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15 Minutes With a Farmer, the in-house podcast of Successful Farming magazine, feature another podcast in the latest episode. Arlene Hunter and Caite Palmer host the “Barnyard Language” podcast, which focuses on running farms and raising families.
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The podcast Money for the rest of us has a membership community that charges $450 a year, and the podcast is earning “well into the six figures” in revenue, according to Simon Owens.
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Lava for Good's Wrongful Conviction will be available in more than a thousand prisons across the US, after a partnership with learning platform Edovo. "We’re helping to educate and inspire incarcerated learners on their journeys toward justice and redemption," said CEO Jason Flom.
Over 80% of Webby Winners reported that their award helped drive new business. Plus, The Webbys earned 12 billion media impressions from global media outlets last year. When you participate in the Internet’s biggest night, the world takes notice.
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In two Texas prisons, inmate DJs will air Scrooge: A Christmas Carol on prison radio stations on Christmas Eve, we learn. Additionally, the podcast will be uploaded to all TDCJ inmate tablets across the state, which will, we're told, allow inmates to listen to the podcast while their family simultaneously listens to it on radio stations in their communities. The podcast is written by Paul Cuschieri and produced by Mark Ramsey.
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On LinkedIn, Jay Clouse publishes an impressive graph showing growth of a show on YouTube. He also links to advice and a $199 course to learn to do the same.
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There’s a new #1 podcast in Australia, according to the Triton Digital Podcast Ranker. Casefile True Crime, which last month switched to Acast, has beaten Hamish & Andy for the first time since February. ARN remains top publisher; SCA’s LiSTNR is top sales representative, but ARN is now less than 250,000 listeners behind it, and the recent addition of BBC shows should push it over.
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Why did Marco Arment remove the little green “support this podcast” buttons from Overcast? In the Accidental Tech Podcast in a chapter called “features we’d add but for Apple”, he shares the reasons why: a) very few people used it; b) because he was worried Apple would reject the app from the app store. He suggests that he’s dropped other ideas for helping podcasters earn revenue because he was concerned that Apple wouldn’t approve them. “The real harm that’s done is in all those ideas out there that people talk themselves out of even trying,” he adds.
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The Colin and Samir Show interviewed the founder and CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek. In the interview, we learn that Spotify’s aim is to grow loyal audiences who pay. Ek suggests that the advertising model “puts the consumer and the creator at odds with each other”.
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Magellan AI has confirmed that it has earnt IAB Tech Lab certification for podcast measurement.
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Be grateful that Pacific Content realise there’s more to podcasting than just the US - and the benefits from learning from overseas markets.
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Spotify for Creators is discontinuing its US-only Listener Support program - which let listeners pledge a monthly recurring amount to support your show. “After a period of learnings, we are shutting down Listener Support on January 2, 2025 to prioritize programs and resources that are more impactful to creators.” Alternatives include our sponsor Memberful.
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Kast Media’s bankruptcy case continues. As part of its public filings, we get to see the company’s monthly accounts. The company earnt $5,792 from Apple Podcasts in October (we presume from paid subscriptions), and $6,153 from advertising.
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Veteran radio DJ David Hamilton has launched a new podcast aimed at over 65 year-olds. Wise Words talks about maintaining friendships, cooking traditions, learning in later life and navigating modern technology. The podcast was launched following research that revealed the average over-65 spends less than an hour a day talking to other people.
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Acast has tweaked its free podcast hosting plan. It used to offer unlimited episodes; it now offers up to five; and there are adjustments to website and embed player customisation options. “We're making these changes to ensure we can continue providing reliable, high-quality hosting services for the long term,” said an Acast spokesperson. “Like many platforms, we've found that a balanced approach between free and premium features helps us invest in better infrastructure and support.”
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Spotify announced a set of new features for creators at its Now Playing event in Los Angeles, with Gustav Söderström announcing its podcast (and video) hosting platform has been renamed to Spotify for Creators. Eligible creators in the US, UK, Canada and Australia are able to join the brand new Spotify Partner Program, which earns money from podcast audio ads (both on and off the platform), and, from early next year, revenue based on how much your video podcast is streamed by Premium users. (The videos will appear uninterrupted and ad-free for those users).
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The New York Times released its Q3/24 financials, too. Podcasting is only mentioned twice in the prepared remarks: “We also began experimenting to make audio a more direct driver of subscriptions with new paid offerings available through Spotify and Apple.”
Lemonada Media, ARN’s iHeart, TenderfootTV, and Bumper have adopted Linkfire, praising innovative features and user-friendly experience, calling it essential for modern podcast marketing.
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The Drum covers How to get a B2B podcast in the top 10% of global podcasts - looking at the lessons learnt by The Science of Service Podcast.
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Only 5% of the top 100 business podcasts release in seasons, says new data from One Stone Creative. The State of Business Podcasting 2024 examines the top 100 business shows, and what we can learn from them; other pieces of data include show formats, monetisation techniques, and artwork: most have a picture of the host, and the most popular artwork colour is teal. It’s a free report.
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SiriusXM released its Q3/24 financial results. Podcast advertising revenue was up 6% q-on-q. Ad revenue for Pandora was down 2% q-on-q though.
Lemonada Media, ARN’s iHeart, TenderfootTV, and Bumper have adopted Linkfire, praising innovative features and user-friendly experience, calling it essential for modern podcast marketing.
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Podcasters are “more like rock bands than radio hosts”, suggests Courtney Carthy at Lenny. “Bands turn on multiple ways to earn money and independent podcasters can do the same to sustain their show.”
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The Podnews Weekly Review this week is a special, feature-length interview with Jack Sylvester - on Diary of a CEO and Flight Studio's podcast innovations. Plenty to learn about how they do things, especially how they choose which episodes to release.
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Spotify’s R&D department has written about how their machine learning works “to analyze podcast audio, video, and metadata to identify platform policy violations.”
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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”.
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The latest Triton Digital Australian Podcast Ranker was released. Listeners are up 15% year-on-year. Of note, many of the catch-up radio shows appear to be publishing full episodes as well as partial highlights in the same feed. A few examples: ARN’s Kyle & Jackie O published 86 episodes in September; Nine’s Ben Fordham posted 160 episodes; SCA’s The Rush Hour posted 128 new episodes. These episodes were all produced from 21 radio programs in September; the auto-download behaviour of most podcast apps meaning that all episodes - clips or the full show - are downloaded. All episodes contain programmatically-inserted advertising.
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After a lifetime of experiences, what perspectives hold true? What do people know for sure when they are 80, or 90? Wisdom of Age is Raine Media’s first original series and is new this month - featuring life lessons from people in our oldest generations. Learn from people like a 97-year-old WWII veteran, an 84-year-old Christmas tree farmer, and a Japanese-born doll maker.
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Amazon’s Wondery has launched a set of toys from Wondery Kids shows, including Wow In The World. You can buy them from - where else? - Amazon. Select toys are also available at specialty in store retailers including Learning Express, Barnes & Noble, Nordstrom, Indigo, and Mastermind Toys.
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Headliner’s mobile app now supports automation and batch clip creation.
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Chartable has sent a further email about its closure - warning you to remove the Chartable analytics prefix by Dec 12. When the company closes, it’lll render your podcast entirely unplayable if you’re still using the Chartable prefix - or, in Spotify-speak, “you could risk episode playback issues”.
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Steve Pratt’s book, Earn It: Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers, is released today. It contains plenty of marketing advice for people in any industry, but many examples from the world of podcasting, too - and is well worth a read. In our review, we’ve a password to get you the first chapter, free.
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Podcast production agency Quill has posted three-year revenue growth of more than 4,100% - earning it a place on The Globe and Mail’s 2024 ranking of the Top Growing Companies.
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Exclusive: Spotify is to close the podcast analytics platform Chartable, as part of a re-focus at the company. Chartable users will receive an email a little later today detailing next steps. The tool, bought by Spotify in Feb 2022, offered “SmartLinks and SmartPromos” attribution tools; which we reported in 2022 were to be incorporated into Megaphone. That’s still the plan for Megaphone-hosted customers; though Spotify has also recently announced generally available attribution tools similar to SmartLinks for the Spotify app. Chartable’s co-founder Dave Zohrob left Spotify in July; Spotify’s other purchase at the time, Podsights, was integrated into Spotify Ad Analytics in June last year.
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A year on from Spotify’s integration with Patreon, Spotify tells us that nearly half the podcasters earning money on Patreon are using the Spotify Open Access integration: and on average, those creators have seen 15% of their Spotify listeners who visited their Patreon page go on to sign up for a paid membership. (Podnews is on Patreon).
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Spotify has announced it’s rolling out new “conversion metrics” on Spotify for Podcasters. The tool allows creators to see how their show gets discovered on Spotify, and how that directly converts to streams.
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Learn how to calculate your podcast’s ROI effectively
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Learn how to secure the #1 spot on Apple Podcasts with Ausha’s in-depth study.
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Avoid the pitfalls of podcasting and learn how to navigate them with Ausha’s new video
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YouTube announced a new “hype” function to help boost videos from new creators, and earn them revenue as well. The gamification feature has been on beta test in Brazil, Taiwan and Turkey. We suspect it’ll work just fine for podcasts consumed within YouTube as well.
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Learn from YouTube experts: watch the replay of a live session with Ausha about Podcasting on YouTube with YouTube specialists. Step into the world of video podcasting and learn everything you need to know about Podcasting on YouTube.
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BetterHelp is the #1 international advertiser in Australian podcasts, according to ARN and Magellan AI.
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The Washington Post covers a great story about niche podcasting: the story of a man who earns $400,000 a year from... HVAC School, a podcast about heating, ventilation and air conditioning products.
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The Podnews Weekly Review this week talks to Steve Pratt, the author of the new book "Earn It: Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers", and discusses the importance of earning attention in the modern digital landscape. We also hear about Buzzsprout's new websites, and someone rings Sam's doorbell. (Full interviews in the Podnews Extra feed).
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Podchaser has announced that its AI-powered Collections+ targeting tool has helped 24% more Acast podcast creators to earn podcast revenue - helping ad revenue reach a wider set of shows than just the top podcasts.
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Let’s Begin with Jenna Arnold is new this week. From early learning company Begin, the show "delivers authentic conversations, expert guidance, and realistic strategies to support parents in the complex journey of raising children and growing alongside them in today's world.".
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Headliner has added a new tool to help you transcribe, caption and clip YouTube videos.
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Learn Ausha’s key strategies to build a dedicated audience for your podcast.
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Learn how to calculate your podcast's ROI effectively, according to Ausha
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Learn Ausha’s tips to create an effective branded podcast using your existing content.
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In the Podcasting 2.0 show this week, we learn that Libsyn is hiring someone who’s role will be to take part in the Podcasting 2.0 community (among other things). We also learn that more than four thousand people are following podcasts using the “fediverse”, like Mastodon etc. (There’s a link in our podcast pages for that).
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Learn how to successfully pitch a branded podcast to your boss or clients with Ausha's guide.
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Magellan AI has added a Groups feature to help manage segments of campaigns.
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Business Insider explains how Alex Cooper’s $125mn deal with SiriusXM works. Of course, there are targets to hit, including live events and programming for SiriusXM radio as well.
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Learn Ausha’s key strategies to build a dedicated audience for your podcast.
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Sketchplanations - The Podcast returns for season three today. Rob Bell, Jono Hey, and Tom Pellereau unravel big ideas - a range of topics from science to daily life hacks, all simplified through engaging sketches that make learning both fun and insightful.
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Megaphone has announced a number of new tools. Contextual Targeting means advertisers can now target specific episode-level topics. A Segment Editor allows podcast publishers to easily add more ad locations into a podcast; and Bulk Order Editing has been enhanced to improve the workflow.
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The New York Times has announced its eighth annual Student Podcast Contest.
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From Airwave: Good Job, Brain!’s Karen Chu says: "Airwave is the Samwise to our Frodo. We're all about maximizing our brain power, so having Airwave support our creative vision, guide us in this growing landscape, and handle ad coordination allows us to focus on what we do best: creating a darn good trivia podcast that we still have to burn onto CDs for our parents to play in their car."
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Learn from YouTube experts: watch the replay of a live Ausha session about Podcasting on YouTube with YouTube specialists.
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Patreon, which said recently that podcasters earn over $350mn a year on the platform, is saying that Apple will take 30% of all creator payments made on its iOS app by November. Apple is already taking 30% of all creator payments for Apple Podcasts paid subscriptions - and these payments, like Patreon’s, are not subject to Apple’s Small Business Program, which lowers the commission to 15%.
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On the Ausha stage at Podcast Movement 👉 Learn how the PSO Control Panel can skyrocket your podcast's visibility and dominate Spotify's search results.
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Podcast growth agency Bumper has announced the Bumper Dashboard, a measurement tool that combines podcast data from a number of different sources. It allows Bumper’s clients to see numbers of verified listeners, total listen time, and more statistics across platforms. Curious to know what it looks like? We were given access - see what we learnt about Podnews podcasts in the Bumper Dashboard.
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Learn from YouTube experts: watch the replay of a live session about Podcasting on YouTube with Ausha and YouTube specialists.
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Learn how to expand your podcast's reach with Ausha’s advice on transforming audio episodes into captivating videos.
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Learn how Ausha suggest you Find the Best Podcast Keywords for Your Show to boost your visibility in-apps.
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Erik Wemple of The Washington Post has published Who’d want to watch a podcast anyway? which looks at the growth of YouTube, interviewing Steve McLendon from YouTube, and Pierre Bouvard from Cumulus Media and Westwood One. We learn that YouTube’s success in podcasting was a surprise to the company.
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Learn about the leading podcast transcription services of 2024 with Ausha’s comprehensive review.
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Podcasters earned more than $350mn from fans on Patreon last year, according to the company. There are more than 40,000 podcasters earning an income on Patreon. Us, too.
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Libsyn Ads released its July 2024 Podcast Advertising Rates. The average CPM rate was $21.90, essentially static against June’s $21.92. The company’s new CRO, Rick Selah, warns us that the holiday season is “just around the corner”.
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Don’t start a podcast, says the NBA’s Draymond Green - at least, if you’re a young NBA player, don’t start one too early, he warns. “Try to make it in basketball”, he adds, “because you ain’t made it in that yet.”
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Exclusive: A podcast app that skips ads has been launched. Adblock Podcast is built by Micah Engle-Eshleman, who charges listeners to skip ads, and shares that revenue with podcast creators. The service also caches audio to avoid negatively impacting advertisers who pay per impression. We have the first interview with Micah in today’s edition of the Podnews Weekly Review, to learn how it works, and what its future is.
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And from Spotify, a thrilling new episode of Spotify Earnings Call Replays was released. Hosted by Daniel and Ben, the episode focuses on a mysterious drop in expected MAUs in early 2024 - even as profits hit an all-time high. Who is to blame? Who is the man called Bryan who talks about a safe harbor? What even is a safe harbor? And what legendary beast is it keeping the ships safe from?
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Kast Media, which is under Chapter 11 protection, is publishing monthly reports as it continues to operate. In June, it earnt $2,100 from Apple subscriptions, and $74,000 from advertising.
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iHeart’s average weekly downloads in the Podtrac ranker for June are 78mn, 18% higher than Triton’s number, despite both solutions being IAB Certified. Over the last month, trying to understand why they’re different, Podnews spoke to Podtrac, Triton, iHeart and the IAB - and learnt:
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Simon Owens posts How Gary Arndt built Everything Everywhere, a podcast with 1.5 million monthly downloads.
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ARN’s iHeart and BlakCast has announced the winner of their Find and Tell podcast series. Ben Haywood’s story focuses on the question of indigenous languages heading towards extinction.
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Rick Selah is now CRO of Libsyn Ads. He said: “AdvertiseCast Founders Trevr Smithlin and Dave Hanley created a magnificent Ferrari; all that’s left is for our team to learn to drive it to maximum speed and efficiency to market.”
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While Sam Sethi is away on holiday, James is joined by Neal Veglio for the Podnews Weekly Review this week. Neal's especially vexed at learning what microphone is the most popular with podcasters. We also hear from TPX's Pary Bell about monetisation of podcasts in Canada, and we have positive comments about Spotify's, um, Comments.
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Designed to keep children off screens this summer holiday, Today with tonies is a new launch today for young listeners aged 4 to 7 and hosted by bubbly presenters Sam Fletcher-Goodwin and Tim Warwood. Listeners will get to discover new places, learn new words, giggle at hilarious jokes and learn a mind blowing fact or two (or three!).
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The YAP Media Network has signed Earn your Happy, The Trent Shelton Podcast and This Naked Mind.
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The alkaline diet claimed to reverse aging and cure terminal illness. But, as we learn in Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media's Chameleon: Dr. Miracle, it was a lie; and, worse than that, it was deadly, too. The show is new today; you can hear the whole thing in The Binge.
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Everything Everywhere Daily has just celebrated its 30 millionth download, and its fourth anniversary. Production of the daily educational podcast, which has hit number 1 on the Apple History Charts and #13 overall, remains a solo effort, with host Gary Arndt doing all of the production, research, and recording. Its stats are openly available via OP3.
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Even If It Kills Me launches today: a narrative documentary story of the band that almost was. You won’t hear what this band sounds like. You won’t even learn their name. But you know this band, even if you don’t. Even If It Kills Me chronicles four high school friends — a gang, bonded together by dead-end small town upbringings and dreams of something bigger, right in the middle of the biggest changes to the music industry in decades.
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TV Chef Fantasy League uses fantasy sports rules to argue about America’s favorite reality cooking competition shows. The hosts pick chefs, earn points based on how those chefs perform, and at the end of the season, a winner is crowned! It's a new name for the Top Chef Fantasy League, and a new home on the Maximum Fun network; and launches today.
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Headliner shares a Dictionary Guide to Podcast Ads, for anyone who wants to learn about podcast advertising and paid podcast growth - including what the jargon all means.
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The first AI-powered podcast marketing tool, Capsho is to launch Capsho NextGen in open Beta. The tool includes self-learning, more flexibility and a custom tone of voice.
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Libsyn has blogged about earning IAB v2.1 podcast measurement certification - the company is certified for Download, Ad Delivery and Listener. It’s the first time the company has covered the news; Podnews reported its recertification when it happened in April.
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A number of commercial media and content businesses have written to the UK’s Labour Party to warn about the damage that could be caused if the BBC is allowed to place advertising in its audio content in the UK. It also highlights the precedent that would be set by the move. (The Labour Party are likely to form the next government in July).
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iHeartMedia could go bankrupt again if the company doesn’t restructure its debt, warns Seeking Alpha. The company currently has $5.3bn of debt, and needs to repay $3.1bn by 2026. It emerged from bankruptcy in 2019. Meanwhile, Audacy has settled a $1.4mn unpaid tax claim brought by a Pennsylvania township. The company is emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
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Danny Brown shares 3 Things I'd Do Differently If I Started Podcasting Today - including “I would have learnt how to edit”.
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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.
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Animal is new from The New York Times - a six part audio series recorded around the world, asking what we can learn about our lives by looking at the lives of other animals.
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Ausha suggests: Gain insight into key metrics for evaluating branded podcasts, and learn how to calculate your podcast's ROI effectively"
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“I’m still in shock, and I’m also very sad.” The closure by Rogers of Pacific Content is the subject of a blog post by its co-founder Steve Pratt, who says “the Pacific Content/Rogers story holds both lessons and warnings.”
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Steve Pratt, one of Pacific Content’s original co-founders, is to launch a book later this year. Earn It: Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers is out on Oct 1.
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Ausha suggests: Learn how to secure the #1 spot on Apple Podcasts with Ausha’s in-depth study.
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In Europe, the EBU is planning a set of virtual events as part of the EBU Academy Audio Week. The paid events are open to all. There’s also a free session on “what can we learn from the differences between podcasts and radio” on June 5.
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The data was produced by Podnews and presented by its Editor, James Cridland, who also warned in his opening keynote that Spotify’s withdrawal from the IAB was concerning for the industry; that the BBC appears to now be fighting against the open podcast ecosystem it helped to establish; and that Podcasting 2.0 offers the industry a significant opportunity.
