjamin, founder of Fireside·fm and the 5by5 podcast network, and Exec Producer Kerry Donahue, former EP at WNYC. The product claims to be a new modular content management system for audio, allowing instant edits and re-ordering of content while being compatible with RSS podcast apps. The tech also incorporates Dolby·io to smooth audio volumes and apply noise reduction. Axios has more information.
  
  
• The British Podcast Awards 2022 are now open to enter. If you’ve created at least six episodes of a podcast over the last year, you’re probably eligible.
  
  
• iHeartMedia’s Conal Byrne has made a number of predictions about podcasting for 2022, writing in Forbes. “The entire internet will be converted to audio and distributed on-demand”, he says.
  
  
• iHeartRadio has added a tool called “Talk Back” to its app. It lets listeners send short voice messages to radio and podcast hosts. It “will roll out

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GUEST:

• John Spurlock talking about implementing ActivityPub/Co-Comments  

LINKS: 

• https://podcastsocial.org
• https://minipub.dev/

NEWS: 

• Anyone can claim to be a creator of any podcast within the GoodPods app, without any proof or validation, we’ve discovered. 
  
  
• Acast has been been “spamming podcasters”, says competitor Buzzsprout, which has published an unsolicited email from Acast sent to many of Buzzsprout’s customers; we’re aware they’ve also been sent to Anchor users too. 
  
  
• “Email marketing is one part of our marketing strategy as we look to bring even more great creators to Acast, and we’re focused on providing the best possible tools and services to help them reach their potential.” — Ross Adams, CEO, Acast
  
  
• How should apps best verify ownership?  Fountain asks for the email held in the RSS file to claim podcast? 
  
  
• Proposed Solution by James Cridland.  Is there a better, easier way to help podcasters “claim” their podcast on different apps? Currently, that process is a clunky method of hoping someone has access to the email address in the RSS feed, and then sending them an email. We think there might be something rather easier. Here’s some proposed documentation of how it might work.
  
  
• WebFinger is a protocol specified by the Internet Engineering Task Force IETF that allows for the discovery of information about people and things identified by a URI. 
  
  
• Edison Research released their Super Listeners study, with Ad Results Media. “Super listeners” - US adults who listen to 5+ hours of podcasts a week.
  
  
• Responding to Spotify purchasing Podsights and Chartable, Bryan Barletta writes this week in Sounds Profitable that “Grading your own homework isn’t third-party measurement,” 
  
  

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SPECIAL GUEST:

• Mike Carr. - Crowd Network 

NEWS:

• Spotify has acquired Podsights and Chartable
  
  
• Spotify has published an interview with Sean Creeley from Podsights
  
  
• Apple has just published a guide to getting promotion for your podcast from Apple Podcasts
  
  
• Breakit, a Swedish news website, has published an article (translated) that alleges downloads are being bought on Spotify
  
  
• iHeartRadio in the US has signed with Sounder to offer advertisers brand safety tools. The company is a seed investor in Sounder’s latest Series A funding round
  
  
• Podnews is launching the first annual report card for the podcast industry. Please give your views here before Mar 1.
  
  
• Delegate day passes have just gone on sale for The Podcast Show 2022, coming to London in May. May 25-26  You can get your day passes today - use promo code PODNEWS for 20% off a limited number of day passes. Podnews is a media partner (and we’ll be there)
  
  
• A podcast has turned into its own radio station in the UK
  
  
• Facebook appears to have rolled-out audio rooms across the world 
  
  

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GUESTS:

• Gigi -  Closing the Loop - The Future of Value
• Oscar Merry - Fountain Podcaster Wallet
• Evo Terra - Hall of Fame Induction
• Stewart Townsend - Podcast Hawk

NEWS:

• Lightning Network is now available on Cash App. It's the fastest, free way to pay anyone in bitcoin. The Lightning Network is a new way to send BTC/SAT that's faster and free!!!
  
  Some legend gave 100 million sats (1 bitcoin) to Cinemuck, the people behind the movie "Human B" - Gigi #Value4Value 
  
  
• Podcast app Fountain has launched a full Podcaster Wallet, making it the easiest way to earn Bitcoin from your podcast. Just search for your podcast and claim it in the app:  you can monitor how much you earn, and see messages, in the app too.
  