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We covered it in early February, but the recording tools in Spotify for Podcasters are going away soon.
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Ausha suggests: Learn how to calculate your podcast's ROI effectively
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With Airwave: From [My History Can Beat Up Your Politics],(<cite>https://podnews.net/podcast/il4q</cite>) Bruce Carlson says: “Airwave grew my audience and my earnings as promised. There’s a tendency among podcasters to 'go it alone.’ Don't do it. Focus on your content and let Airwave help you build."
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Ausha suggests: Learn to create an effective branded podcast using your existing content.
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The Triton Digital Podcast Ranker is out for Australia. ABC News Top Stories is new at #3 (like NPR News Now, it’s the bulletin that also appears if you ask a smart speaker for the latest news). Everyone is a winner: ARN/iHeart is #1 publisher by listeners; LiSTNR/SCA is #1 sales representative, though ARN is close on its heels, and the ABC is #1 for total downloads.
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Allowing the BBC to add advertisements on its podcasts in the UK would be “disastrous” for the industry, says an open letter from twenty companies, including podcast production firms. BBC podcasts are commercial-free in the UK; elsewhere, they are sold by Acast.
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Audacy released its Q1/24 financial results. The company, which didn’t hold an earnings call, didn’t release podcast data.
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Ausha suggests: Learn how to expand your podcast's reach by transforming audio episodes into captivating videos.
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Cumulus Media’s Q1/24 financials were released. Podcasting isn’t broken out, but “is pacing up” according to executive comments. Total revenue is down 2.7%.
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Someone has been taking the podcast A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs and, without credit, translating it into French for nearly two years, says the host, earning money from it, too. Andrew Hickey, who hosts the podcast, warns “I am going to give him until Monday to take all those episodes down and post an apology before I contact a lawyer”.
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Ausha suggests: Learn about the leading podcast transcription services of 2024 with Ausha’s comprehensive review
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SiriusXM released its Q1/24 financial earnings. The numbers are down for satellite radio and for Pandora; but Chris Peterson looks at the numbers from a podcast point of view, and discovers a bright lining: podcast revenue was up 22% year-on-year, and programmatic podcast revenue has almost doubled.
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Three US presidents are united on an episode of SmartLess available today. Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes were joined by Presidents Biden, Obama and Clinton in New York City. The episode was available early on Amazon Music and Wondery+. The show switches to SiriusXM later this year.
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Spotify has released its Q1/24 financials. The company made over €1bn gross profit (US$1.07bn) for the first time; and returned €197mn of net income.
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Bear Brook returned today from NHPR with a special episode. Almost five years after the true crime podcast first came out, there's been a sudden development in the 1988 case of the murder of Sharon Johnson. We learn what might happen next.
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The Podnews Weekly Review talks with Jeremy King from the M&M Awards, Sean Howard from Flightpath, and Sam Sethi discusses how ActivityPub might work in joining up the disparate world of podcast apps, in a section he may be surprised to learn hasn't been edited out.
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In the US, the IAB has released the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report. Total internet ad revenue grew 7.3% in 2023. Internet audio, including podcasts, grew 18.9% to $7.2bn. We’ll learn the podcast revenue numbers on May 9.
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The long-running interview show hosted by Anna Sale, Death, Sex & Money, is back, with a new home. Formerly with WNYC Studios, the show launches with Slate today, with a conversation with a sociopath. We learn that a life without shame could feel beautifully liberating.
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Meanwhile, Wil Williams suggests that nonfiction podcasts can learn from “the black sheep of podcasting” - they write that crossover episodes and promo swaps work very well, along with a wish for all to succeed.
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Podcasters are now earning more than $100 million in annual revenue on Substack the company says, a figure that has more than doubled in the past year. Of the 250 highest-revenue publications on Substack, more than half publish audio and video.
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A talent agency focusing on YouTubers and Twitch streamers, including Mr Beast, Night has acquired The Roost Podcast Network from Warner Bros. Discovery. A majority of the team will be retained, including the head of the network, AJ Feliciano.
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On MeSsy with Christina Applegate & Jamie-Lynn Sigler, the two hosts get vulnerable about the curveballs that life can throw - theirs just happens to be multiple sclerosis, better known to many as MS. They'll self-reflect, learn, laugh, and grow through their own raw and often-times hilarious conversations with each other, friends, co-stars, and the people that keep them going through the messiness of life. Produced by Allison Bresnick of Wishbone Production, it's represented for ad sales by PMM.
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Returning earlier this month, KCRW's Lost Notes explores the stories and scenes of LA’s historical soul and R&B scene. Later in the season, we're promised a story about the secret Hollywood hideout of a pair of legendary musical brothers. It's hosted by Novena Carmel and Michael Barnes.
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4 Big Lessons I’ve Learned From Recording 50 Episodes for My Podcast - Ucha Vekua suggests that consistency beats everything; that you should focus on your workflow; and play the long game.
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Stupid Things For Love with Scott Campbell has joined AdLarge for podcast advertising sales. Campbell is a tattooist who has earned the confidence of a clientele that has stories to tell. Debut episodes include Tony Hawk, Marc Jacobs, and Benny Blanco.
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After Earnings is new from Morning Brew and Stakeholder Labs. The podcast features CEOs from public companies, with conversations traditionally reserved for analysts and hedge fund managers in public to connect directly with retail investors after they report quarterly earnings. It's hosted by Austin Hankwitz and Katie Perry.
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How do you measure how good a transcript is? Apple suggests that the current measure, “Word Error Rate”, isn’t good enough - treating all words identically, even “um” and “er” - and proposes a new metric, “Human Evaluation Word Error Metric”, or HEWER.
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Triton Digital has announced a partnership with ID5, an identity provider, to add audience data to Triton’s Audio Marketplace. ID5 uses “consented signals provided by media owners to securely identify users without compromising privacy and data protection”; Triton client ARN is quoted as saying it has converted 60% of their unaddressable audience to addressable.
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Sesamy, a monetisation tool for publishers, has released a case study showing how its tool has “partially paywalled” podcasts of Kvartal, a Swedish magazine, and other clients in the UK and and Italy. There is much to learn: buying a whole season in advance seems to work well (only 15% want to pay monthly); conversion-rate was, surprisingly, over 10% of subscribers; and 70% of users wanted to pay with Swish, a mobile payment system popular in Sweden, rather than using card payments.
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Rooster Teeth is to close. The company’s Roost podcast network will continue to operate, while owners Warner Bros Discovery finds a buyer. It has 150 full-time employees.
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From Airwave: American Carnage is a podcast about the history of political violence in the United States, launching with a five-part series on the radical abolitionist John Brown.
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Magellan AI shared its rankings for top podcast advertisers in January. MGM Resorts was the advertiser which has increased its spend the most, alongside MailChimp owner Intuit and IXL Learning. There’s a free webinar on these results tomorrow at 11am ET.
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Casefile Presents: The Easey Street Murders is new from the Australian true crime show Casefile, and ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia. The show unravels one of Australia's most haunting cold cases - an unexplained murder in Collingwood. It's presented by journalist and author Helen Thomas.
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The iOS 17 changes to Apple Podcasts have meant podcast ads are more effective, new data from Podscribe has revealed. As part of Podscribe’s performance benchmarks, we learn that ads have driven a higher amount of visitors and conversions since Apple Podcasts changed how auto-downloads work.
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CanadaLabs has been launched by CanadaLand - an initiative for Canadian journalists to help them learn, network, build skills and careers, and develop audiences. It is launching with a local correspondent audio contest, an audio journalist fellowship program, and a set of events and workshops.
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Spotify for Podcasters is removing its own audio editing tools, in favour of a partnership with Riverside. Spotify users will get Riverside’s free plan,
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The New York Times has suffered from brand safety concerns, with CEO Meredith Kopit Levien saying that the company’s “digital performance, including podcasts, was impacted by marketers avoiding some hard news topics like the Middle East conflict.” That was the only mention of podcasts in the earnings call; the company reported mixed results.
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Spotify released its Q4/23 results. Total revenue grew 16% Y/Y to US$3.9bn; all the company’s figures met or exceeded expectations, with the company now having 602mn monthly users. The company lost $81mn in the quarter, a better figure than was flagged in December.
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Spotify does still have exclusives. The Riddler: Secrets in the Dark is described as a “Spotify Audio Series”, and is not available outside of the Spotify platform. It’s part of Spotify’s multi-year agreement with DC and Warner Bros. We did note at the time that the press release studiously avoided using the word “podcast”.
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Science YouTube channel Kurzgesagt explains “How we make money on YouTube with 20mn subs”. Its shop earns 40% of its revenue. YouTube ads account for just 13%.
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From Airwave: Wiser World has just joined Airwave. Designed for busy people who forgot—or never learned it in the first place—and need a quick refresh, Wiser World takes world history and makes it approachable and concise.It's hosted by Alli Roper.
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From one type of award to another - Podcast growth agency Bumper has analysed 28.5mn Apple Podcasts star ratings (in the US store) to learn how they work. Crime Junkie has the most US ratings, at 344,000; but only 28% of shows have any star ratings at all. (Star ratings have no effect on the recommendation algorithms.)
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Research from Emory University, NYU, and Carnegie Mellon University suggests that you should rotate your advertising creative: finding that some people get annoyed with online ad banners after seeing the same ad as little as three times. We’d love to see similar research for audio ads.
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Zach might just be twelve, but he's got a lot of questions about climate change: as well he should. We The Children is new today from Lower Street - a podcast that's good for teachers for their climate curriculum, but also so jam packed with information that adult listeners will learn lots by tuning in.
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What did you learn from a podcast in 2023? The EarBuds newsletter asked 45 different people across the industry. Alberto Betella from RSS
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_From Airwave:+ SUBTEXT is a podcast about the human condition, and what we can learn about it from the greatest inventions of the human imagination: fiction, film, drama, poetry, essays, and criticism. Hosted by a philosopher and a poet, it is currently exploring Citizen Kane.
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From Airwave: Can hair grow between your teeth? And could we ever lose our Moon? Well... That’s Interesting tells us the answer (spoiler - yes); and promises a deep dive into bizarre and fascinating topics, with the occasional guest coming in cold and learning everything in real time just like you.
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The Podcasting 2.0 show regularly receives boostagrams and donations to help run the Podcast Index. In total over the last few years, Chad Farrow calculates it has earned $70,319 in donations, plus a further $38,400 in micropayments.
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From Transistor, Justin Jackson suggests that you don’t start a video podcast: and go audio first. “In the beginning, a new podcaster needs to find their voice, practice, and learn what makes an episode compelling. Video adds a whole layer of production complexity that distracts from that aim. Plus, appearing on video adds a lot of pressure to worry about your appearance.”
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In the Podnews Weekly Review this week, we talk to the founders of Podcast AI, Fountain, and Podcast Guru. We learn a little more about Apple’s effect on downloads with iOS 17; and whisk through the week’s news as normal.
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The Australian Podcast Ranker was released for November. For the first time, it includes the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The ABC says it has the most titles in the top 200, with long-form interview show Conversations landing at #5. LiSTNR claims the #1 podcast slot, with Hamish & Andy being the only podcast with more than a million listeners; ARN’s iHeartPodcast Network Australia claims #1 publisher. The top 10 shows are all Australian.
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Warner Bros Discovery is to partner with Spotify’s Megaphone and SPAN for podcast distribution and monetisation. Other WBD podcasts signed with Acast in September.
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In the Podnews Weekly Review this week, we learn about Daniel J Lewsis's new Podgagement website; and hear from Rachael King from Pod People. Plus, Sam and James talk about Spotify's layoffs (before we heard that Paul Vogel was leaving).
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After reporting its first quarterly profit for more than a year, Spotify is laying off 17% of its workforce, according to an email sent by Daniel Ek to employees. Approximately 1,500 jobs will be affected by the cuts. “I realize that for many, a reduction of this size will feel surprisingly large given the recent positive earnings report and our performance,” Ek wrote - the layoffs are in addition to 800 already announced this year. The stock price went up 7.5%.
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iOS podcast app Castro will be shut down over the next few months, according to a surprise post from Mohit Mamoria, a former senior Castro staff member and current partner of Tiny Capital, the investment company that bought Castro in November 2018. Meanwhile, the app itself has been down for a number of days with a database server issue. There's no way to export your library: the company warns a fix might take some time.
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A featured science podcast on Airwave: NASA’s technical workforce put boots on the Moon, tire tracks on Mars, and the first reusable spacecraft in orbit around the Earth. In Small Steps, Giant Leaps, learn what’s next as they build missions that redefine the future with amazing discoveries and remarkable innovations.
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From Airwave: Noodle Loaf is an interactive music education podcast for kids that has received the Common Sense Media Selection seal for creating high quality kids content. Episodes contain fun music for kids, movement activities, rhythm games and plenty of learning through play.
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In Australia, an indigenous-led podcast network called Blakcast launched today by Mundanara Bayles in partnership with ARN's iHeart. The launch took place on Gadigal land in Sydney this morning. The network includes Mundanara's podcast Black Magic Woman, the winner of yesterday's Australian Podcast Awards for best indigenous podcast.
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In Australia, spending on podcast advertising in Q3/23 grew by 88% year-on-year, according to new data from Magellan AI and ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia. The top 3 advertisers were Amazon, BetterHelp and "Takeaway
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Spotify's Megaphone published its Podcast Trends 2023 report. The data shows significant growth in podcast listening by older listeners: in Italy, people aged 55-64 are listening twice as long as last year; in the US total time spent listening for 55-64s has increased by 50%, and by 49% for those over 65.
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Johnny Jet, a travel blogger, is the latest victim of a scam aimed at podcasters. It was a Facebook hack, where someone promised to pay a guest fee of $3,000, and gained control of his Facebook page under the guise of setting up a live event. Here's someone else reporting the same thing; and Podnews knows of a very high-profile podcaster who fell for a similar scam in September (being promised $2,000 to remotely speak). He told us: "We should warn podcasters about this. They’re PHISHING, but targeting podcasters specifically. This pitch was tailored to me personally."
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RUN, FOOL! is new today from MrBallen, At Will Media and Campside Media - featuring a weekly compendium of grisly and harrowing tales guaranteed to make you scream. It stars award-winning writer, producer, and comic book creator Rodney Barnes.
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Audacy released its Q3/23 financial results. Digital revenue, including podcasting, was $64.7mn, up 3.3% year-on-year. Total revenue is down 9.4%.
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From Airwave: The Film Vault helps you discover movies you may have missed, and be warned about others you should. It's hosted by Anderson Cowan (Loveline) and Bryan Bishop (The Adam Carolla Show), and contains weekly top 5 lists - including, last episode, top 5 Canadian characters.
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BBC R&D has released the code behind its Adaptive Podcasting trial; and documentation containing the learnings from its work. The release marks the culmination of this phase of the ten year project.
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SiriusXM released its Q3 financial numbers. Podcasting saw a revenue growth of 28% in the quarter. The number of users at Pandora continues to shrink, though.
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Libsyn's AdvertiseCast has signed an ad partnership deal with Big IP Media to cover four popular reality-TV podcasts ... PodcastOne signed multiyear extensions for On Display with Melissa Gorga, Gals on the Go and LADYGANG (which it renewed in March) ... ARN's iHeart Podcast Network Australia announced a multi-year sales partnership with 7NEWS, Australia’s most-watched television network for news and public affairs. ARN has launched a takeover bid for its rival SCA/LiSTNR.
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Headliner's Eddy, an editing and production tool, generates a promo pack of summaries, keywords and quotes. The company has just added four episode art images for your show, produced by generative AI.
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Spotify is in profit again (PDF); surprising analysts who were expecting the company to lose money this quarter. Revenue was up 11%; operating expenses were down 13%.
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Big Game Hunger is new from Multitude: a weekly comedy show where Jenna Stoeber and friends craft the big next game every episode. Starting with a random genre, concept, and vibe, Jenna and a friend will take a game all the way from pitch, to slightly more developed pitch. Get ready to laugh about games you love, learn about game trends, and yearn for titles that will surely never make their release date.
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Gen Z is Spotify's fastest-growing generation of music and podcast listeners, says a new UK report from the company. In the first half of 2023, the demographic has seen 58% more podcast plays year-on-year; 39% listening at a faster-than-normal speed. Around half of Gen Z podcast listeners in the UK (53%) say they’ve learned about a community they’re not a part of as a result of listening to a podcast.
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Apple employees apparently get vacation time: the company warns that new shows, channels or subscription submissions between Nov 18 - Nov 26, and Dec 22 - Jan 2 might be delayed. Don't worry, though: uploads of new episodes will continue going through just fine.
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In Australia, the owner of iHeartPodcast Network Australia ARN Media has made a hostile bid to take over its competitor, SCA (which owns LiSTNR). The radio market is worth AUD $1.7bn (US $1.1bn): ARN and SCA are the two largest companies. If successful, the broadcast radio business would be split into two companies for regulatory reasons; however, the podcast businesses aren't subject to the same ownership regulation.
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The Times writes How to make big money from podcasts. We learn that Persephonica's Political Currency is recorded at Acast's offices in London; we also discover that Steve Coogan's CH Podcasts business, which makes an Audible-exclusive show, paid £1mn in dividends last year.
Over 80% of Webby Winners reported that their award helped drive new business. Plus, The Webby Awards earned 5.8 billion media impressions from global media outlets last year. When you participate in the Internet’s biggest night, the world takes notice.
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Out To Lunch came back for a new season last week - with a brand new host, Ade Edmondson. You'll know him for The Young Ones, though he was also in a Star Wars film, it turns out. Ade takes guests like Ed Byrne, Chrissie Hynde and Reece Shearsmith, Bridget Christie, Daisy Haggard, Nigel Planer and Tony Visconti to a restaurant of his choosing, and learns more about them.
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Journalist information website Muck Rack released a survey of over 300 journalists who also make podcasts. Almost a third earn less than $40,000 per year overall, claims the data. More than one in four have recently changed jobs due to economic uncertainty.
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First look: Acast has been named by Warner Bros Discovery as exclusive podcast distribution and monetization partner for a number of the company's brands. The companies have worked together for Investigation Discovery for three years.
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In the Podnews Weekly Review tomorrow - we've exclusive data from Edison Podcast Metrics UK, as well as learning more about how the ranker works and what other data the team collects. Plus - wearing headphones might be damaging to your hearing: we speak to Q104.3's Shelli Sonstein who's been wearing headphones for fifty years.
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After Adam Curry told them off for only publishing their conversations with podcasters on YouTube, rather than - um - a podcast, Buzzsprout Conversations has been launched by the podcast host as an actual podcast. The show lets you learn from podcasters about their success.
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From the Airwave podcast network: Earn & Invest has thought-provoking conversations that empower you to Earn and Invest wisely, shaping your future while making informed decisions today. Recent episodes have looked at early retirement.
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The hosts of Strike Force Five have cancelled a planned benefit show in Las Vegas tomorrow. Jimmy Kimmel has COVID. The show earns money for the late-night show hosts' employees who are impacted by the Hollywood writers' strike.
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A simple, straightforward way to promote your podcast? Embedding your audio in an email - so it plays right in the email app. We tested using the HTML audio tag in email and learnt that it is an effective way to promote your show - it works for much of your audience, and degrades gracefully for those where it doesn't. See all the details in our full report.
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The Economist confirmed that almost all the newspaper's podcasts will be subscription-only from mid-October. Podnews has learnt the service is being operated using Acast+ Access, which integrates with The Economist's subscription platform.
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Part of the Airwave Podcast Network: If you want to keep up with the latest advances in AI, while keeping one foot in the real world, then Practical AI: Machine Learning, Data Science is the show for you! The focus is on productive implementations and real-world scenarios that are accessible to everyone.
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A new Australian Podcast Ranker has been released for August. SCA's LiSTNR now has over 8mn monthly listeners. ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia is celebrating being the #1 podcast publisher for 40 consecutive rankers.
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Who's a fan of appearing on podcasts? Why, none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger. After a number of interviews about his forthcoming book: "I’ve been impressed with every podcast host so far. They ask questions I’ve never thought about. They all have their own unique focus. They feel more like a deep conversation than an interview. They’re real." (h/t Pete)
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Edison Research released the shows with a highest concentration of listeners in households earning $100,000+. Gimlet and The Wall Street Journal's The Journal is #1.
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In a piece of data analysis, Rephonic discover that true crime ads earn the most; as do shows from Sweden. Maybe Förhörsrummet are on to something.
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The financials behind Spotify's podcast strategy is the subject of a deep-dive in the Wall Street Journal. We learn some shows cost up to $250,000 per episode during Dawn Ostroff's time at the company; that Science Vs has seen its audience doubling and listening hours increasing by 60% since no longer being exclusive; and that Trevor Noah is earning $4mn in a deal that is more equitable for the company.
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Spotify has changed the eligibility for the company's Ambassador Ads that can be used to earn money from podcasts. From Oct 1, creators must have 1,000 unique Spotify listeners within the past 60 days to qualify (the old limit was 100), and "we will limit the types of content eligible for this program", the company has said.
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We Edit Podcasts give us ten warning signs that we might need to revamp our podcast.
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Alastair Campbell, host of The Rest Is Politics, is interviewed by Pod Bible. We learn that he did one pilot episode with his cohost, Rory Stewart; and that doing the show online from different places seems to work well.
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In The Times, an article about The Rest Is Politics cohost Rory Stewart suggests he earns around £70,000 (US$88,000) a month from the podcast. The podcast was with Acast until July.
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Troy Farkas, a former producer for The Ringer and ESPN, has published his first book. Surrender: A Guide to Living Your Best Life in Your Twenties includes his own experiences and lessons learned from his time navigating the early stages of his career at both companies.
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Spotify has published an R&D paper on identifying what language a podcast is in. The open RSS standard has the
<language>
tag, though that does depend on the podcaster setting it accurately.
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Podnews has learnt that the issue was a trademark dispute from a third party. We understand that Glenn Beck's organisation was sent an email in late July, but hadn't responded. We've raised trademark disputes ourselves with Apple; the emails to podcasters from Apple look like this and clearly say content will be removed if you fail to respond. After Beck's company read the email and resolved the issue, the show returned to Apple Podcasts. Listeners who follow the show were unaffected.
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Podcast spend in Australia for Q2/23 was up by 64% year-on-year, according to ARN's iHeartRadio Australia and Magellan AI. The top 3 advertisers were health insurance company NIB, McDonald's, and Amazon.
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Bandrew Scott has published his annual YouTube podcast earnings from Bandrew Says. We learn that YouTube Premium users contribute 30% more to creators over a year than ads.
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Further reading: City AM report How Spotify’s $1bn bet on podcasts failed to make any money, and we learn in Pod Bible that Annie Macmanus doesn't listen to our podcast.
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The Locarno Film Festival has abruptly walked away from a podcast contract with producer BrandAudio. The festival cancelled the agreement within a few weeks of this year's event. “We found the festival’s unexpected and abrupt cancellation of our valued co-production relationship most peculiar", said BrandAudio’s Managing Partner Darryl von Däniken; the company still jointly owns the IP in the podcast's name and format.
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Adam Curry published a new episode of Boostagram Ball, the music podcast that pays the artists. Music artist Ainsley Costello received more than $104 in two weeks from the plays on Boostagram Ball and others like it; in April, on more than 60 distribution platforms, she earnt $22.49.
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The UK's Sport Social Podcast Network has signed ad representation agreements with ARN in Australia and Blue Wire in the US.
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If you love learning heaps of personal stuff about people on the internet including their embarrassing trips to the emergency department and tips on asserting dominance over landlords, SBS has all the laughs in its newest podcast, The Parasocial Social Club. It's hosted by TikTok'er Jenny Tian and Sydney comedian Kevin Jin, and is also available on YouTube and SBS On Demand.
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Edison Research revealed the Kids Podcast Listener Report. 29% of kids aged 6-12, in the US, are monthly podcast listeners. 87% of them have shared something they learned from a podcast with others. The report is free to download.
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Almost four out of five people would skip a radio ad in a podcast, with two-thirds saying it was "annoying". The research from Signal Hill Insights and Pacific Content warns us that "creative and content must be designed for the experience", and that podcast creative can't be an afterthought.
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Spotify released its financials for Q2/23. Monthly Active Users grew 27% to 551mn. Paid subscribers also grew 17% to 220mn.
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Rough Translation's final season has just gone live. Love Commandos follows the Delhi-based group that, for nearly a decade, offered shelter and aid to young people who challenged boundaries of caste and religion to marry the people they loved. Hosted by Gregory Warner, there are new episodes every week.
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Nielsen’s latest Audio Today report suggests that US podcast consumers are listening more while travelling, with numbers increasing the most at commuting times. Today, we also learn that commuters are significantly more likely to listen to business podcasts than the average listener; and at-work listeners are more likely to enjoy shows about leisure and fiction.
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Spanish-language podcast platform iVoox has released an annual report into the state of podcasting in Spanish. Podnews has an English translation; the Spanish version is on the iVoox website. A third of all Spanish podcasters started their show in the last year; over a quarter of shows include video; and almost 20% are earning revenue from their podcasts.
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YouTube could be great at finding new listeners for your podcast, according to a study into podcast consumption on YouTube from Veritonic. 65% of people who watch a podcast on YouTube are consuming it for the first time, the data says. Also, we learn that 54% of listeners like to consume podcasts on YouTube because they enjoy seeing the hosts and their guests talk, we also learn; and (slightly unnervingly) 2% of people watch YouTube while driving.
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Be intimate, be heard, be seen - three key recommendations for podcast advertising from ARN's neurolab, which investigated what happens to our brains when we listen to podcast ads.
Signal Awards Managing Director Deondric Royster, with special guests and Signal Academy jurors Joni Deutsch (Vice President of Podglomerate) & Maurice Cherry (Creator and Host, Revision Path), will host a discussion about the state of the podcast industry next Thursday, July 27th at 3pm EST. This virtual panel event will cover some of the hottest topics in the podcasting industry, such as the use of AI in podcasting, what the sunsetting of Stitcher means, and more! The panel will also explain everything you need to know about entering the Signal Awards this season and the judging process. Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in a live Q&A with our panelists. If you are interested in submitting work ahead of our Extended Entry Deadline on August 11th and have any questions for the Signal team, this virtual info session is a great way to learn more! RSVP Here!
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In a blog post, Acast tells us What Marketers Can Learn from Multi-Hyphenates About Brand Storytelling in Podcasting
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Black Magic Woman becomes the first Indigenous podcast to join ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia. The show has provided a platform for Aboriginal doctors, lawyers, parents, entrepreneurs, professors, authors and actors, recognising the importance of telling their own stories separate from the mainstream media.
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In Canada, Myles Sexton - a TV personality, style expert, and advocate for gender identity, sexuality and mental health, has joined the Acast Creator Network with Our Private Bits, presented with their fiancé, Tyler Austin. They will both share candid reflections on the obstacles they’ve faced and the invaluable lessons they’ve learned along the way.
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From the wines and spirits division of Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, engageMH: The Power of Mixing Podcast promises us fascinating stories and heritage of Moët Hennessy brands, gain insights from industry leaders, and you'll learn how to craft delicious cocktails like a pro.
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It's NAIDOC Week in Australia, and A Yarn with our Elders is new today from Bendigo Bank and The Peers Project. The new podcast teaches us to listen more intently and understand more deeply the ways of the world’s oldest living culture. The Peers Project is Australia’s only BIPOC female-led podcast agency.
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Squint and you'll see the Stitcher logo top-left in the thumbnail: Better Tomorrow with Hannah Brown is new from Stitcher Studios and Lagos Creative, and premieres Jul 19. The TV personality she seeks to answer life’s big questions: “Am I better today than I was yesterday? And how can I learn to be better tomorrow?”
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NYPR, the owner of WNYC Studios, is to eliminate FY23 bonuses for the leadership team, and will not take a new cycle of interns. An internal email, seen by Skye Pillsbury's The Squeeze, also warns of more cost-cutting to come.
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Podcast ad monetisation company Audioboom issued a profit warning. "the Company expects the revenue and adjusted EBITDA for the current financial year to be lower than previously anticipated", it said, adding: "The Company has adjusted the approach taken to calculating its minimum guarantee offers for podcast partners". Shares fell over 27%.
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YouTube announced easier access to the YouTube Partner Program, with lower eligibility criteria. It unlocks monetisation options
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The owner of the iHeartPodcast Network Australia, ARN Media has bought a 14.7% share of its competitor SCA, which owns LiSTNR. Media ownership laws mean it can't own more than 15%.
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German podcasts earned €39mn (US$42mn) from podcast advertising in 2022, according to FernUni, which has conducted a study into what type of podcast advertising works best. The conclusion is that ads work better if they're related to the subject matter of the podcast.
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Meghan Markle's podcast produced just twelve episodes in a $20mn contract. The Wall Street Journal suggests that she may not earn the full amount after not meeting productivity clauses. Podnews has heard from multiple sources that some interviews on the show were done by other staffers, with her questions edited-in afterwards.
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The Australian Podcast Ranker for May was released. Both ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia and SCA's LiSTNR claim various #1 slots. The #1 publisher in the country is the ABC, but they are still not participating in the ranker; they announced their participation in March (and in Oct 2019).
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Above - watching our podcast host migration tool, you'll often see shows migrating to Spotify's Megaphone. Working with an investor, we've learnt that since early 2021, Podnews's sample data shows that Spotify's Megaphone has migrated at least 2,428 shows to its network from other hosting companies: representing shows with a total of 131 million listeners. The number of shows being migrated in our sample continues to increase; though the shows transferring recently have fewer listeners.
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50% of YouTube creators earn more than $500 per month, claims a new survey; but YouTuber Mike Figueredo posts that YouTube Revoked My Channel's Monetization and Won't Give Me Answers.
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iVoox has launched monetisation using dynamic advertising for its Spanish-language podcasters. Creators who publish their show on iVoox will earn revenue from the ads inserted in their episodes.
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"If you’re not white, or a man, you’re earning less than you were three years ago." That's the finding of the UK Audio Network's State of the Audio Industry Survey 2023. As part of a second phase in the Equality in Audio Pact, a number of content creators have published an open letter to the podcast industry calling for action.
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It's the latest acquisition from the PodX Group, who now own companies in Scandinavia, Argentina, France and the UK. To learn more about PodX Group, read this interview with CEO Staffan Rosell in the Podcast Business Journal.
Thank you to ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia for becoming our latest supporter. Thanks to our supporters, we can offer Podnews free to everyone. You can support Podnews personally or on behalf of your company here.
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The number of podcasters using Spotify's proprietary Q&A and polls features has doubled in the past two months, Spotify has revealed - these features are available to any podcaster available on Spotify, wherever they're hosted. In an article sharing case studies from a number of different podcasts, we also learn that Maya Prohovnik, VP and Head of Podcast Product at Spotify, hosts a show herself - The End of the World as We Know It, a first-time parenting podcast.
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ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia has launched Your News Now, which they claim is one of the world's most advanced news podcasts in the world. The "under three minute burst" contains geo-targeted segments, including local weather. NPR's geo-targeted Consider This](https://podnews.net/update/daily-localised-podcast) podcast launched in 2020, though is updated once a day; Your News Now is updated every six hours.
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ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia has signed a representation deal with Producey, a podcast publisher.
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Audacy published its Q1/23 financials. Excluding the loss of Crooked Media (which switched to SiriusXM in May), podcast revenues would have been up 14%; but they fell in real terms (the company didn't say by how much). However, locally-produced podcasts are the most profitable part of the business, the company said.
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Baggage Drop has just... dropped. It's a new show from Wondermind, aimed at listeners who are interested in learning more about mental health and how it affects our daily lives. Hosted by a rotating cast of mental health practitioners, it publishes three times a week.
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SoundOut, a sonic brand tracking company, has published The SoundOut Index 2023, containing a look at company sonic brands in the US. Hot Pockets has the most recognisable sonic logo; Netflix is at 12; YouTube at 64; Audible at 104; and Acast's "North Star" sonic brand is at #111.
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SiriusXM released its Q1/23 financials. Podcast revenue was up by 34% (though overall revenue declined by 2%). Cumulus Media also released their Q1/23 financials. Digital revenue (including podcast ads) was up by 23% (though total revenue slumped 12%).
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Daniel Ek said in an earnings call: “You’re right in calling out the overpaying and over-investing, and I can start off by saying that we’re not going to do that.” He added that because Spotify was now the largest podcasting platform (albeit by reach, if not by downloads), "we should be in a better position should we want to renew a deal." Worthwhile remembering that Joe Rogan's $200mn deal is up for renewal in the next six months.
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The Sound Off Podcast features Jeff Vidler from Signal Hill Insights. In the show, we learn about Jeff's views on podcast measurement and more details behind the Canadian Podcast Listener. There's a transcript here.
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Universal Music is asking music streaming services to block access to AI companies, so that the company's music is not ingested into learning systems for AI.
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Deals: ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia has renewed its representation deal with Audioboom as a "multi-year partnership". … PodcastOne has acquired two shows - a hit rewatch show Causing a Scene, previously known as The Netchicks on Libsyn, and I've had it, which was formerly on Podbean … Syntax has been acquired by Sentry, a code analytics product, on the occasion of its 600th show. "We personally loved Scott and Wes’ ad reads for Sentry, but going forward the podcast will be free of paid advertising".
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First look: Spotify's Megaphone has launched its own broadcast-to-podcast technology tools. Building on the toolset it bought in its acquisition of Whooshkaa in Dec 2021, the radio-to-podcast tools are already in use by FOX News Audio.
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Podtastic Audio has made it to 100 episodes: the show aims to "deliver value to the indie podcaster", and help them learn basic techniques that will make their podcast stand out. Brian Cottington of Libsyn is the guest for this episode - a filmmaker and podcaster.
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Podcast Bestie, the Podcast returns with Gary Arndt of Everything Everywhere Daily, who has achieved thirteen million downloads. He records in... Garageband. (transcript)
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In the Podcasting 2.0 "board meeting" this week (transcript), Dave Jones is ill (again?!), we learn that Fountain is the most-used app for boosts (except for live shows); and Adam's views on the Podcast Standards Project, who he sees as welcome "diplomats" in the attack on proprietary podcasting.
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Warner Music Group is to lay off 270 staff, or 4% of the total company: it's unclear whether their podcast division will be impacted; interactive TV company Roku is to cut 200 jobs, or 6% of the company, doubling the layoffs announced in November.
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In the latest of our series of deep-dives into East and South East Asia, Guang Jin YEO looks at podcasting in South Korea. Think that podcast consumption in Korea is massive? That might not be the case any more… discover the history of podcasting in Korea and a warning to the rest of us about closed platforms and competition from others.
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What’s Good with Miniminter and Randolph has closed a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery's The Roost Podcast Network, re-signing with the podcast monetization and growth support agency.
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Spotify's R&D team has published a paper about goal-oriented podcast recommendations - "I want to learn something" rather than "play me something similar to what I've listened to already".
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My Story So Far is a brand new podcast featuring stories around a shared experience captured at live storytelling events in Colorado from Colorado Public Radio. Hosted by CPR Community Audio Producer Luis Antonio Perez, storytellers worked with Perez as their coach to learn how to craft and hone their stories.
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Tyler Moody has been named as Director of Digital Content for Cox Media Group's radio division. While at CNN, he was the creator of the WarnerMedia Podcast Network.
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Spotify and NPR are detailing their new partnership in a post highlighting how the two companies are "forging a new partnership focused on diversification and discoverability". The major partnership was announced last week at Spotify's Stream On event and Podcast Movement Evolutions.
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The Australian Podcast Ranker for February has been released, containing shows from Shameless Media and Squiz Media for the first time. The ABC's figures could be in next month. Kyle & Jackie O, from iHeart, is the new #1 podcast. SCA's LiSTNR claims it now reaches more than 6.5m monthly listeners.
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Easy Stories in English has been acquired by Glassbox Media. The show brings 173 episodes and has successfully secured more than 500,000 monthly downloads to the Glassbox Media platform.
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In a Faceboook post, Todd Cochrane reveals that Blubrry podcasters have already earnt $625 from value-for-value in the first three weeks of the company's support. "Considering it takes time to train audiences on V4V, this is pretty incredible," he says.
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News podcasts are highly successful. Signal Hill Insights learns more details about their audience - and what we can learn from them.
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The owner of ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia, HT&E released its annual report. It claims 4.7mn monthly podcast listeners, and 2.4mn registered users on the iHeartRadio app in the country. Digital revenue was AU$14.6mn (US $10mn), up 56% y/y: 4.6% of total audio revenue (the group also owns out-of-home businesses).
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Podcast advertising in Australia in Q4/22 increased by 36% y/y, according to new data from Magellan AI and ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia. Amazon, Maccas and Paramount+ were the top three advertisers.
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What is one of the most developed podcast markets in all of East and South East Asia? It's podcasting in Thailand: where they like learning new things, but also love horror. Our initial look at podcast markets across E/SE Asia is now complete: we'll start diving deeper into each country in the coming months.
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Troy Price writes about his impressions and learnings from PodFest in Orlando.
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Lemonada Media is to launch a new podcast with Julia Louis-Dreyfus - aiming to learn life lessons from women over 70. “In our culture, older women are rarely seen or heard. What a shame. We are missing out on the wisdom and experiences of a huge portion of the population,” Louis-Dreyfus says.
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How do you make your podcast rank better in search? Podchaser asked 35 podcast SEO experts, and has produced a fifteen-step guide to podcast SEO.
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Backstage with Patreon is new today from the funding platform. The show invites existing and aspiring Patreon creators to learn from and be inspired by interviews with the Patreon team and successful creators about how to grow their creative business on Patreon. The 20 to 30 minute episodes are hosted by Brian Keller from Patreon’s Creator Success team.
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SiriusXM released its financial results for 2022. Off-platform ad revenue was up 34% to $475mn for the year, "with podcasting driving most of this growth". Overall results for the company were mixed; Pandora saw 9% fewer monthly active users.
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Spotify released the company's Q4/22 financial update. In an earnings call, Daniel Ek admitted "In hindsight, I probably got a little carried away." We carry a longer quote from Ek about podcasting below.
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Harley Quinn and The Joker: Sound Mind is new today on Spotify, in partnership with DC and Warner Bros. The seven-episode series is the highly-anticipated second project to be released as part of Spotify’s multi-year agreement with DC, and Warner Bros. following the global sensation, Batman Unburied. It stars Christina Ricci and Billy Magnussen.
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"I booked over $120,000 in revenue with podcast ads in 2 years. Here's how I grew and monetized my show." - an interview in Business Insider with Jay Clouse (host of Creative Elements).
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The fast-growing Everything Everywhere Daily podcast, hosted by Gary Arndt, has been acquired by Glassbox Media. That brings Glassbox's listenership to over ten million downloads a month.
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In Sounds Profitable, learn Tom Webster's three favourite data points from his research last year.
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New podcast app Fountain and payment provider Zebedee have announced a partnership to enable pay-per-minute streaming for podcasts. Podcasters can earn money as listeners pay what they want to listen to shows. You can top up using Apple Pay, Google Pay, or a credit card (and support Podnews Daily that way).
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Janan Ganesh writes for the FT: Podcasts aren’t as smart as you think (paywalled): "But people are starting to conflate [the podcast] with the hard grind of learning. At worst, they substitute it for reading."
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The Australian Podcast Ranker for December was released by Triton Digital. SCA's Hamish & Andy lost their top spot - but then, they didn't release a single show in December; the #1 is now Casefile True Crime, produced by Audioboom and represented by ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia, which remains the top publisher; while SCA's LiSTNR remains the top sales house (just). Both claim they're #1 in press releases.
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How Much Money I Earned as a YouTuber in 2022, from Ali Abdaal, outlines how he earnt revenue from his YouTube videos. His total revenue for 2022 was $4,600,593. Mind, his costs were $2.5m; and he's been going since 2017.