  
• Castos has released a new feature enabling all its podcasters to earn Bitcoin from listeners, as well as links to PayPal, Patreon and others. It’s one of the first podcast hosts to build in support for “value4value”.
  
  
• Exclusive: Mumbler has released what they call the first monetisation study for podcasts in Spain. 
  
  
• This year’s Podcasting Hall of Fame inductees will be unveiled at 9am ET today by Podcast Movement. 
   
• Podcast Movement: Evolutions: Mar 23 · Los Angeles, California, USA
  
  
• Edison Research has released the top 50 US podcasts for 2021. 
  
  
• Podtrac reports iHeartRadio is #1 for podcasting

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GUESTS: 

• Mark Asquith co-founder and MD of Captivate.FM talks about their acquisition by Global and what's next for Captivate and how the line between radio and podcasting has blurred?
  
  
• Craig Hewitt founder and CEO of Castos talks about the latest version of their platform and their upcoming support for Value4Value and why advertising is not the future for podcast monetisation.  

NEWS: 

• Google is randomly switching podcasts in its app to point to pirated copies with ads. Jason Calcanis noticed his podcast, All-In, mysteriously had ads in it; Google’s Danny Sullivan replied: “we appear to have mistakenly pointed to a duplicate version of the podcast”
  
  
• Buzzsprout’s data suggests that the Google Podcasts app is losing market share, from 2.6% to 2.3% in the past year. 
  
  
• Buzzsprout’s global stats for January, calculated to the IAB standard, show the company hit 100 million monthly downloads for the first time.
  
  
• A website using Google Fonts has been fined for breaking GDPR privacy rules, since it leaked the visitor’s IP address to Google without their permission. Podnews phased out use of Google Fonts for privacy reasons more than two years ago.
  
  
• When publishing a show to Spotify, you are now reminded to read the platform rules; though not to explicitly agree to them.
  
  
• SiriusXM has launched AudioID. 
  
  
• The BBC says it saw a total of 257m podcast downloads globally last quarter. That would make it the #3 podcast publisher in the world.TECH: 

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GUESTS: 

• SCOTT WAXMAN // HALA TAHA

NEWS:

• Spotify takes Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s podcast ‘into its own hands’ after the couple produced NO content for a YEAR.
  
  
• Spotify picks Joe Rogan over Neil Young
  
  
• Stephen Fry has launched a new podcast exploring the brain. The podcast is exclusively on Audible.
  
  
• Amazon Buys Exclusive Rights to ‘My Favorite Murder’ Podcast. 
  Amazon Music and Wondery will offer new episodes of the podcasts for a week before they are available on other services.
  
  
• Libsyn has put its new user interface, Libsyn5, live to all users.
  The new interface is easier to use, and features 'social scheduling’ and support of the locked tag.
  
  
• Exclusive: The free and open-source podcast solution for you to self-host, Castopod has reached v1.0, and now has a website of its own.  The podcast platform includes open comments, video clips, anonymised analytics, and wide support for the new podcast namespace. It’s available for download today.
  
  
• Podcast hosting company Castos has added customisable podcast website themes.
  CEO Craig Hewett will be a guest on the show next week. 
  
  
• Captivate launch Automated Show Notes.
  Mark Asquith will be a guest on the show next week.
  
  
• Anchor podcasts are unplayable in some podcast apps.
  Overcast CEO/Developer Marco Arment, added, in a tweet to Anchor: “It’s been two weeks that you’re serving malformed files, breaking media players, and losing the audiences of your customers. Do you care about this medium at all?”
  
  
• Ross Mathews and Nikki Boyer are co-hosting The Ambies, the second annual Awards for Excellence in Audio run by The Podcast Academy. They’re the co-hosts of Dying for Sex, the winner of the 2021 Podcast of the Year; the ceremony is on March 22 in Los Angeles, and live online.
  
  
• Castopod joins Spotify, Podchaser and Podnews in adding copious amounts of JSON_LD to podcast pages.
  