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Drink Champs has signed an audio exclusive deal with Interval Presents, Warner Music Group's podcast network. The show was with iHeart and the Black Effect Network, and was threatened with a $250m lawsuit last October
claim your podcast and start your viral adventure. Check out Fathom’s revolutionary new podcast experience today: Click here to learn more.
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In 4 Things For Your Podcast, the story behind why Avery Warner cancelled an episode, and said "My guest and I didn't have an alignment on certain views. What happened next I thought was very unprofessional. I can't support nor promote that kind of behavior." It's a learning for us all!
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Discovered on YouTube: Jon Holstead does transcriptions for Rev for eight hours, lured by their promises of earning "up to $1.10 per minute". But how much did he make, really?
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The New Yorker publishes an article on influencers "earning tens of thousands on Instagram".
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On Instagram, the hosts of Four Years Later have posted how much they earnt from their podcast in 2022… they lost $327. "It goes to show you guys actually have passion for it and aren’t just chasing dollars!", says one commenter.
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Exclusive: 911 Podcasts is to move into unscripted audio series. The new podcast Unscripted with Adam Murciano will dive into the careers of the actors who have performed on the company's podcasts, and learn what it takes to make it as a voice actor. It launches on Monday, with early access on the company's Apple Podcasts channel.
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While neither Apple or Spotify support the new
podcast:transcript
tag yet, transcripts are supported on websites and in some new podcast apps: so Dan Barnett has evaluated about 15 different tools so far. He wrote about the first few on his website, including Microsoft Word and OtterAI. "Would be great to know if anyone is interested in these kind of comparisons to convince me to keep going and speed it up!" he tells us. We're interested.
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Dish, a podcast with Nick Grimshaw and Angela Harnett, has some special guests this Christmas - Downtown Abbey's Hugh Bonneville, radio's Annie Mac, and morning TV stars Dermot O'Leary and Alison Hammond will be enjoying seasonal favourites and serving up a warm helping of chat, probably.
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First look: The Program has published its annual report, looking at where the fiction podcast grew and earnt money. Apple Podcasts Subscriptions were the second biggest revenue source, in spite of a relatively low price ($4/month). The producer also covers their experience with Libsyn's AdvertiseCast and Rusty Quill; and what happened when they started posting shows on YouTube.
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Mental health podcast The Imperfects has signed with ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia for a further two years. It's a top ten podcast, and in 2023 the show is also touring Australia.
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Everything Everywhere Daily's producer, Gary Arndt, has signed with Glassbox Media. Glassbox will serve as the exclusive advertising representative for the podcast and will work on positioning the podcast for television and other media. The show also just had its ten millionth download.
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What day do shows in your podcast genre release new episodes? Podchaser analyzes six months of podcast data and shows the most/least popular days to publish a podcast.
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Spotify has published its 2022 Podcast Trends Report. "If 2021 was a story of content explosion, then 2022 is one of diversification", the company says. Other than the details above from Megaphone, the data says:
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In How 9 Podcast Growth Strategies Yielded a 535% Increase in Downloads, Andi Last shares the strategies they do - and don't - use.
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DM Podcasts and NOVA Entertainment are to end their commercial partnership at the end of next month. NOVA had hosted and commercialised the company's shows since July 2021; DM were previously with ARN's iHeartPodcast Network, while NOVA once had a partnership with Acast.
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Will Arnett is hosting a World Cup live chat on Amazon's Amp. There's a podcast version exclusive to Amazon Music.
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As the popular show finishes up, My Dad Wrote A... releases a bonus episode today, where the team hear from their fans. One listener used the podcast to scare away a bear, we learn, while another proposes to his boyfriend live on the episode. Listen to find out if he said yes.
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'Gaslighting' has been chosen as the word of the year by Mirriam-Webster, just as The Gaslight Effect Podcast launches. ‘The gaslight effect’ is what happens to someone over time when they have been intentionally psychologically manipulated to question their own character, perception of reality, and ultimately their sanity. Hosted by Dr. Robin Stern, a psychoanalyst, you'll learn how to get out of it, and to recover.
Over 80% of Webby Winners reported that their award helped drive new business. Plus, The Webby Awards earned 5.8 billion media impressions from global media outlets last year. When you participate in the Internet’s biggest night, the world takes notice.
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From CBC Podcasts #7 is: Covid lockdown didn't stop Someone Knows Something host David Ridgen from following up on unsolved cases. In The Next Call, Ridgen takes his investigations onto the telephone - dialing victim's family members, police and eye-witnesses in a methodical search for answers. 'You won't be able to turn it off,' warns Cosmo.
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Triton Digital's Australian Podcast Ranker for October was released. We had two press releases: ARN tells us that ARN's iHeartPodcast Network is #1, while confusingly, LiSTNR tells us that LiSTNR, also, is #1.
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Comparisons: YouTube has more than 2 billion monthly logged-in users; Spotify has 456m. YouTube Music has now hit 80m paid subscribers, growing 60% year-on-year. Spotify has 195m paid subscribers, growing 13% year-on-year. In a year, YouTube paid $6bn to the music industry (Jul21-Jun22); Spotify paid $7bn (2021). YouTube's podcasting front page is still only in one country, the US; yesterday, Spotify released video podcasting to 180 global markets.
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In the UK, The Guardian's Football Weekly was named Podcast of the Year by the Football Supporters Association.
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Nancy Barnes has been named the next editor of the Boston Globe newspaper. She is currently Editorial Director for NPR News; before that, she was editor of newspapers like The Houston Chronicle and the Star Tribune in Minneapolis.
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How much do podcast editors get paid? In previous years, we've learnt that it's a job where women get paid more than men; this year's survey results are unveiled on Wed Nov 16.
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This Job is History is new from Wondery and actor and comedian Chris Parnell, taking a look at jobs that no longer exist - funeral clowns, VHS clerks, and milkmen (something which will come as a wake-up call for the many milkmen in England).
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Audacy published its financial report for Q3/22. Digital, including podcasting, made $62m in the quarter: up 2% y-on-y, down 10% q-on-q. Total revenues declined 3.8% y-on-y. The company is threatened with stock market delisting; stock hit a record low of $0.27 yesterday.
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From CBC Podcasts #15 is: Let’s Make a Sci-Fi > “Three comedians try to write an earnest sci-fi script together while making a podcast documenting their efforts,” writes Nick Quah in Vulture’s ‘Best Podcasts of 2022,’ describing the show as “fun,” “lovely” and “special.”
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Australian podcast adspend is up by 33% year-on-year, according to ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia and Magellan AI.
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"Thousands of ad-free podcasts" doesn't mean every single podcast available on Acast, and it doesn't include shows that Acast don't fully-host (like shows from the BBC, for example). Qualifying shows are marked in the app. The company wouldn't share specifics of earnings with us, but a spokesperson told us that creators are going to be "thrilled" with the additional revenue.
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There are seven warnings for the podcast industry from radio, says Tom Webster in this week's Sounds Profitable from RedCircle. Tom shares four of them, including the high number of ads you hear on-air (and, increasingly, on podcasts).
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From the Industry Track - Making Great Podcasts On Time, On Budget, On Point: "Producing things is hard. So many personalities, ideas, schedules & peccadilloes to manage. And the deadlines! Oh, the deadlines. Join some of the folks from Spoke Media who manage all of the chaos, and find out how they've learned to create beautiful art from impossible constraints."
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Spotify has reported its Q3/22 earnings. It has 456m monthly active users (up 20% y-on-y). Ad revenue, led by podcasting, is up 19% y-on-y and 7% q-on-q, at €385m (12.8% of the company's total revenue). The company lost €228m in the quarter; they predict a loss of €300m in Q4 (but suggest they may also raise their prices, following Apple's price hike).
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From Fool & Scholar, Travis Vengroff and Kaitlin Statz release a new kids and family musical podcast The Boar Knight. A charming story about friendship, it's their first series in the kids and family space. Fool & Scholar's podcasts have won 52 Audio Verse Awards and have garnered more than 20 million downloads.
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Data: In Australia, the ABC's Annual Report was published. The national broadcaster is seeing 33m downloads per month for its podcasts (p64), up 22% year-on-year. (ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia, the #1 according to the Australian Podcast Ranker, got 18m downloads in Sep 2022). News shows got the highest increase (50% year-on-year); the ABC News Daily achieved 46% higher downloads than its predecessor, The Signal. Long-form interview podcast Conversations remains #1, with an 8% drop. /ht Oscar
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From Lemonada Media: On Funny Cuz It’s True Elyse Myers interviews well-known individuals about their most awkward moments. Relentlessly unfiltered and relatable, we’ll laugh at and learn from the moments that keep us up at night.
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The Australian Podcast Ranker for September was released. SCA says LiSTNR is #1. ARN says its iHeartPodcast Network is also #1. The ranker doesn't measure the ABC, which is probably #1.
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From Lemonada Media: On Funny Cuz It’s True Elyse Myers interviews well-known individuals about their most awkward moments. Relentlessly unfiltered and relatable, we’ll laugh at and learn from the moments that keep us up at night.
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Curveball is back for a third season. The podcast features in-depth interviews with an influential person who takes you inside a challenging time - to offer insights into tackling life's tricky and traumatic moments. It's from Deadset Studios and ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia.
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From Lemonada Media: On Funny Cuz It’s True Elyse Myers interviews well-known individuals about their most awkward moments. Relentlessly unfiltered and relatable, we’ll laugh at and learn from the moments that keep us up at night.
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Spotify has acquired platform safety company Kinzen. "The technology the Kinzen team brings to Spotify combines machine learning and human expertise - backed by analysis from leading local academics and journalists - to analyze potential harmful content and hate speech in multiple languages and countries." Kinzen is based in Dublin, Ireland; no terms were given.
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From Lemonada Media: On Funny Cuz It’s True Elyse Myers interviews well-known individuals about their most awkward moments. Relentlessly unfiltered and relatable, we’ll laugh at and learn from the moments that keep us up at night.
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Rivet360 shares what they learnt from taking video and transcripts of a recent podcast and sharing this multimedia further.
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Are European telcos harnessing digital audio’s full potential? WARC and Spotify have released research on how digital audio channels are being adopted within the media mixes of European telecom brands. While digital audio has over 17% share of total media consumption in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, the report claims that the spend on digital audio as a percentage of telcos’ total spend in 2021 was below 0.6% in each market. The report is a free download here.
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Demand for skilled workers remains at an all-time high despite a topsy-turvy economy. Hire Learning is new, talking with hiring managers at leading companies, helping listeners better understand what decision makers are thinking when it comes to hiring people. It's produced for MSH, a global technology and talent solutions provider.
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This could be an attempt to boost "iHeart" numbers on Podtrac. If so, there could be more iHeart traffic to be added: currently unmeasured by Podtrac are Triton Digital and Omny Studio, who are owned by iHeart, and iHeart affiliates, like ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia or Bell Media's iHeart Canada.
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If you heard that "most books sell fewer than 12 copies", that might not be true: but in the comments to this article, we learn that 66% of books (print, from major publishers) sold fewer than a thousand copies in the last year.
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However, ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia remains the #1 podcast publisher, and saw a 6.5% growth in total downloads.
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Justin Jackson, a co-founder of podcast hosting company Transistor, did an 'ask me anything' on Reddit, a social media platform. (Fun fact: his username is "spankymustard".)
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Matt Haughey, founder of MetaFilter and blogger, writes a guide to making a podcast. He last wrote one in 2011, noting this year that "the way I create a podcast today is completely different than how I did it in the past, thanks mostly to maturing tools in the podcast space."
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Following April's launch of PodX, a Swedish podcast investment company, Bloomberg's Ashley Carman has talked to the organisation to learn more.
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Edison Research has posted a précis of Gabriel Soto's keynote at Podcast Movement in Dallas. Fear is good, he says, adding: "don't be afraid to learn something".
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After 17 years in podcasting, Sounds Profitable's Tom Webster posts 17 things he has learnt from audiences and from you.
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The Know For Sure Pod has signed exclusively with Gumball. The show, hosted by B. Simone and Megan Brooks, launched in April 2022 and in just three months has already garnered over 6 million listens.
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Libsyn will today be announcing a new programmatic ad solution for Libsyn-hosted shows. The beta program for Libsyn's Auto Ads, which allows pre, mid and post-roll, is now open for application. Additionally, the company has announced it has made more than $50m in advertising earnings for podcasters.
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Congratulations to Corey Layton, Head of Digital Audio at ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia, for winning the Radio Today Executive Leader of the Year.
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Podcast app Fountain has enhanced its search, and has published more details about how to earn sats on the service.
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Exclusive: Back in Dec 2021, SiriusXM were sued by the National Association of the Deaf and Disability Rights Activists, for not providing podcast transcripts. Almost eight months later, lawyers acting on behalf of SiriusXM have responded with an aggressively-worded 32-page document, which Podnews has obtained, calling the filing "unnecessary", a "public assault", and "a cudgel to tarnish responsible companies". The request for transcripts for all shows on the platform is "misplaced and completely unreasonable"; and the whole filing is just "a public relations campaign".
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Blubrry has unveiled a way all its hosting customers can earn money through programmatic advertising. There are no minimum downloads or audience figures required; the company is using SoundStack. We're also told to expect a big announcement from the company on Monday.
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The person behind Darknet Diaries, Jack Rhysider, has been interviewed by Apple Podcasts. He now has 2,200 paid subscribers, earning almost $11,000 a month.
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Gregory Warner is curator of The EarBuds Podcast Collective this week, focusing on Podcasts About Work & Work Culture Around the World. You should subscribe to the newsletter!
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Advertising on ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia is twice as effective as the global benchmark, according to new figures from Podsights.
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Veritone's financial report for Q2/22 shows revenue up 78% year-on-year. It was below expectation, leading to a stock market slide. Neither their release, nor their earnings call, mentioned podcasting once.
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How do you get started with programmatic advertising on your podcast? Bryan Barletta from Sounds Profitable has written a helpful guide with everything you need to know to earn money.
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Rap Radar - Interval Presents, the new in-house podcast network from Warner Music Group, has added hip-hop podcast Rap Radar to its portfolio.
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How many downloads gets 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. He writes more on Twitter; and will report back after a month with more detail about what he's learnt about the Apple Podcast charts - and the importance of choosing an appropriate category.
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Cumulus Media released its Q2/22 financial report. The company made around $15m in revenue from podcasting last quarter, up by 27% year-on-year; podcasting accounts for 6% of the company's revenue. The company warned of a tougher market environment.
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The new Buzzsprout Ads have earned independent podcasters more than $100,000 so far, according to the company.
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Publisher and broadcaster Audacy has bought podcast app Moonbeam, according to Moonbeam's founder, Paul English. Moonbeam includes an AI machine-learning system for enhanced discoverability. Terms weren't given; indeed, Audacy has yet to announce the purchase.
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If you like learning about new podcasts in Podnews, you can now get this section as a podcast itself. New Podcast Trailers is available in your favourite RSS podcast app.
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The BBC could be examining ways to change their financial reporting to hide their presenters' earnings for podcasts. Currently, podcasts are paid from public service money (which has to be reported, like on page 97 of their Annual Report); one potential plan is to get the commercial arm, BBC Studios, to make the shows and pay the presenters, which wouldn't fall under these rules.
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The Nutrition Couch is celebrating a million downloads in its first twelve months. Produced for ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia, it claims it is one of the few podcasts actually hosted and produced by qualified dietitians.
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The Betoota Advocate reports on an apparent Australian government piece of research that "no podcast ever has earnt a four hour run time". The story concludes: "Dr Twal states she is not sure when podcasters stopped respecting people’s time but states that if we don’t crack down on podcast dribble the next generation could be forced to live through podcasts that go for up to 10 hours."
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Acast CEO Ross Adams was asked on the Podland podcast today a difficult question about the future of the company's email marketing strategy. The episode will be available in the next few hours, if you'd like to learn what he said.
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Tumble Media, along with research partners, has been awarded a $1m grant by the National Science Foundation. The team will study podcasts as a classroom tool to engage blind and visually impaired students.
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Our survey says… a TV show is shifting to podcasting. Family Feud The Podcast has been launched by ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia. The show is also called Family Fortunes in the UK, and the podcast features two showbiz stars pitched against each other.
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As Dan Misener and Jonas Woost leave Pacific Content, they generously share The Most Important Things We’ve Learned About Making Successful Podcasts with Brands. "Don't make it all about you" is one of their nuggets of knowledge.
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From the makers of the hit podcast Root of Evil, Facing Evil is launched today by Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio. Hosted by Rasha Pecoraro and Yvette Gentile, it's a new, weekly true-crime show that focuses on different, but equally resonant stories, and will apply the lessons of healing they've learned in their quest to overcome generational trauma in order to focus on the victims and individuals at the heart of the cases.
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ARN's iHeartPodcastNetwork Australia is #1 for podcasts, again, in the Australian Podcast Ranker.
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The latest episode of Our Voices features Podnews's Editor, James Cridland, talking about two role models that shaped his outlook on life. A beautifully-produced fifteen minutes of storytelling, you'll learn about Michael and Steve. The power of mentorship and learning, it's a great listen.
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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.
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Radio veteran David Lloyd wonders whether anyone knows how to edit audio any more. "I screamed half-way through one lengthy interview recently. Whilst I was thoroughly interested in the topic - and the interviewee knew their stuff - they fell into laboured errrrs and ummmms which, after the first half an hour graduated from being just annoying to almost driving me to violence. Why bother creating an unlistenable podcast?" He gives tips to make things better.
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Triton Digital has published its Canada Podcast Report for May. WarnerMedia is a new participating publisher. Dateline NBC remains #1; SXM Media are the network that's #1 for podcasts.
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Daria Suvorova, from the Women Authors of Achievement Podcast, has posted her lessons learned when starting a podcast from scratch. "Promote your show with consistency", she suggests.
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You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet has joined ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia. The show, with comedian Peter Helliar, features chats with celebrity movie lovers about classic and beloved films they haven’t quite got around to seeing… until now.
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Podcast app Fountain is now rewarding people for listening to shows with Bitcoin, which they can then share with their favourite podcasters as "value4value". They more people listen, the more they get - and the more they can share.
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If you like learning about new podcasts in Podnews, you can now get this section as a podcast itself. New Podcast Trailers is available in your favourite RSS podcast app.
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Julie-Anna Needham of Decibel Podcasts learnt eight things at The Podcast Show in London; while podcast host Captivate interviewed eleven attendees, including Podnews's Editor.
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If you like learning about new podcasts in Podnews, you can now get this section as a podcast itself. New Podcast Trailers is (are?) available in your favourite RSS podcast app.
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How I make: The Piketon Massacre looks at the work that goes behind a #1 podcast. From the producer of The Piketon Massacre, learn what tool is invaluable to staying organised, what tech they use, and who they use to host (and why).
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This Is Small Business is new from Amazon, produced by JAR Audio. Hosted by Andrea Marquez, listeners will hear stories from small business owners about pivotal moments in starting, building, and scaling their business, and learn from real-world experiences shared by industry experts.
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Pod Break is an event for African podcasters to take a break, live with other podcast creatives in Chicago IL, USA, in early July, and learn from each other.
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What makes a great podcast host? We Edit Podcasts suggests that confidence and a willingness to learn are important.
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First look: 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).
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Data: Bruno Guglielminetti reports on a new survey about podcast listening in Québec, Canada. 30% of Québécois adults regularly listen to podcasts.
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Podcast production company Listen has written a piece on what their team learnt from The Podcast Show in London. Content is king, and video is the future, they suggest.
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In the UK, audio revenue is up 500% in a year, says the Digital Publishers’ Revenue Index. The twelve traditional publishers in the report claim £4.2m (US$5.3m) were earnt in the first quarter.
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Thank you to Dave Jones, Adam Curry, Medus, Chrislas, the Mere Mortals podcast and Oscar Merry for your kind boosts over the past few weeks. Here's where to get a new podcast app that will help support us using value4value.
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Ad buyers want to buy short podcast ads; podcasters are pitching longer ones, says Digiday. The website suggests it's because the longer ads earn podcasters more money (though it might be because they'll work better for the client).
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Tortoise, a "slow news" service in the UK, is the subject of a profile at Apple Podcasts. They're selling paid subscriptions through the service (and learning lots from it).
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Patreon has unveiled an update to the audio tab in the Patreon mobile app. It allows patrons to listen to all the creators they follow in one place. Here's a short video showing it off; the company says podcasting on Patreon has doubled in the last three years, with podcaster earnings increasing fourfold.
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Tom Webster has announced he is to join Sounds Profitable as Partner. Writing in Sounds Profitable with AdvertiseCast, he outlines the future for Sounds Profitable - to share content, research, and run events and advisory services to help set the course for the future of the audio business. Last month, Webster announced he was to leave Edison Research. To learn more, you should subscribe to Sounds Profitable.
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The IAB US Podcast Advertising Revenue Study will be presented this morning at Podcast Upfront: we're expected to learn how podcast advertising grew in 2021, and whether the US podcast ad market is now over $1bn. In 2020, the report suggested it had reached $842m.
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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. Meanwhile, competitor Cumulus Media has rejected a hostile $1.2bn bid from a consortium wanting to take it private.
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A number of public media broadcasters have joined a podcast accelerator programme for on-demand podcasting for children. It's to be run by PRX, PBC Kids and the CPB.
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Launched last week from iHeartMedia, Betrayal is a true-crime podcast of the story of TV producer Jenifer Faison whose picture-perfect marriage completely shatters when Faison came home from work one afternoon to find her house searched and her husband arrested for the continued sexual assault of a student. She tries to learn more about convicted sexual predator and two-time Kell High School ‘Teacher of the Year’ Spencer Herron.
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ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia has partnered with The Daily Aus, a fast-growing news outlet for millennials. Bringing stories that matter for young Aussies, ARN will help them reach a wider audience.
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Are you selling access to your show? The free ride for Spotify’s paid podcast subscription service is coming to an end. In Spotify’s earnings call yesterday, Daniel Ek said that from 2023, the company will take a 5% cut (plus payment costs). Apple Podcasts takes 30% (including them).
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Warner Music Group has launched a new podcast network, Interval Presents, producing "multi-format, culture-forward audio content at the intersection of music, pop culture, and social impact". It'll be run by Allan Coye.
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Targetspot's owner, AudioValley, has published its 2021 annual results. Revenue is up 44.5%; Targetspot earned €26m (US$27m) in revenue, though the company lost €6.4m (US$6.8m) overall.
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Exclusive: A major UK initiative for diversity in the audio industry, the Multitrack Audio Fellowship has announced it is to return this year, with a number of new host companies. Fellows will be paid a Living Wage, gain hands-on experience in a demanding production environment; have the chance to learn from peers in the radio and podcasting industries; and be given the opportunity to compete for several professional commissions. Open to those at a disadvantage because of race, disability or socioeconomic background, you can apply now; fellowships will be offered in London, Manchester and Edinburgh.
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Trapital has Will Page, former Chief Economist at Spotify, as a guest this week. Page believes the music industry is transitioning from a “herbivore market” to a “carnivore” one: future growth will not come from brand-new customers — it’ll come from the streaming services eating into each other’s market share. There are parallels, too, with podcasting. Here's a transcript
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Podcasting is growing in China, says CGTN, a Chinese government website. "Over 36,000 podcasts have been either downloaded or streamed across China", says the website (which seems… low). Lizhi, one of the main podcast platforms in the country, was interviewed in Podland News in January.
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Audioboom released a Q1/22 trading update. For the quarter, revenue was $19.7m (more than double year-on-year) and the company earned $0.9m EBITDA profit (30x higher year-on-year). It said that it has contracted revenue of $60.5m for this year already: more than it brought in during the whole of 2021.
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Petrified won a New York Festivals Radio Award for Drama Podcast in 2020 despite having only six episodes, and garnered rave reviews and gained legions of horror fans worldwide in the process. Season two of this hugely acclaimed horror fiction anthology podcast from a darker Ireland launches today, from Peter Dunne (writer/director) and Liam Geraghty (producer). Petrified tells the chilling tales of ordinary people encountering the supernatural, and their terrifying fates.
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In Five Unconventional Tips for Growing a Podcast, we're taught to understand learning arcs, grow other content forms, and experiment.
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Eric Barnett joins Supporting Cast as director of sales and marketing. He joins from Findaway, an audiobook distribution company acquired by Spotify, where he was the manager of strategic partnerships.
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The Podcast Show - the new international festival for podcasting in London this May - has announced its first 100 speakers, including The Receipts, Jonathan Wall (BBC Sounds), Miranda Sawyer (The Observer), Jane Garvey & Fi Glover (Fortunately with Fi & Jane), Nihal Arthanayake (BBC Radio 5 Live), Glenn Miller (CAA), Marvyn Harrison (BELOVD Agency), Jen Sargent (Wondery), Fearne Cotton, Ross Adams (Acast), Julia White (Twitter), Alice Levine, Edith Bowman and Munroe Bergdorf ... and they're just getting going! Get ready for another 250 names being announced in the coming weeks. You can book your day pass from £55 - use promo code PODNEWS for 20% off a limited number of passes. Podnews is a media partner (and we'll be there).
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Rooster Teeth and WarnerMedia Access announced the Rooster Teeth Digital Creators Program, an initiative designed to identify and develop aspiring and emerging digital content creators with an eye toward widening diverse, equitable, and inclusive representation.
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Hyve Time is a brand new podcast all about the business of beekeeping. The host Mike James plans to bring listeners all the buzz about the beekeeping world, and interviews other business owners to find out what busy beekeepers can learn to keep everything sweet.
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The Real Estate Rebel with Scott McGillivray is back for a third season, this time working with Acast. It will cover topics like how to invest in a hot real estate market, how social media is changing the real estate landscape, and lessons Scott has learned from being a landlord for over 20 years. - read more
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The Salem Podcast Network, part of Salem Media Group, made $6.4m in its first year. It made $1.6m in Q4/21; representing 2.3% of the company's $69.1m revenue.
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6 Tools to Grow & Earn From Your Show - Tar Haahr suggests websites and an email list.
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With ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia, Magellan AI has launched a new regular report showing the top podcast advertisers in Australia. You can subscribe here. The report for Q4/21 shows Amazon at #1, with the highest Australian brand - Binge, a video streaming service - at #4.
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Produced by Quill: Contributors features provoking conversations about how to take your organization one step further by prioritizing more than just the bottom line. Hosts Marnie Niemi Hood and Russell Evans from the CAAT Pension Plan sit down with leaders who are contributing to the well-being of the country and global stage by innovating industries and leading change.
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Correction Corner: How much did Libsyn pay for PAR? It turns out that we can't read SEC statements: apologies. The correct figure is $8m cash, plus a further $4m worth of stock and earn-out.
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Yesterday, we wondered about Spotify's new auto-downloads feature - here are some more settings screens - and asked Spotify whether it is just a test, and whether the app stops downloading if you stop listening. It's just a test, says Spotify; a spokesperson tells us: "We’re always working to enhance the Spotify experience and we routinely conduct tests to inform our decisions. Some tests end up paving the way for new offerings or enhancements while others may only provide learnings. We don’t have any additional information to share at this time."
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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," adding "it’ll be a hard case to make to continue using Podsights when your actions in aggregate benefit a tool that is most beneficial to Spotify and their direct clients." You should subscribe to learn why he thinks we need to take collaborative action.
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PodMatch now pays podcast hosts when they release episodes. Podcast hosts will now earn money when releasing new episodes interviewing a guest via the service. (It's either $6 or $39 per month to join PodMatch as a host).
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Produced by Quill: Contributors features provoking conversations about how to take your organization one step further by prioritizing more than just the bottom line. Hosts Marnie Niemi Hood and Russell Evans from the CAAT Pension Plan sit down with leaders who are contributing to the well-being of the country and global stage by innovating industries and leading change.
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Produced by Quill: Contributors features provoking conversations about how to take your organization one step further by prioritizing more than just the bottom line. Hosts Marnie Niemi Hood and Russell Evans from the CAAT Pension Plan sit down with leaders who are contributing to the well-being of the country and global stage by innovating industries and leading change.
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Breakit, a Swedish news website, has published an article (translated) which alleges that downloads are being bought on Spotify. The journalists tried to buy 130,000 listens to their podcast: but, both Spotify and Acast spotted the bots and invalidated the traffic. However, they succeeded in paying for 50,000 plays from 8,000 listeners for a fake music track.
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Produced by Quill: Contributors features provoking conversations about how to take your organization one step further by prioritizing more than just the bottom line. Hosts Marnie Niemi Hood and Russell Evans from the CAAT Pension Plan sit down with leaders who are contributing to the well-being of the country and global stage by innovating industries and leading change.
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Produced by Quill: Contributors features provoking conversations about how to take your organization one step further by prioritizing more than just the bottom line. Hosts Marnie Niemi Hood and Russell Evans from the CAAT Pension Plan sit down with leaders who are contributing to the well-being of the country and global stage by innovating industries and leading change.
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Produced by Quill: Contributors features provoking conversations about how to take your organization one step further by prioritizing more than just the bottom line. Hosts Marnie Niemi Hood and Russell Evans from the CAAT Pension Plan sit down with leaders who are contributing to the well-being of the country and global stage by innovating industries and leading change.
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Produced by Quill: Contributors features provoking conversations about how to take your organization one step further by prioritizing more than just the bottom line. Hosts Marnie Niemi Hood and Russell Evans from the CAAT Pension Plan sit down with leaders who are contributing to the well-being of the country and global stage by innovating industries and leading change.
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Triton Digital has released its Australian Podcast Ranker for January. Casefile remains number 1. In publishers, Stitcher moves to #2, but has around half the monthly listeners of ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia, who remain #1 for podcasts.
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16 duPont-Columbia Awards were announced last night. Winners included According to Need from Katie Mingle and 99% Invisible, Blindspot from WNYC Studios and The History Channel, and The Line, an original podcast from Apple TV+.
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Exclusive: Mumbler has released what they call the first monetisation study for podcasts in Spain. 137 podcasters took part. We've been given a set of pages translated into English; almost half of the podcasters said they were not monetising in any way. Selling services was the top way of earning revenue, followed by sponsorships.
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Rosie Squires has joined Mamamia as Editorial Director. She was Head of Digital Content at ARN.
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"Try not to become a person of success, but rather a person of value". John Lee Dumas speaks about his podcast, whether he's a fan of Clubhouse, and effortlessly turns this podcast interview into a sales opportunity. Learn from the master!
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Are you a podcaster? The Podcast Host is running a survey to learn what matters to you.
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Podcasting in China is not that popular yet, but things are changing, according to Head of Capital Markets for LIZHI, Effy Kang, speaking to the Podland podcast. "The lower penetration rate in China indicates a growth potential in the future", she told us. She sees more connected devices, 5G, and increasing use in-car as being opportunities for more audio consumption. Hear a full interview in the Podland podcast today.
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ACCESS: A Podcast About Abortion answers all the questions you might have been afraid to ask about abortion - not something people normally think or talk about. Hosted by Garnet Henderson, next week's episode is all about religion.
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In the US, 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, has interviewed the country's biggest newsmakers and earnt an Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Innovation. Speaking to Podnews, he said he's learnt "how much importance simple facts carry … Facts needs to be the most important thing you're imparting. … It's a big deal."
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Home bitcoin and lightning node Umbrel has released v0.4.11, and with it, the first version of Helipad: an app that lets you see a live view of incoming boosts and boostagrams from your listeners. This lets anyone see feedback and payments of cryptocurrency from people using new podcast apps. We've a guide to get started.
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True crime rules; but exclusive podcasts don't much, and nor do any of the big acquisitions - at Pacific Content, Matt Hird took all the "top podcasts of 2021" lists he could find, and analysed all 432 podcasts they mentioned to see what can be learnt. 9/12 is incidentally, the top of the tops.
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The Australian Podcast Ranker for December 2021 was released. Casefile remains #1. ARN's iHeartPodcast Network is comfortably in the lead for publishers, for the twentieth consecutive time.
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Nick Harnett is Acast's new PR and Marketing Manager for UK and Ireland.
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Launched today, Chutzpod! is for Hebrew school scholars and those who dropped out, those who want to learn and be inspired, but don't want to schlep to synagogue, listeners of all or no faiths, and anyone trying to live a meaningful life during these trying times. It's hosted by Rabbi Shira Stutman, and Joshua Malina, and presented by PRX. - read more
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Wonder Media Network has launched The Growth League, a new podcast and community of extraordinary women looking to learn and grow from one another, hosted by New York Times Best-selling author Diana Kander. Each week, Diana sits down with a different successful woman to uncover their habits, tactics, and rules for growth.
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Podcast Review, from the Los Angeles Review of Books, has posted its ten best podcasts of 2021, with S***hole Country given the #1 crown. In Vulture, Nick Quah has also published his Best Podcasts of 2021 list, as judged by 150 creators, producers and hosts: Maintenance Phase "was, by far, the podcast that earned the most votes in the survey."
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Stitcher released data for 2021, showing their consumption data and, separately, data from a creator survey. 41% of larger independent podcasters earn revenue from paid membership platforms like Memberful, Patreon, Glow or others.
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Pizza - a deceptively simple food, but one that has enough history to fill 1,700 pages of a book: and now, Modernist Pizza Podcast takes the book's co-authors and learns more about every part of pizza - from flour, sauce, and cheese, to its roots and the evolution of regional styles.
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Listen to us using some new podcasting apps, like Fountain, and you can tip us small amounts of Bitcoin while sending us a message. These are called boostagrams - thanks to Dave, talking about Spotify's new Pod City that "Everybody’s building a podcast studio! Not sure what to make of that. 🧐"; and to Adam, who thanked us for including a donation link for the Podcast Index last week. Here's how to enable your podcast; and some new podcast apps to try.
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Dave Winer, the inventor of the podcast RSS feed, has written a blog post on why, in his opinion, podcasting isn't dominated by one large company - and what we can learn from that.
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10 Things to Know Before Creating a Global Multilingual Podcast, from Adonde Media, responsible for the recent Last Days of Maradona podcast, suggests that learning how to deal with different timezones is a good start.
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The company was selling "lifetime access" on AppSumo for over a year, for $79 (against a nominal $900 price), and had secured considerable support from AppSumo itself. Using this tactic, the company had earnt more than $78,000 by November last year (screenshot); it was still selling lifetime access in March this year, and still promoting bCast on the AppSumo platform in July.
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Joe Nocera, who created The Shrink Next Door for Bloomberg and Wondery, and who sold it to Hollywood to make it into an Apple TV series, is [suing Bloomberg over lost earnings from the show] (https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2021/12/14/shrink-next-door-joe-nocera-sues-bloomberg/).
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We're also told that iHeartMedia has a current policy of "no promotions, no raises"; and we've learnt iHeart's average salaries - $55k for a producer, $70k for a supervising producer, and $90k for an executive producer. (These are around 15% lower than Werk It's survey in 2019), or AIR's rate guide from the same year).
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Jack Rhysider writes how to launch a successful podcast NFT. Gary Vee has apparently earnt $66m using them.
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The BBC's plans to monetise its podcasts are analysed by Dan Barnett on the Beyond The Podcast website.
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Got Books? Conversations with Booksellers & Bookmakers has started a new season - a podcast with a mix of booksellers and people who make books come to life. From Scotland to Berlin, Senegal to Toronto, you'll learn why bookshops are all such special places. The truly international podcast is produced by two Romanians in London and Berlin. - read more
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First look: The host of indie fiction podcast The Program has given Podnews readers the first look at his growth, marketing and revenue in 2021. A case study like no other, you'll see his download figures, revenue, the effect Apple Podcasts promotion has on his show, the release of a soundtrack album, and his plans for the future. There's something to learn here for every podcaster.
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We've updated our 100 Most Popular Podcast Names article today, with the latest data. We've additionally learnt that 705,000 shows have the word "Podcast" in them; there are 1,719 podcasts called "Real Talk"; and 177 shows called "This RSS Has Been Deleted".
Over 80% of Webby Winners reported that their award helped drive new business. Plus, The Webby Awards earned 3.3 billion media impressions from global media outlets last year. When you participate in the Internet’s biggest night, the world takes notice.
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We updated our guide on how to earn Bitcoin from your podcast.
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Tenderfoot TV is funding a podcast entirely from Bitcoin. From Nowhere will look at the "dark past" of the crypto world; it'll launch in early 2022. (Read this to earn Bitcoin from your podcast; we've just updated it with the latest information.)
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Medium is getting into audio, acquiring audio-based learning platform Knowable. Warren Shaeffer, co-founder of Knowable, will join Medium as the Vice President of Audio. (Evan Williams, Medium's CEO, was co-founder of Odeo, an early podcast company.)
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ARN's Life Uncut is to become a radio show, the company has announced. The show is to air in Australia on KIIS, as a part of ARN's 'Podcast to Broadcast' strategy.
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Chartable has launched additional remarketing pixels for SmartLinks. You can now add TikTok pixels or Google Tag Manager to your SmartLinks, helping you learn more about your podcast's marketing.
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Audacy reported their financial results for Q3/21. The company, which owns Cadence13, Pineapple Street Studios and Podcorn, said in an investor call that it made around $16m in revenue from podcasting - 4.8% of the total company's income.
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Over 222 podcasts now use Satoshis Stream, a simple way to enable value4value.
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Magellan AI and ARN's iHeartPodcast Network have compiled the top 15 podcast advertisers in Australia for Q3/21. eBay, project planning software Monday, and Amazon are the top three; the top Australian brand is the Commonwealth Bank at number 5. We note with satisfaction that broadcaster Nine Entertainment is, rightfully, at number 9.
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In US company financial results: Cumulus Media's CEO Mary Berner commented that their podcasting business is profitable, but margins are low - and hinted at further acquisitions in podcasting ... The New York Times said their "audio storytelling" now reaches 20 million listeners a month ... Graham Holdings own Slate, City Cast, and Pinna and say these businesses all saw revenue increases but all made losses.
Advice & How-To, Creativity & Marketing, Public Service & Activism, and Sustainability & Environment for General Series. We have also added Crime & Justice, Family & Kids, Featured Guest, Health & Wellness and Interview/Talk Show categories to expand honors in Individual Episode, and much more. Learn more, and enter the 26th Annual Webby Awards by our Final Entry Deadline of December 17th, 2021
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African Roundup has been awarded a grant from the Celo Community Fund. African Roundup is a Johannesburg-based podcast company tracks progress of Africa’s emerging digital, tech, and innovation scene; the grant is "intended to support a monthly blockchain-themed UNAJUA Podcast learning series, produced and published in multiple languages".
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Spotify released its Q3/21 results. We have analysis below; but in the investor call, we learnt:
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Boostagram corner: Thanks to Adam Curry for his "duck duck go boost" of 2260 sats. Podnews earnt 29,000 sats last week. Here's how to enable your podcast
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In separate news, NPR's podcasts have been added to the iHeartRadio app in Australia.
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When sending boostagrams, you can send any amount of boosts - and some numbers have meaning. A boost for 1776 is known as a "Liberty Boost", while a boost for 1999 is a "Prince Boost". Gary Arndt has compiled an initial list - anyone who wishes to send us a school calculator boost would be a friend for life!
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Boostagrams this week from Gary Arndt, sending 1776 sats through Fountain and saying "This show is my primary way of keeping abreast with what is happening in the podcast industry". Sir Peet, using Fountain, sends 5,000 sats and says "more drinks, cheers!" And, someone anonymous sends 2112 sats from Breez, pointing out that "Ozy Media is a very strange company". You're right. We made 22,815 sats last week, about US $12.50 (much from streaming, not boosts). Here's how to enable your podcast for value4value - and if you're not seeing a boost button in your podcast app, find a better one.
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Meanwhile, 31% of Norwegians listen to podcasts every week, according to research from Kantar, presented by Knut-Arne Futsæter at the EMRO 2021 Conference. That has doubled in the past five years, according to the company. Norwegians spent 12 minutes with podcasts per day, versus 65 minutes with the radio.