  
• this podcast (@seetee.io) is putting their boost messages onto their website. (If you’ve an Umbrel running

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GUESTS:  

• Brad Mielke - Host/Managing Editor, "Start Here" Podcast at ABC News
  
  
• Effy Kang - Head of Capital Markets at Lizhi - the first podcast app that Apple promoted in the Chinese app store

NEWS:

• Apple Podcasts has launched “Listen With”, a podcast playlist service to help listeners discover new shows. The first podcast guide is Jay Shetty. Creators can request to be included using this form.
  
  
• The flagship podcast from ABC News, Start Here, marks 1,000 episodes today. Since its launch in March 2018, the podcast’s host, Brad Mielke.
  
  
• PodPing a method to inform podcast apps the instant a new episode is published, Podping saw 139,328 new episodes published over the last seven days.
  
  
• Use the Podping Watcher to see new episodes in real-time. 
  
  
• Home bitcoin and lightning node Umbrel has released v0.4.11, and the first version of Helipad: an app that lets you see a live view of incoming boosts and boostagrams.  We’ve a guide to get started. Over 4,000 podcasts are now on the Lightning Network!
  
  
• Exclusive: PodInbox has launched a monetisation feature to allow podcasters to get fan donations.  Here is Evo Terra’s.
  
  
• 48% of podcast downloads are of old shows, says research from Firstory. 
  
  
• German podcast hosting company Julep Hosting has launched “Dynamic Baked-in”, a system that allows a bridge between baked-in advertising and DAI
  
  
• Podchaser reviews are now available in Podcast Guru, a podcast app. Podcast Guru users can read, and add, reviews direct from the app.
  
  

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NEWS: 

• Spotify has launched clickable call-to-action cards, - described as ad banners for podcasts.  Currently limited to Spotify Originals and Exclusives, US only.
  
  
• Spotify’s new CTA cards aren’t new and aren’t open. The new JSON-based chapter specification from Podcast Index also allows graphical banners and clickthroughs which can be timed with audio.
  
  
• Spotify has added star ratings to its app for podcasts. Could you please rate us?
  
  
• Spotify added 1.2m new podcasts to Spotify’s catalogue in 2021. “Anchor continues to drive 80% of the new podcasts. Podcast Index added 466,000 shows in the past six months. It added 3.1m this year
  
  
• The Podcast Font for websites, containing icons and logos for popular podcast platforms, apps with just one line of code. It’s open and free
  
  
• More new podcast episodes were published last month on Anchor and Buzzsprout than anyone else
  
  
• The Podnews Ranker shows an unchanged top three
  
  
• The podcast:liveItem tag has been formalised
  
  
• Got licensed commercial music on your podcast? Facebook will edit it out, muting your show instead
  
  
• A content warning and privacy notice has been added to the Google Podcasts app - the notice links to

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James Cridland talks with Jonas Woost Director Of Strategy at Pacific Content about his podcast predictions for 2022. 

They talk about ...

• Who is Pacific Content?
• Is Podcasting still open in 2022?
• Paid Subscriptions?
• Legacy media buys into podcasting
• What does that mean for indies?
• The rise of fiction podcasting
• Are celebrity podcasts dead?
  
  

It’s been another remarkable year for many in podcasting with some tremendous growth in our industry.  As 2021 nears its end, it’s time to ask, ‘What’s Next?’  For the seventh year in a row, Pacific Content has asked some of the smartest thinkers in podcasting this important question. We received plenty of predictions!

Part One:
https://blog.pacific-content.com/in-the-year-2022-320f4c175f6f

Part Two 
https://blog.pacific-content.com/in-the-year-2022-part-two-92c22c1c44b0

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From an airport lounge in New York, we hear about Descript's new version, and rumours in the industry...

What do you think about our new shorter length? Give us feedback using fanmail or our contacts below.

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GUEST: Larry Rosin, the co-founder and President of Edison Research

Spotify buys Whooshkaa! Congratulations Rob  Loewenthal.  A great guy and a great team. 

SiriusXM is being sued for failing to provide podcast transcripts for deaf users by the National Association for the Deaf and the Disability Rights Advocates.  

• As we researched in June 2020, transcripts can offer significant SEO benefits.  
  