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Spotify has made a series of announcements about podcast monetisation. First up, top Anchor podcasters in the US can now be part of the Spotify Audience Network. That allows ad-buyers to buy ads on your show, and improves your potential to earn revenue. These ads are called "Automated ads", since they'll be automatically inserted: if you're with Anchor, you can join the waitlist today.
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If you're in the US, you can learn more about adding your podcast to Facebook's mobile app here. If you're not in the US, your luck's out, for now.
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How I Work has joined ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia. Hosted by Dr Amantha Imber, it explores the working days of some of the world's most successful innovators. The show was with Acast.
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In case you wondered, last week Podnews made 4,536 sats from listening to the show, and a further 29,956 from boosts. That's $16.40 just last week. In total so far, we've made $188. Even though it's very early days, that'll pay for a decent round of drinks, so if your podcast isn't value4value-enabled, we'd recommend doing so.
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A new social podcasting app, Podopolo, sent tweets to many podcasters yesterday including Aaron Mahnke that the CEO Melinda Wittstock admits were "poorly worded". The tweets suggested that podcasts should claim their show on the app to "receive shared earnings from listens". Wittstock confirms, in common with other apps, they do not make money from unclaimed podcasts on the platform. (They don't otherwise alter podcasts, and do not cache your audio, either - all is good).
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How to earn Bitcoin from your podcast - Podnews's podcast is value4value-enabled
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Evo Terra highlights why learning podcasting from the pros is bad advice.
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On Reddit, Andrew Warner writes a piece about "podcast ad revenue - what I've learned over ten years". He says: "Make sure your ad sponsors are just as valuable to your listeners as your show. A bad sponsor will make you lose listeners, and when you lose listeners, you lose good sponsors."
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Eight ways smaller newsrooms can make audio pay, from the Reynolds Journalism Institute, is written for journalists and newspapers, but is a good overview of the different mechanisms for earning money from your podcast.
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Now ordered by total monthly listeners, the Australian Podcast Ranker for August has been released. Hamish & Andy remains #1 podcast (919,000 listeners); ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia remains #1 publisher (3.4m listeners - or 15% of all Australians). Total downloads increased in August to 49m.
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Dave Jackson has released a new episode of Leading the Bleeding, an edit of a Zoom meeting last week. He's also made a video, Enabling Your Podcast To Receive Bitcoin, describing how he set the show up for value4value - a way to earn cryptocurrency from your listeners.
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And, CNN's Total Recall: California's Political Circus is new today, focusing on the 2003 Califormia election that led to Arnold Schwarzenegger being elected governor.
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Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett's podcast SmartLess is a new entry at #9 in the Podtrac top US podcasts list for August. The show was bought by Amazon's Wondery at the end of June. Podtrac contains participating publishers only.
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We've updated our guide on how to earn value4value from your podcast.
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Paid podcast subscriptions seem to be having a moment: Breaking Points, a podcast and YouTube show, has seen 10,000 paying subscribers in just two days using Supercast. The company tells Podnews that their top ten podcasters are earning more than $9 million in annual recurring revenue from paid subscribers on the platform; and that their growth rate is outperforming Substack's early published milestones.
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Darknet Diaries has achieved 670 paid Apple Podcasts subscribers in just 45 days, according to its creator Jack Rhysider. He also says he has yet to promote it: all discovery is happening through Apple's app. After Apple's 30% cut, he's earning $2,338 per month.
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Gary Arndt has written an introduction to Podcasting 2.0.
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Anyone can learn to do their own PR. Paul Blanchard has a book - Fast PR - which promises advice and insight from a variety of big companies. Paul's a personal supporter of Podnews; we saw this in a tweet, though (and he bought us a coffee once in The Before Time).
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In the Australian Podcast Report, released last week, ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia remained at #1. Weekly downloads from top 10 publishers fell 6.7%. iOS has a 55% share in Australia.
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Maribel Quezada Smith learnt some Unexpected & Valuable Lessons From Podcast Movement 2021 - including a replacement to the business card that'll never run out.
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Audio editor Ardour has released v6.9. Embarking on a significant rebuild, the developers warn to steer clear of the v7.0 nightly build for now.
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The language you use can make your podcast more successful - and there's proof. Use "I, we, you" not "her, him, them", don't swear, use positive language and don't talk slowly - and people will listen to your show more, according to research by Spotify's Research and Development department. The team published data learnt from transcripts and playback data of over 5,000 English episodes.
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The Triton Digital Australian Podcast Ranker for June 2021 has been released. Casefile True Crime is still #1, as is ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia.
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Using Podcasting 2.0 apps like CurioCaster or Podfriend, listeners can share small amounts of cryptocurrency with the podcasts they listen to. Now, so-called "Boostagrams", like those seen above, allow listeners to send messages to podcasters, too, along with a tip. Here's how to get started with accepting cryptocurrency for your podcast
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Cumulus Media saw record digital revenue, including from podcasting, in Q2/21, according to their financial report; though podcasting didn't make any other appearance in their earnings call.
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Yesterday, Podnews reported at least 1,000 paid shows in Apple Podcasts. Overnight, the Podcast Index reports that there are also now just over 1,000 value4value-enabled podcasts earning Bitcoin, too.
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Meanwhile, Fountain is new on the Apple App Store - a new podcast player that allows you to share podcast clips and also optionally support your favourite podcasts with Bitcoin, using value4value. An Android app comes shortly. (Here's how to earn Bitcoin from your podcast).
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Spotify's podcast ad revenue has jumped 627% year-on-year, according to their revenue announcement today: Joe Rogan and Megaphone helping the increase. We learnt that Podz cost the company $53.4m; and Greenroom $67.7m. The company appears to have stopped reporting the number of monthly users who listen to podcasts. They have 365m monthly users; last we heard, 25% of them (91m) listen to podcasts.
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Toxic: The Britney Spears Story has been downloaded over 550,000 times in the first three weeks, according to SiriusXM CEO Jennifer Witz in an earnings call.
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What goes into planning a paid promotional campaign to support a podcast? The UK podcast producer Listen, along with ad-buyer Carat, highlight their learnings.
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Mikaela Lancaster is highlighted as "the woman driving Spotify Australia’s push into podcasts" in the Sydney Morning Herald today. She confirms that podcast listening hasn't impacted music listening on the platform. 2020 tax returns suggest Spotify Australia earnt US $18.2m in revenue from its free service; but earnt $0 from premium subscribers - that money is funnelled to Sweden, and it pays no tax on that estimated US $290m revenue in Australia.
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In an email, Google has said FeedBurner is to move to new infrastructure in mid-August, and warns people using their email subscription services to download their lists before then, since that feature won't be available. Here's more detail. FeedBurner powers 56,000 podcast feeds (about 1.4% of all podcasts).
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Podcorn's CEO is interviewed for an advertorial in MediaVillage about earning money with podcasts. The company, owned by Audacy, has 48,000 podcasters using their platform.
Want to be on the Podnews front page? We'd like to run some testimonials about how useful you find Podnews. "We trust Podnews every day to learn about our industry - Joe Schmo, PodcastingHosting Co", that sort of thing. We'll use the nicest and best, and link to your website or Twitter or something. Up for it? Reply to this email (updates@podnews.net), and thank you.
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In Australia, DM Podcasts have joined the NOVA Entertainment Podcast Network. They were represented by ARN's iHeartPodcast Network, but ended the partnership "by mutual consent". They were also the #10 publisher in April's Podcast Ranker, but appear to have been removed from the ranker from May. We highlight some of their new titles below.
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Thinking about building a PWA - a progressive web app - for audio? Prototyped suggests that PWA ought to stand for Problems with Apple, after they share their learnings.
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Half of the shows listened-to on Audioboom are from their back catalogue of older shows: so they've launched AdRip, a tool that automatically rips out live ad-reads in old podcasts, replacing them with new ads, so creators can earn more revenue.
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The winners were announced for the British Podcast Awards 2021. We've a full list: Fearne Cotton (above) won the Podcast Champion award for her efforts to open up the mental health conversation, and the Podcast of the Year was awarded to VENT Documentaries.
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First look: PodcastOne has launched LaunchpadOne, a new, free podcast host. The platform includes PayPal donations, a learning center and the opportunity to get discovered by PodcastOne.
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How much do people in podcasting earn money? Misha Euceph writes a Twitter thread that tells you.
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iHeartRadio has launched NextUp, an initiative "that takes underrepresented diverse creators and gives them a chance to learn all about the world of podcasting from one of the largest global podcasting networks". Submissions open on Monday.
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On Satoshis Stream, one of the ways of enabling cryptocurrency-funded podcasts, there are now 250 value4value-enabled podcasts.
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Moonbeam is a new app aimed at "solving the biggest problem facing the industry: finding new podcasts". Built with a combination of machine-learning and human creators, it includes the ability for podcasters to create shareable clips, and was founded by Paul English, who built Kayak and Lola.
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In Australia, ARN's iHeartPodcast Network and The New York Times have agreed a podcast ad sales deal. ARN's iHeartPodcast Network is the country's biggest commercial podcast publisher.
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In the UK, Mags Creative is running a free six week learning and mentoring programme. The program will offer industry insights, expert knowledge and support for 12 podcasters from underrepresented communities. They wish to specifically encourage those who are Black, Asian or minority ethnic, have disabilities or identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community to apply.
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For Pride Month, Come Out Wherever You Are speaks with guests across Australia’s gender and sexual spectrum to learn about their unique experiences and understand what it’s like to come out for the first time (and every time after that).
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Ad Results Media has hired five new team members: Tony Carnevale as Creative Director, DeShá Runnels, Gretchen Smith and Patty Mertes, each as VP of Media, and Jemina MacHarry as Director of Business Development.
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The Australian Podcast Report for May has been released by Triton Digital. ARN's iHeartPodcastNetwork is still #1; and has seen a 75% increase in downloads year-on-year.
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Bose and Spotify have launched a Music + Talk show called A life in tracks, featuring interviews with notable Black stars including Russell Wilson, Allyson Felix, Rotimi and more to learn about the music that shapes their lives in celebration of Black Music Month in June.
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Steve Goldstein notes that Wheel of Fortune, a US TV game show, starts playing the game in just 45 seconds from the start of the show: and that podcast intros are way too long.
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Our Editor, who was hosting the conference in Sydney, looked after a monetisation panel, including learning the benefits of running your own app.
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From the HubSpot Podcast Network: The Salesman Podcast is the world's most downloaded B2B sales podcast - helping sales professionals learn how to find buyers and win business from them in a modern, effective, and ethical way.
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People: Cécile Rondeau Arnaud has joined Acast as Associate Partner Manager, France. She joins from Moustic Studio.
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FAIR, a US media watchdog, warns about the new podcast oligopoly. They note the size of LibertyMedia, which owns SiriusXM and also 50% of iHeartRadio.
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Apple Podcasts has launched a new affiliate program for podcast subscriptions. The Apple Services Performance Partner Program now allows people to earn money by linking to (other peoples') paid shows - you earn 50% of the first month's subscription fee.
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From the HubSpot Podcast Network: The Salesman Podcast is the worlds most downloaded B2B sales podcast - helping sales professionals learn how to find buyers and win business from them in a modern, effective, and ethical way.
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Audio for kids is the focus of the Ready To Learn Podcast Accelerator, from PRX, PBS KIDS, and CPB. The program announced six teams of audio creators who are taking part.
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If you want to learn more about Clubhouse users in America, Edison Research have a webinar next week.
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Want to earn Bitcoin from your podcast? - yes, you can do that with a growing number of podcast apps.
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Where better to sell audio than… audio. Sounds Profitable's Up Next - Spring 2021 is now live, with more than two dozen companies taking part, promoting their new shows to ad buyers. Learn more at Sounds Profitable or start listening now - the feed also includes panels and a look at the trends behind podcast consumption.
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How to get to one million downloads; an interview with Sheena Yap Chan.
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Q1/21 revenue is 5% up at SiriusXM, which owns AdsWizz, Simplecast, Stitcher and 99% Invisible. Revenue was boosted by Stitcher and AdsWizz revenue. Pandora has lost 8% of its monthly users over the past year, though.
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MorganStanley issued a client note saying mostly positive things about Spotify, calling them "overweight", and predicting they'll hit $350/share in the next twelve months (they're $298 currently). Spotify releases their earnings results for Q1/21 tomorrow (and possibly, with it, their plans for podcast subscriptions); they're currently increasing prices in the US and UK.
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Apple has launched Apple Podcasts for Creators, a new website to help creators learn more and stay informed. The Apple Podcasts Connect dashboard has been improved with more stats and control, including geographical restriction and multiple users. Podcasters have received an email with more information (which is probably in your spam box).
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Warner Music Group and Spotify announced a new partnership which will see the two companies develop a series of original podcasts built around WMG’s artists’ and songwriters’ catalogs.
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Wondery has launched Secret Sauce - asking what secrets we can learn from some of the world's most extraordinary companies. First: Airbnb.
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Google Podcasts has hit 100m installations on Android. Since November it has doubled installations, added support for subscribing by RSS feed, and is the #3 podcast app according to Libsyn and Buzzsprout. It's due to launch personalised episode recommendations at some stage this week. Surprisingly, it is not a standard install on new Android phones.
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Audioboom has signed a further two year commercial partnership with ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia; a distribution deal with True Crime Obsessed; and a development deal with the Obsessed Network.
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ARN Neuro Lab research suggests there are distinct differences in how effective advertising is in podcasting and radio. "Radio showed the strongest ability to engage listeners and for extended periods of time, racking up 60 per cent more neural engagement than other audio formats. Podcasts, meanwhile, were found to provide an environment that lends itself to higher levels of memory encoding," says the research, paid-for by an Australian radio broadcaster which also operates the iHeartPodcast Network Australia.
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Bryony Gordon's Mad World is back for a third season. The show explores mental health and wellbeing, and will feature a number of UK guests, including presenter Fearne Cotton and Booker prize winner Douglas Stuart.
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Popular audio mixer The RØDECaster Pro has new beta firmware, allowing more functionality for the sound pads like switching cameras, a MIDI function and an ASIO driver. Grab it here - the company warns you not to use it for critical projects quite yet.
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Scott Pape, an Australian financial advisor and journalist, has recommended five podcasts in a newspaper article. ARN's iHeartPodcast Network chief Corey Layton points out that the Australian Apple Podcast Chart is dominated by these picks, adding "in reality, those shows aren’t generating more listens than the ABC’s Conversations (now at #7) and therefore shouldn’t top the ‘charts’. Perhaps it’s time Apple rename the ‘Apple Podcast Chart’ to ‘Apple Podcast Trends’ to better represent how it works."
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Emerging podcast app Podfriend has enabled micropayments for podcasters, allowing everyone to earn cryptocurrency while people listen to their podcast. We've updated our guide on how to earn Bitcoin from your podcast.
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Work in progress - because we suspect this is about to get rather easier; but here's how to earn Bitcoin from your podcast. (Even VISA now supports crypto, kind of).
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Why choosing a podcast niche is important - Kristi Jacobsen writes about earning trust and authenticity
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The UmStop is a new training bracelet for podcasters. Using machine learning and artificial intelligence, it administers a silent, but mild, electric shock every time it detects you saying the word "um", "er", "you know", or "sort of". In tests, it cuts the amount of editing by 30%.
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The Salem Podcast Network has announced a partnership with The Todd Starnes Podcast. He does a thing called a 'Toddcast', which we thought was funny and original until we searched for it.
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Satoshis․Stream is a new service that allows anyone to earn Bitcoin from their podcast. Using the
podcast:value
tag (but a tool to help if you can't add it to your own podcast's RSS feed), it's much easier to use than previous services; the podcast put together by Podnews Editor James Cridland and Sam Sethi, Podland, signed up to use it, and within the first twelve hours we've made 3129 sats ($1.72).
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Trust Nobody, the fan podcast for Wie is de Mol, a Dutch game show, is earning US$4,000 a month on Patreon, says Simon Owen. The show's creators say that it's "been made better by the user content and feedback submitted by the Patreon community".
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Warner Media's Rooster Teeth is profiled in Venture Beat, along with the news that the Roost Podcast Network is to launch a further six shows this year.
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ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia is celebrating record year-on-year growth. The company has published detailed genre details: Business and Finance is the fastest growing category.
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The forthcoming Edison Research and Triton Digital "Infinite Dial" will tell us that "the amount of ad-skipping (in podcasts) is high", pre-warns Tom Webster in his newsletter. He points out that podcasts are the only audio medium that even has skippable ads.
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Tyler Moody, the VP of the WarnerMedia Podcast Network, has marked his end date as February on LinkedIn; others in the (former?) division appear to have been redeployed.
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You can earn money on Facebook, according to an article by Facebook on Podcast Movement.
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In Australia, ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia was launched a year ago, and is celebrating their anniversary.
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Entercom did their Q4 2020 earnings call. Digital revenue was up 23% year-on-year, though the company didn't break out podcasts.
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Cumulus Media, owners of Westwood One, says it achieved more than 1bn downloads in 2020, and podcasting is "pacing up more than 30% in Q1". Podcasting revenue grew 40% last year. "We've made our bet on partnership arrangements with talent as opposed to going out and spending a lot of money on IT or infrastructure," said CFO Frank Lopez-Balboa. The company uses Spotify-owned Megaphone.
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With 67,500 upvotes, and 1,200 comments, this episode of Darknet Diaries has got some traction on Reddit. Jack Rhysider shares his stats for the episode.
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Podcast host Captivate has announced new integration with Descript, allowing you to upload directly from the Descript interface. Megaphone has launched a unique listener performance tool, allowing "elegant, real-time visibility into podcast impressions, downloads, and listener engagement".
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Spotify has announced a live-streamed event, Spotify Stream On, on Monday Feb 22. It's not clear what it is; but Daniel Ek's comments recently may give a clue: "We are very bullish on the opportunity to provide meaningful ways for podcasters (to) monetize through the platform efforts. And I hope to be able to talk a little bit more about what our plans are in the near future on that."
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January's Australian Podcast Ranker is out. Stuff You Should Know, represented in Australia by ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia, continues as #1 podcast; Life Uncut, above, is #3. Diamantina Media (represented by ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia) is a new publisher at #9. Downloads for the top ten publishers increased by 5.5% month-on-month.
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Resonate's co-founder Jacob Bozarth appears on a recent episode of Ecomonics "to talk about lessons he's learned about podcasting, the experience of producing a podcast, and the story of Resonate over the past 5 years". It's the episode published on Feb 3.
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The New York Times released their financial results for 2020. They made $36m in podcast ad revenue, up $7m; total advertising revenue for the business declined by 20%, though. Those numbers should increase - this year, the NYT can sell advertising in This American Life, as we reported last August.
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25% of the 345m monthly active Spotify users now use the app to listen to podcasts, up from 22% the previous quarter. Speaking on the company's Q4 2020 earnings call, Daniel Ek said he's "reasonably confident" that he can see benefits in user growth and retention from podcasts.
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Podcasting is growing fast, according to LiveXLive CEO Robert Ellin. Speaking on Fox Business alongside Adam Carolla, the PodcastOne owner reckons the future for podcasting is in video, and told Stuart Varney that podcasting "will be $5-10bn in the next 5-7 years".
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Matt Deegan writes about taking money off your listeners. We learn that RedHanded earns £28,000 (US $38,400) per month from Patreon; and that The Allusionist has 1,600 supporters on Patreon after leaving PRX three months ago. (You can support Podnews on Patreon too).
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Writing for Podcast Movement, Daren Lake writes about making the most of a failed podcast.
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Netflix says, in its Q4/20 earnings call, that it no longer needs to borrow money for content, and is very close to financial sustainability.
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The Daily's woes, and revenues, are covered by Business Insider ($). We learn that the NYT's audio unit earnt $29m in 2019, but expenses were - goodness - $8m. (Thanks, JAS!)
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Australia's Podcast Ranker for December shows Stuff You Should Know at #1, represented in the country by ARN's iHeartPodcast Network. They had 9.2m downloads in December; the second place, SCA/PodcastOne, had 5.2m. The ranker is incomplete, listing participating publishers only.
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An amusing press release from Superhuman Public Radio, announcing a new logo, is the result of a request from NPR, we learn. The co-executive producers of SPR tell us: "NPR asked us to change our logo, which we did. We are just thrilled that after debuting just a month and a half ago we can count them among our listeners. We have nothing but admiration for NPR. Having their staff among our fans is a big win for us. Our exchanges with them have only confirmed our suspicion that we have something special on our hands."
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As Pete Buttigieg learnt he'd been nominated as Transport Secretary, he was doing a podcast with Hillary Clinton: The Deciding Decade.
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After a year working on The Program, a fiction podcast, the author has written their learnings. We learn that Patreon is the most successful donation tool for the show; a feature in Apple Podcasts really helped; and about the pleasures of Reddit.
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Australia has a new #1 podcast, according to the November Australian Podcast Ranker at least: Audioboom's Casefile, represented by the #1 network, ARN's iHeartPodcastNetwork Australia. Overall monthly downloads dropped by 6.5%. An incomplete ranker, it measures participating publishers only, and still doesn't include the country's largest podcaster, the ABC.
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Bruce Wawrzyniak reflects on lessons learnt after publishing 500 episodes.
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Magellan AI and Sounds Profitable have produced a map of the podcast advertising landscape, designed to help make sense of the space. Dubbed a "Podscape", you can learn more about it in this week's Sounds Profitable.
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Marketing Tactics We Can Learn From Sports Podcasts - Jack Rhysider suggests that Twitter might be the best method of promoting your podcast that you have.
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Corey Layton and Stephanie Coombes from ARN's iHeartPodcast Network is interviewed, saying that for their radio group, the incremental revenue from podcasting is rapidly growing.
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Keeku is a new French childrens' podcast platform which has just launched. It features curated children's audio content from a variety of publishers - curated by age group, theme, or time of day. The company says it'll grow kids' imagination and accompany them in learning while limiting screen-time.
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Pacific Content's Dan Misener analyses Apple Podcasts star ratings. Most podcasts have no ratings at all - but 87% of all ratings are 5-star ratings, he discovers. There's a big difference in ratings between different categories. The average star rating is 4.6. Help us be average.
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Vurbl, a free "creator-first audio streaming platform", launches today. The press release draws comparison with YouTube, claiming that Vurbl is a central place that any user can upload any audio content they own, not just podcasts, and earn money from it - monetization is supported by real-time programmatic ads. The company achieved $1.3m in funding in September. (We're on Vurbl).
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Curveball is new today on ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia. The new podcast talks to business leaders about a time this year when adapting fast was the key to determining a company's future. The first guest is outgoing CEO of Virgin Australia, Paul Scurrah.
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Stephanie Coombes is the new Podcast Content and Partnerships Director at ARN, which runs the iHeartPodcast Network Australia.
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"I think this will be a very savvy move for Spotify that helps them sell ads on their own shows as well as on third party podcasts, while also gathering whatever data they want." - Jeff Umbro, The Podglomerate, on LinkedIn
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In a timely post, Laura Mayer writes about her experiences in podcast consolidation, including poor treatment from management. She doesn't mention companies by name in the post: however, her LinkedIn shows she worked for Panoply/Megaphone for two years, then switched to competitor Stitcher/Midroll. We hope Spotify will treat its new Megaphone staff a little better.
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Podcasting is profitable for iHeartMedia - podcast revenue grew 74% year-on-year (downloads are up 71%), and new advertisers are also spending with the company in other places too. (Overall, the company has seen a 22% decline in revenue, and made a $32m loss). Bob Pittman, the CEO, committed that "50% of the new podcasts we launch on the iHeart Podcast Network will be from female and diverse creators".
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Entercom's podcasting business, including radio·com and Cadence13, claimed a 27% increase in downloads year-on-year in their latest earnings call.
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Anchor, the largest podcast host in the world, has achieved IAB Certification for their podcast analytics. Here's their full certificate. We've updated our podcast hosts page. As a small warning: "some podcasters may notice a very slight decline in play counts as a result," the company says; though some that have contacted Podnews have seen significant drops.
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Podcast ad-tech host Megaphone is still losing money but revenues increased significantly in the first nine months of 2020. Graham Holdings Company also owns Slate, Foreign Policy, and kids podcast publisher Pinna; all these companies lost money, though Pinna's revenue is also increasing.
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Are podcasts are bit too long? Blinkist, which takes best-selling nonfiction books and produces a 15-minute summary, has launched Shortcasts, doing 15-minute versions of podcasts. Revisionist History from Pushkin Industries is one of the shows offered in Shortcast format, in collaboration with the podcast creators.
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Using clips of comedy in your podcast? Expect a knock on your door before too long: Spoken Giants is a new royalty administration agency for the spoken word - much like a music publisher earns royalties for song composers.
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Portland Pod's Tanner Campbell has launched a podcast editing course on AppSumo. Normally this course costs $429, but for a limited time it's just $24.
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Sounder has partnered with Triton Digital to allow any podcast to earn revenue with dynamically-inserted advertising. This adds to their partnership with DAX for larger publishers.
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Podcasts are a unique form of media because people use them both to learn and to be entertained, according to The Canadian Podcast Listener 2020, which has released a sneak preview of some of its findings. The research says that the attentive, lean-in audience for podcasts is great for advertisers.
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Always wanted music in your podcast? Now's your chance. Anchor and Spotify have launched Shows with Music - a chance for proper, full radio-type shows with full tracks. However, shows only appear on Spotify and your listeners only hear the songs in full with Spotify Premium - but musicians do get paid as they would with any other Spotify play. If you're in the US, you can earn with Anchor sponsorships, but you can also upload your own ads, too. Available now in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland, episodes containing music will undergo a review process before being published to Spotify.
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The top 10 things I learnt in my first 100 podcast episodes (Max Branstetter)
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The Australian Podcast Ranker has been released for September. The #1 remains Stuff You Should Know, represented in Australia by ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia. The top 10 publishers account for 45,853,133 downloads, up 4.1% from August. An incomplete ranker, it measures participating publishers only, and doesn't include the ABC, the country's largest podcaster.
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Stuff of Legends is new from ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia. Hosted by Christian O'Connell, it features interviews with people like Russell Brand and Ricky Gervais sharing their three most treasured items. It's also being aired on ARN's radio stations, too.
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She Podcasts has launched a new virtual membership community, the SuperSquad. A place to learn and network "without the distraction of social media" is promised.
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How To Avoid Podcasting’s Trough Of Disillusionment - Karen Burgess from Pacific Content wants us all to relax a bit.
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Podiant has added free online courses and industry news to a brand-new Podcasters' Hub, which they've launched today.
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Sounder, a podcast platform, is a year old. They write about what they've learnt working on a podcast startup.
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Here's a long and illuminating interview with Jack Rhysider, off of Darknet Diaries. "Now it’s getting nearly 3 million downloads a month and pays more than he made in cyber security."
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70 Million is back for Season 3. For its season premiere, 70 Million takes you inside Chicago’s Cook County Jail during a rapid outbreak of COVID-19. Learn of the unprecedented steps officials took to control the outbreak, and how COVID-19 is directly confronting structures within the criminal justice system. Listen to Episode 1. (ad)
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Some indie shows are earning five-figure annual run-rates on RedCircle, says CEO Mike Kadin, responding in a Reddit query.
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Redditor u/msmialko is building a Mac-based audio editor for podcasts, and wants your help to learn more about your production process.
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ICYMI: Eight Things I Learned Making a Podcast about How F*cked We Are (Rob Deitz).
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ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia has partnered with The Good Bits, which features erotic stories from New York Times bestselling authors Alessandra Torre and Sierra Simone and USA Today bestselling author Stefanie London. ARN's Corey Layton says it's "testament to our ongoing commitment to supporting great Australian podcast content."
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The next version of Overcast, the world's third biggest podcast app, will remove one way for podcasters to earn revenue, and highlight another as a concern. A new "privacy screen" in the app's latest beta release adds a brightly-coloured warning alert for any podcast that may earn revenue from dynamic advertising and geolocation. And for smaller podcasters, the "donate" button, launched in August 2018 by the app's developer, Marco Arment, will be removed "because nobody used it and it’s not worth today’s app-review risk", he writes - referring to Apple's notoriously strict app approval process. The donate button is also in apps from Breaker, RadioPublic, PodcastAddict, Castro, and our own podcast pages. (From Sounds Profitable, here's more about how geolocation works in podcasting).
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Babbel, which says it's the top-selling language learning app, has added an in-app podcast player containing all the podcasts from Babbel. Podcasts for Italian, Spanish, English, and French learners are available, with additional content designed specifically for English and German speakers. They say that they've seen a 200% increase in new registrations as a result of the global pandemic.
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Because podcasts hosted on Anchor are not subject to the normal Apple Podcasts approval process, these pirated copies are instantly appearing in searches using Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and apps that use that data, like Overcast and Pocket Casts. Many of the copies have enabled Anchor's Listener Support, to gain financially from their copies. None of these plays will be credited back to the original owner; and ads will not earn the publishers revenue.
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An update from Anchor, following our story yesterday that Anchor could automatically delete your account without warning. Anchor say that they do not have an algorithm that automatically deletes duplicates; instead, the company uses a combination of automated and human-detected signals to assess potential infringement, and they tell Podnews that podcasts are always elevated to a human before any action is taken. In the case we reported on, the podcast had "similar content to the Libsyn-hosted Spotify listing", and it had other negative signals which led to its removal.
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Exclusive: the robots are coming. Free podcast host Anchor could automatically delete your account without any warning. It happened to experienced podcaster Jonathan Mendonsa - and all for uploading a piece of audio that he owned. And as we went to press, we discovered one reason why. If you're with Anchor, you should probably read it.
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ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia has added three new podcasts to its roster, and posted audience growth figures. "Listening on the iHeartPodcast Network is up 31% since before the pandemic," says the data. ARN uses Megaphone.
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iHeartMedia, the owner of iHeartRadio, says that its podcast revenue grew 103% year-on-year in Q2 - total digital revenue was $93m. Unique podcast listeners grew by 30% year-on-year; downloads grew by 62%. Revenue for the quarter across the company, however, was down by 46.6%: we can blame the pandemic for that.
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The New York Times will sell advertising on This American Life's podcast in 2021, according to their earnings call. Meredith Kopit Levien, who becomes CEO in September, said that the company sees The Daily as "a distribution channel for us to launch other great work into the world", and has an average of 3.5m daily listeners.
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Warner Music Group's CEO isn't concerned that they may lose money from Spotify's interest in podcasting. The company is also "looking at the economic model of podcasting" but "haven’t seen the right ones yet".
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"I believe the podcasting game is in the first inning," SiriusXM CEO Jim Meyer said in the earnings call. "I don't know what the viability is of podcasting as a standalone business." Chief Content Officer Scott Greenstein added "The podcast is very nascent ... you can tell by the numbers, not many podcasts do very significant numbers."
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No Merger is a new podcast from ARN's iHeartPodcast Australia, exploring the failed merger between two AFL clubs.
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Pandora is launching interactive voice ads, which allow listeners to say "yes" if they want to learn more about a product or brand's service. This follows a trial we reported on in April 2019; Spotify also tested this in May 2019.
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So, you want to start a fiction podcast? Multitude has released a 50-page PDF, from auditions to production, editing to marketing, and what they learnt when they produced Next Stop.
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Tumble en Español is an adaptation of the popular kids podcast into Spanish. Here's what the producers, Tumble and La Coctelera Music, learnt while doing it.
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OneFinePlay posted a job ad for a Podcast Producer recently, and got 350 applications. What they learnt from the process was interesting: "only 50 of the 288 total candidates had ever been involved in the making of a podcast". (Should have advertised in Podjobs!)
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It's official: Scripps has agreed to sell Stitcher to SiriusXM - the agreed price is $325m ($265m cash plus earnouts). Stitcher is a podcast advertising saleshouse, an original podcast studio, and an app.
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Todd Juenger, an 'media analyst' for Bernstein, has decided "it's unlikely Spotify will generate much earnings from podcasts", and has downgraded his rating on the stock. It's not the first time he's talked Spotify down this year. In 2018, he said Disney would fail to launch a successful streaming service; it had 28.6m subscribers in the first three months, was the highest trending search term last year and is beating Netflix for app downloads in the US. Analysts, eh?
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Aureal touts itself as a recording app and free podcast host that distributes your podcast to major platforms. It promises you get paid, too, but it’s something to do with the blockchain and apparently harnesses “the power of Distributed Ledger Technology to empower your content value and optimize the revenue generation, with the use of Interplanetary File System”. The IPFS is a method of hosting files in a peer-to-peer network which could mean Aureal pays no bandwidth costs, though it appears to be incompatible with podcast apps.
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Culture Class Podcast, a podcast that learns about different cultures and backgrounds, recently interviewed Daryl Davis, a Black man who befriended members of the KKK.
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On The Jordan Harbinger Show Maria Konnikova is a journalist, a best-selling author and an international poker champion: a title she earnt while researching her latest book. Fans of poker and human motivation should listen to her interview
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Triton Digital has released its latest US Podcast Report. The top 5 podcast networks, unchanged in order, saw a 6% rise in downloads. WarnerMedia made its debut at #8, with 3.7m weekly downloads; the data includes participating publishers only (and doesn't include iHeart nor ESPN).
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iHeartMedia and WarnerMedia Entertainment have signed a deal to co-produce a slate of companion podcasts to promote HBO Max and their upcoming catalogue of original and legacy shows.
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Finding the best part of your podcast to promote - Headliner's Neil Mody goes into the technology, and neuro-linguistic programming, that the company uses for their automatic podcast videos service.
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Holy podcast exclusives, Batman! Spotify has signed an exclusive deal with Warner Bros/DC for an original slate of podcasts including Superman and Wonder Woman.
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Rob Greenlee has been confirmed as Chairperson of The Podcast Academy, in a press release. Writing for Podnews, Rob Greenlee says that becoming Chairperson was "not something that I asked for, or even lobbied for". He focuses on the benefits of being involved, and highlights two free webinars today to learn more.
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Oxford Road Presents: Media's New Deal interviews Nick Quah (see above). Quah talks about his concerns of power and capitalisation in the podcast space, and ad space trends. We also learn he listens to all podcasts at 1.2x.
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The latest Australian Podcast Report has been released by Triton Digital. ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia is the #1 publisher, with 8.4m downloads in May. Audioboom and West Australian Newspapers are new publishers in the report. The ABC, the country's largest podcaster, was promised to be joining "in a few months" back in October, but is still absent. They did not respond to our request for comment. The ranker only measures participating publishers.
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Podcasting's bigger than ever. ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia says that podcast listening is 22% larger than even before the coronavirus pandemic in the country. The company has published detailed stats for categories, and has also announced commercial partnerships with Audioboom and Kast Media.
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Two Seasons In, Here’s What We’ve Learned About Podcast Marketing, shares Podnews supporter Message Heard.
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Good Yarns is one of two new podcasts from Podshape, a new podcasting company in Brisbane, Australia.
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Zoom, which almost everyone uses for video conferencing these days,released their first-quarter's figures: revenue has increased to $328m from $122m a year ago.
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The highest new entry at #7 is Últimas noticias de CNN en Español (from WarnerMedia), which is also on smart speaker news briefings. Us too: we're on Alexa and on Google Assistant.
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Listnr makes a podcast in over 30 languages without recording anything - it uses speech synthesis, "synthesized by our Deep Learning Engine".
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RomComPods "harnesses our culture’s reinvigorated love of the charming romcom genre, and provides a bit of much-needed escapism during the COVID craziness", with more than twenty voice actors recording remotely. The first season, Honeymoon for One, launches today.
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Adam Carolla managed to "make history" with 1.1m video streams of a live episode of his podcast. The stream of the PodcastOne show was with LiveXLive, who are also the new owners of Podcast One. (Tip for podcasters: it's pronounced Live by Live, we belatedly learn.)
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An award-winning folk podcast, Folk on Foot is to run a second music festival online this Monday May 25. The first, over Easter, raised over £110,000 (US$134,000) to support musicians who are unable to earn a living during the coronavirus.
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Winds is a "beautiful RSS and podcast app" for desktop. The open source app offers discovery based on "machine learning".
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Love Learning is a new audio learning tool for kids, and was launched yesterday in Brisbane QLD, Australia. Each episode will include links to downloadable activities to keep the kids entertained for hours after the podcast ends.
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Cumulus Media, owners of Westwood One, said in their earnings call that their podcast revenue was up 60% year-on-year in March. Downloads were also up year-on-year by 50%.
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iHeartMedia had their investor call on Thursday. The company mentioned podcasts 57 times, more than they mentioned radio (49 times). Their podcast revenue in Q1 grew 80% year-on-year, said Bob Pittman, adding that their own iHeartRadio app has doubled year-on-year for podcast usage.
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Podcast ad revenue for the New York Times rose by 30% in Q1 2020, COO Meredith Kopit Levien said during an earnings call. CEO Mark Thompson also noted that the number of subscribers is now at an all-time high of over six million. However, total advertising declined 15% for the company, and they're expecting it to get worse before it gets better.
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Blue Wire, a sports podcasting startup, gets a write-up by a Forbes blogger, especially focusing on the changing times for sports radio. The company has also announced three new hires from Sports Illustrated, Warner Brothers and Wondery.
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Nick Garnett, a BBC reporter, posts a piece about "remote recording for podcasters", discussing how remote recording tools work and what equipment you need.
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There are now over a million podcasts in Spotify, according to their investor call. The company claims 286m monthly active users, and that it's "the number one audio service for podcasts in dozens of countries around the world".
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SiriusXM, the owner of Pandora, has admitted in an earnings call that Pandora has "definitely seen a downturn in listening" but that it "has come back recently". "You can track the change and listening trend directly to commute [times]", said CFO David Frear. The company didn't mention Pandora's podcasting aspirations at all; Pandora itself has lost 8% of its monthly active users over the past year. Meanwhile, the company's star Howard Stern is open to ideas about what happens at the end of the year once his contract expires.
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Comedy podcast Archergeddon clearly has nothing to do with the above. It is, according to PodBible, an everyday story of country folk in Bambersham who have to plan the Easter Fête while avoiding the apocalypse. Warning: their scripted apocalypse contains "a deadly virus". Too soon.
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Keeping Up With Corona is a new podcast on ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia, about how to navigate life and keep the kids sane while dealing with isolation. Of note: the podcast's evergreen content is augmented with the latest information, using dynamic content insertion.
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From Kevin Patton, the host of The A&P Professor, which teaches anatomy and physiology, a free e-book to help teachers transitioning to distance learning: Pandemic Teaching: a guide for college faculty.
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How can you market your new show? The creator of The Program audio series managed to get into Apple Podcast's New and Noteworthy in three different countries, as well as get promotion in Hacker News and Reddit, for their show. They've written a full look at the effect that had on the podcast's traffic, and some learnings from the experience.
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Also in Sweden, Mordpodden's publisher Bauer Media have removed nearly 330 podcast episodes after multiple plagiarism claims in an investigation by Swedish Television.
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Using data from Megaphone, ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia claims "a significant increase and interesting changes" in podcast consumption. Particularly, it points to a new peak between 11am and 1pm.
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Google Ad Mob pulled advertising from Podcast Addict again (we reported the first time on Oct 31). This time it was barred from earning revenue because of "unauthorised filesharing". The company have since admitted they were wrong in doing so, and ads are now appearing once more.
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Podtrac has published March 2020's top podcast publishers. There are a number of new publishers participating in Podtrac's list: WarnerMedia (new at #10), Fox News Radio and Slate. "Sixteen of the Top 20 were up or flat for March over February in regards to Downloads", says the release.
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A new Australian Podcast Ranker has been released. Stuff You Should Know remains the #1 show, which is represented in Australia by ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia. The top 100 podcasts account for 19.1m downloads in total; it doesn't include the ABC, the country's largest podcaster.
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RØDE have announced new firmware for the RØDECaster Pro, the company's popular audio mixer. v2.1 beta, available at the bottom of this page, includes the ability to control individual processing parameters, enhanced metering, a new reverb effect, sound pad overdubbing and MP3 export. It also features an enhanced companion app. As a warning: it's an unsupported public beta, so only install it if you're cool with things going wrong occasionally.