  
• The podcast:transcript tag is an open standard, supported by a number of podcasts and offers both static transcripts (in HTML or text) or real-time captions (in the SRT format). Widely supported by many modern podcast hosts including Captivate, Transistor, Buzzsprout, Omny Studio and others, a number of podcast apps display these transcripts, including the popular Android app Podcast Addict. 
  
  
• Amazon Music has a proprietary solution for transcripts.
  
  
• Spotify added the right to transcribe using their own proprietary solution in May 2020, and a limited beta in May 2021. There is no mechanism for publishers to supply their own transcripts.
  
  
• Google offers live captions within every Android app on Pixel phones; that live caption tool is also available on desktop Chrome .  The company doesn’t support the podcast:transcript tag.
  
  
• Apple surprisingly doesn’t offer any live captioning.  The company doesn’t support the podcast:transcript tag.
  
  
• With the exception of Podcast Addict,  no major podcast app supports transcripts. 
  
  
• In terms of podcasts to test things on, Podland contains live captions and transcripts using the transcript tag. Also using that tag, the Podnews podcast contains a transcript only.

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 HOSTS:

• Listen to James Cridland and Sam Sethi   

GUEST: 

• Jeff Price CEO - Word Collections
  
  Spotify has pulled a number of comedy albums from its service, after claims they weren’t licensed correctly.  Jeff Price has announced a $3.5m investment round for his Word Collections company, which “focuses on getting comedians and other spoken-word performers paid for the use of their works for the first time”.

NEWS:

• The Infinite Dial 2021 for the UK was released last week. The headline was 41% of the UK population (16+) listens to podcasts every month - around 23m people. The data is directly comparable to the US (41%), Canada (38%) and Australia (36%). The data was paid-for by Bauer Media and Spotify. 
  
  
• Links: Adam Bowie looks at the data.
• We interview Larry Rosin President at Edison Research next week.
  
  
• Exclusive: Spotify has made a number of exciting press releases about new podcast partnerships in the past two years: but many of those Spotify announcements have yet to result in a single new podcast, according to our research. Where are they? And what’s going on?
  
  
• A Sky News investigation in the UK has discovered antisemitism, racism and white supremacist material in podcasts on Spotify.  Spotify has removed 150 hours of content after the news channel’s report. “In some cases, explicit slurs could be found in episode titles and descriptions while album artwork displayed imagery adopted by white supremacists,” the story says. The podcasts are still available on Google Podcasts.
  
  
• Alex Paterson has listened to more than 350 hours of The Joe Rogan Experience.  He says he: “compiled some of the worst examples of Rogan’s sexist, racist, and harmful commentary over the past year -- all paid for by Spotify”.
  
  

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 HOSTS:

• Listen to James Cridland and Sam Sethi   

GUEST: 

• Winslow Bright - Executive Producer at Premier Music Group

NEWS: 

• Apple Podcasts announced its Best of 2021. A Slight Change of Plans with Maya Shankar from Pushkin Industries was chosen as Best Show of the Year.
  
  
• The chart also gives us some understanding of the performance of Apple Podcasts Paid Subscriptions - Bad Blood: The Final Chapter is #1 in the list, and said in September that they had 6,000 subscribers. (That was $16,000 a month in revenue after Apple’s cut).
  
  
• The Australian Podcast Awards winners will be announced on Thursday 2nd December at a live ceremony in Sydney.
  
  
• In Australia, the winners of the Australian Commercial Radio Awards were announced. Best Original Podcast went to Zero Waste Baby with Veronica Milsom, produced by SCA’s LiSTNR.
  
  
• In the UK, the 2021 Audio Production Awards took place. The Production Company of the Year was won by Listen Entertainment.
  
  
• In the UK, The Rachel Bland new podcast award from BBC Radio 5 Live has been awarded this year to You’re Not My Mum: The Stepmum’s Side.  
  
  
• Edison Research’s Infinite Dial is coming to the UK. The UK has been without a direct comparison to the US, Canada and Australia in terms of podcast consumption.
  
  
• The latest Share of Ear study from Edison Research suggests that more than a quarter of all Americans a

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