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Edison Research are planning an additional webinar, Inside The Infinite Dial, on Apr 3. Expect to hear "the entire content strategy behind the project, what we have learned over the last two decades, and how to translate that success to your content practices."
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Survivor's Guide to Coronavirus is a brand new podcast from Australian comedian Nazeem Hussain, asking fellow comedians and personalities like Luke McGregor, Julia Morris, Karl Chandler, Collingwood’s Dane Swan, Scott Pape (The Barefoot Investor), Urzila Carlsson, Joel Creasey and even Melbourne Lord Mayor Sally Capp, how to survive this stupid virus. (ARN’s iHeartPodcast Network Australia / Megaphone)
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Creative Elements describes itself as "How I Built This for the creative class", and argues that it’s never been a better time to earn a living with your creativity. The show launches today, with high-profile guests talking about the nitty gritty of building their creative career. (The Podglomerate / Megaphone)
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PRX's Privacy Symposium took place late last month in a rather different-feeling New York NY, USA. While much of the privacy symposium was held in private, video of the first four sessions has been released. "We need inspiration, we need experiments, we actually need to fail a little bit more and not crucify those failures, but really learn from them. We need to create standards", said PRX's CEO Kerri Hoffman.
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Whooshkaa is offering free private podcasting accounts to schools worldwide. We covered fellow Australian company RØDE's offer of a free RØDECaster Pro kit to any NSW school a few days ago. Veritone is also giving free access to its applications. UK-based podcast host Podiant is offering a free 30-minute consultation to help you get started.
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Finally, if you're in self-isolation, there's one thing you absolutely mustn't do, according to this satire site. Too late!
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Actually, technically, we need four stories, it turns out, otherwise things break. So, below, we link to an article from Rob Dietz about eight things he learnt when making his podcast. That's in our podcast news section, which is next.
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The London Evening Standard claims that podcasting is good for your mental health.
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Triton Digital have released new rankers for the four weeks ending Feb 16: their new LATAM ranker; and their Australian Podcast Ranker, which was delayed after a typo. The Aussie ranker has a new #1: Stuff You Should Know from iHeartRadio, which is sold in Australia by ARN. From The Newsroom is the highest Aussie podcast in the list, debuting at #2 even though it launched a week into the data period.
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Joshua Dudley profiles Sarah Rhea Warner, "whose level of giving back in her field seems to be approaching sainthood".
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In an earning summary, The New York Times says The Daily has achieved 1 billion downloads. Podcast revenues look to have increased by 26% to $71m, though this accounts line also includes revenue from the NYT's branded content studio and from Wirecutter - it's 13% of the company's ad revenue.
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Acast has launched Acast Marketplace, allowing any advertiser direct and automated access to the company's podcasts. The company earnt $40m from ad revenue last year.
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At the start of National Eating Disorders Awareness WeekTransmitter Media have launched their first original podcast, Rebel Eaters Club - a show that is about breaking up with diet culture. The host, Virgie Tovar, "shares her personal history as a fat woman of color who hated her body for twenty years before learning to love herself as she is".
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Podcasting in Egypt started in 2016, and overwhelmingly uses free hosts (and earns little money). But the Egyptian industry is expanding, according to a report from podcast producer Arcast.
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Today, we learnt that Google Podcasts has a different front page for French speakers.
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Andy Bowers, the co-founder of Megaphone, has left the company. As a clue to what he's doing next, he writes: I had so much fun in the early days of podcasting—when the stakes were low and failure helped us learn, when things were not so formulaic and we were making up the rules as we went along—that I’m moving on to other nascent media.
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YouTube earns $15bn a year, Google has announced.
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Spotify claims podcast listening on its platform has grown 200% year-on-year, and has data showing podcast consumption on Spotify leads to stronger retention and upgrades to Premium. Spotify now claims over 700,000 podcasts on its platform; Apple currently has 873,466 in their directory. Just 16% (43m) of Spotify's monthly active users engage with podcasts, though.
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Empire Streaming is the latest podcast host to achieve IAB Certification. The company is based in Pittsburgh PA, USA; there are now twelve companies with IAB Certification.
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Joe Rogan's earning $30m from his podcast, and My Favorite Murder earnt $15 million in 2019 says Forbes, in a story by a staffer that ranks podcasters by revenue. Dave Ramsey is at #3 at $10m.
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Paul Bae, the host of the Podcast Gumbo podcast, is posting things he's learning about creating the Podcast Gumbo podcast.
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Mick Jagger has said "start me up" to his own podcast company. Rainy Day Podcasts will produce a number of original narrative podcasts, and has done a deal for up to seven podcasts with Warner Bros Digital Networks.
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The European Radio Show, currently underway in Paris, France, has a surprisingly vibrant Pod Village: an area with exhibitors from mainly French podcast companies. The area also has a demonstration theatre - when we walked past, we saw Podcastics demonstrating "lien magique", magic subscription links. There was also a conference track of podcast topics, open to everyone, with speakers and panels: we saw Declan Moore from Wondery explain their strategy. Podnews's Editor, James Cridland, gave a keynote: "ten things radio can learn from podcasting". The event continues today and tomorrow.
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PR Daily warns us about five blunders to avoid with your internal podcast. Being boring is apparently one of those.
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Out Editor is in Paris, France, at the Salon de la Radio later this week. See a 30-minute keynote, ten things radio can learn from podcasting; and he's on two panels: Making podcasting mainstream in Europe and The future of audio under Google, Apple, and Facebook. Go get some free tickets.
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Give them Lala... with Randall launches next week: a new podcast from Lala Kent and her film producer fiancé Randall Emmett. WarnerMedia Podcast Network have signed a deal for the production, sales and promotion of 50 episodes. (Knit)
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Podnews will be at Salon de la Radio in Paris, France, next week; our Editor is talking on "ten things that radio can learn from podcasting". Want to catch up? Drop us a note. Want to go? Grab your free ticket here.
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Casper Mattresses is going for an IPO. In its documents, we learn that for every $1,000 Caspar mattress, it spends $290 on ads, including a lot of podcast ads.
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Megaphone has announced David Cohn as Head of Sales. He joins from WarnerMedia.
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Spreaker Prime: The MovieFilm Podcast is hosted by film critic Zaki Hasan and television writer Brian Hall, and in their show they engage in hilarious and insightful conversations on all the latest out of Hollywood, including news, reviews, and interviews with some of the biggest names in movies! They’re using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut their hosting costs.
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Spreaker Prime: Which Murderer is a show that talks about the methods, motives and background of murderers and their victims, covering two crimes per episode and debating from the victim's perspective which murderer the hosts would pick to kill them if they HAD to choose. They’re using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut their hosting costs.
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Spreaker Prime: **Switch, Pivot and Quit is a podcast that lets you sit in with your girlfriends and chat all things career changes and challenges. These influential women often find themselves iTunes’ curated list of "Inspiring Women." They’re using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut their hosting costs.
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Spreaker Prime: The Karen & Ellen Letters highlights a found correspondence between two teenage girls and their landlord, over a three year period, from the 1980s. This podcast is the reading of those letters and a re-telling of the host's journey to validate their authenticity. They’re using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut their hosting costs.
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Pandora and AdsWizz has been awarded the TAG “Certified Against Fraud” Seal by the Trustworthy Accountability Group. The company says "it reassures buyers that Pandora is following anti-fraud best practices to combat fraudulent, invalid traffic and promote greater transparency in the advertising supply chain".
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Libsyn also runs its own podcasting advertising business. It earnt $1.57m in 2017 from podcast advertising, but earnings fell to $1.26m in 2018, and in the first nine months of 2019, ad revenues slumped further to just $438,000. As we reported in October, their terms and conditions forbid podcasters on their platform to carry any advertising without written permission, and require Libsyn to also sell ads on behalf of publishers. Some who've contacted us suggest that the restriction of Podsights may be for reasons other than privacy.
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Spreaker Prime: Something's Not Right is a podcast where the hosts explore true crime and all things creepy or unpleasant, with a special focus on incidents in Tennessee. So, take a seat and enjoy with hosts Thashana and Olivia. They’re using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut their hosting costs.
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A new legal risk for podcast directories and podcast apps: unauthorised image use. Podnews has learnt that a company called ImageRights is sending legal letters to podcast directories, demanding money for "copyright infringement": in this case, they claim that a podcast directory has reproduced podcast artwork that contains their client's copyrighted image. All podcast directories automatically pull images straight from podcasters' RSS feeds; republishing infringing images is, this company claims, further copyright infringement.
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Subscriber numbers gone down in YouTube? Don't panic - they're just removing numbers related to closed accounts.
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Spreaker Prime: Paranormal Punchers is a light-hearted podcast discussing anything paranormal. From Bigfoot to haunted locations, the hosts breakdown a paranormal story and give you their uneducated, but honest and spirited opinions. They’re using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut their hosting costs.
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Sparks is a new podcast app that "helps you learn, retain and apply knowledge from your listening", which has launched today. You can hit a button while listening to capture your thoughts and bookmark that moment for later.
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Could targeted podcast advertising save lives? Radio France is using Targetspot to produce personalised podcast advertising that is aware of a listeners' location, the local weather, and health data to warn of flu outbreaks, colds, food poisoning and other issues near them.
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TuneIn and Sony/Warner are both appealing a UK High Court decision made last month that has, effectively, stopped TuneIn from listing non-UK radio stations in the country. "We hope to overturn this latter point on appeal as we believe that it is fundamentally bad for freedom of expression on the Internet and cultural diversity," a TuneIn spokesperson tells Podnews, adding "the Court of Appeal will now have to grapple with this complex case, which looks at whether we should be allowed to provide our UK users with access to hyperlinks to music radio stations that are freely available on the Internet."
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Omny Studio has launched Comparison Analytics, allowing easier-to-read comparisons of the growth of your podcast episode downloads for their first sixty days. The company also offers CSV export of analytics.
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Spreaker Prime: The NBA Podcast is a show hosted by Bryan Toporek and Morten Stig Jensen who spend each episode walking through all of the latest happenings in the NBA, both on and off the court. They’re using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut their hosting costs.
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Kara McGuirk-Allison shares her experiences about being a solo podcaster. Lots of tips and advice about how to reach new audiences, and the perils of editing on a cloud-based system.
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Thanks to Amanda Hickman, who has compiled all the surveys and studies into US media salaries and pay rates she can find.
Thank you, Anne, in the USA! She became our 11,000th email subscriber at 2.58am our time this morning. Welcome also to recent subscribers from Canada's Elmnt FM, NPR, Australia's Network Ten, Belgium's VRT, Warner Music and NBC Universal.
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Spreaker Prime: Latter-Day Lesbian is hosted by Mary and Shelly (the latter) who share their raw, honest and funny life experiences. Shelly is a divorced mother of seven dealing with leaving the Mormon church and learning about her sexuality for the first time. They’re using Spreaker Prime to host for free and make more money.
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Spreaker Prime: You've heard the stories about bloody murder and horrendous homicide, but what about the rest of the crimes committed on a daily basis? The podcast Mugshot brings you stories about the crimes you didn't know you needed to hear... Robbery, fraud, arson, stalking, assault, and more. They’re using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut their hosting costs.
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The host of Strong and Free, Christopher Balkaran, shares what he's learnt after podcasting for a year.
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Spreaker Prime: Morbidology is a weekly true crime podcast that takes an in-depth look at some of the world's most heinous murders using investigative research and primary audio – including 911 calls, interviews and trial testimony – to share each true story. They’re using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut their hosting costs.
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Libsyn's revenue continues to increase, according to its Q3 2019 report. For its podcasting business, Libsyn earnt US $10.5m in revenue in the first nine months of 2019: up 14% from $9.2m in the same period last year. Libsyn has 67,000 podcasts on its platform, and also owns an internet hosting company, Pair.
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Spreaker Prime: True Crime Fan Club Podcast is a show for for the ultimate true crime enthusiast. The host peels back the curtain and gives you a glimpse into the life and crimes of some of the most evil minds of our time. They’re using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut their hosting costs.
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Microsoft have launched a podcast. "The In Culture podcast brought to you by Microsoft is a platform for musicians, artists, fashion designers, gamers, and creators to tell their stories and how they have harnessed Microsoft's technology to make strides in their prospective artistic fields!" Interesting to note, no prominent "subscribe with Apple Podcasts" link on the podcast's homepage. (Simplecast)
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Spreaker Prime: Sistah Speak: The Walking Dead is a podcast devoted to the AMC series, The Walking Dead. Sistah J, Sistah K, and guest hosts discuss the latest episodes, theories raised by fans of the show, and give personal opinions from a Sistah’s point of view. They’re using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut their hosting costs.
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Entercom CEO David Field gave the prices paid in cash for Cadence13 ($34m) and Pineapple Media ($14m) in an earnings call; that's below the reported prices at the time. The company, which owns RADIO·COM, has announced that it's to get onto Bixby voice assistants
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Spreaker Prime: Dogma Debate is a podcast hosted by comedian and actor, David Smalley, who respectfully invites believers to provide evidence for their religions, crystal healing, ouija boards, witchcraft, politics and other worldviews. He’s using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut hosting costs.
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Morning Brew's Josh Kaplan writes a long, and helpful, list of experiences of selling podcast advertising for the first time. In it, he patiently explains all the different bits of how podcasting works, in order to explain how difficult it is.
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Spreaker Prime: Love HBO’s new show Watchmen? Then Who Watched The Watchmen is just the podcast you should be listening to! Each show breaks down the storyline and interesting details of each episode. They’re using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut their hosting costs.
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TuneIn has lost a major court case in the UK. Brought by two large record companies, the ruling given was that TuneIn is unlawfully linking to international radio stations that do not have UK music licences. Under copyright law, music licences are required in each country where content is consumed. TuneIn is currently the default podcast service for Amazon Alexa smart speakers, and the default radio service for both Amazon and Google.
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"Most podcast advertising is very rudimentary and not personalized," said SiriusXM CEO Jim Meyer on an earnings call. "Frankly, this area is ripe to be disrupted and improved." The company owns Pandora, which has seen a 5% increase in subscriber revenue.
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The screenshot in the above story would appear to indicate that the app achieves somewhere in the region of 210m ad impressions per month (263M for the period shown). The typical earning from an AdMob banner is anywhere from $0.15 to $1.50 per thousand; assuming it's $0.15, that could represent $32,000 in monthly revenue from ads. Contacted by Podnews, the developer of Podcast Addict declined to comment to our nosy enquiries about revenue, which is fair enough.
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Hunted launches on November 12th: the first in a slate of audio fiction from Wolf Entertainment and Endeavor Audio. "When four convicts escape from a maximum-security prison, Deputy Marshal Emily Barnes (Parker Posey) is called in to pursue the criminals on one of the most treacherous and violent manhunts in United States history." The trailer's in our podcast today. (Wolf Entertainment / Endeavor Audio / Megaphone)
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Spotify has released its Q3 2019 earnings report, claiming a 39% increase in podcast listens in just three months. It made an operating profit of US $60m, in comparison to a $6.7m loss in 2018, reports Engadget. There are some calls for podcasters on the platform to be paid; and other calls for podcasters supplied to Spotify Premium subscribers to be ad-free.
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Kellie Riordan, the head of the Australian ABC Audio Studios, has written a long read of five things we learnt from OzPod 2019.
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ARN has become exclusive Australian sales representative for iHeartPodcast Network. ARN, an Australian broadcaster, has the rights to the iHeart name and app in the country.
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Stitcher podcasts are now represented in Australia by Whooshkaa, opening up Midroll podcasts to Australian advertisers. The company got IAB Certification in May, has its own Alexa integration, and we've covered similar Whooshkaa deals with WYNC, Wondery and Australian radio network ARN.
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Podcast publisher Audioboom has published its financial results for Q3 2019. Revenue was $5.7m for the quarter (up 86%); the company has 45% more advertisers year-on-year; and it's earning $27 CPM.
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Spreaker Prime: The World Wanderers Podcast is hosted by Amanda and Ryan, twenty-something travel enthusiasts and world travellers who tackled 40 countries in one year. They talk with incredible guests who share their travel stories, tips and tricks, destination recommendations, and thoughts on how travel can allow you to lead a happier life. They’re using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut their hosting costs.
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More advice: Why brands should experiment with one-off podcasts (JAR Audio); How to guarantee success in audio storytelling (JAR Audio again); Which podcast microphone should I buy? (Podaboutit)
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How much money do podcasters make? Jack Rhysider says that 99% of all podcasts earn nothing at all; but estimates some of the revenue for the big shows.
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The Podcast Editors Community have revealed the results of a survey into the industry. The average charge for producing an hour-long podcast was around US$105; and the best thing to increase your price as an editor is to be effective on social media, and to go to events - but not too many. The full survey results can be found when signing up to more information about the Podcast Editors Conference; or you can watch the full webinar.
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Spreaker Prime: Gone Cold is a true crime show that explores unsolved homicides and missing persons cases throughout the state of Texas, aiming to provide the victims and their families with a voice. They’re using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut their hosting costs.
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Podcasts will be bigger than radio next year in terms of NPR's revenue: according to Deborah Cowan, the organisation's CFO. She's expecting to earn $55m from podcasting next year. NPR is profitable, and overall revenue grew 10% year-on-year.
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Spreaker Prime: Black Widow Podcast is a scripted podcast that investigates dating as a millennial. It promotes positivity around sexual experiences, especially the experiences of women, whatever end of the sexual spectrum they might be on. They’re using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut their hosting costs.
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George McDonagh, the producer of Power Corrupts writes what he learnt when producing the first season. He notes that the podcast has had half a million downloads. (Libsyn)
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Spreaker Prime: High and Dry is a comedy podcast that discusses serious topics like their bracket of “coolest person over 70-years-old” and other hilarious mayhem. They're using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut their hosting costs.
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In Australia, the ABC have released an improved search function that uses automated transcripts from podcasts. They're using AWS Transcribe, according to this technical article.
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Also at the London Podcast Festival, Aclass: Women invites podcasters and podcast newbies to learn how to create, develop and grow their very own successful podcast. Brought to the festival by Acast, it's a free event, and includes free studio time. Here's more details, and how to apply.
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Spreaker Prime: Nothing rhymes with murder is a global journey of murder, with a new country and true crime gems every week. (Sadly none so far includes anyone eating a burger on a girder). The hosts, Kate and Georgie, use Spreaker Prime to earn money and save on their hosting costs.
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Spreaker Prime: The Wicked Library featurhes dramatic tellings of horror fiction stories from new, upcoming, independent and bestselling authors. They use Spreaker Prime to earn money and save on their hosting costs.
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Spreaker Prime: Jay + Jack Productions produce a number of podcasts as accompaniments to TV shows. The Leftovers looks at the HBO series, as one example. They use Spreaker Prime to earn money and save on their hosting costs.
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A new service called Podcorn has launched: it says it's a podcast marketplace for sponsorships, helping podcasts earn money. The company launches with $2.2m of seed funding.
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The New York Times, in an analyst's call earlier this month, revealed that digital advertising (including within its podcasts) grew by 14% year-on-year, and that they added a second ad into The Daily at the end of June. (We think this refers to an additional midroll position; there have been occasional post-roll ads for a while). Mark Thompson, the CEO, added that the company is "looking for ways ... of building out our podcasting capability".
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iHeartMedia's earnings call was last week. Bob Pittman highlighted iHeartRadio's promotional power, noting that "Disgraceland went from 100,000 downloads in the last month it was published on its former platform to two million" once it had moved to iHeart.
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Spreaker Prime: Every day, there are stories that are Unresolved. Micheal Whelan tries to determine why these stories - unsolved crimes and other unexplained phenomena - have no ending. He uses Spreaker Prime to earn money and save on his hosting costs.
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Spreaker Prime: Lost Origins explores all things ancient mystery, alternative historical theory, extraterrestrial phenomena, and lost civilizations. Hosts Andrew and CK are using Spreaker Prime to earn money and save on their hosting costs.
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Kellie Riordan from the Australian ABC Studios posted some things she learnt at Podcast Movement 2019.
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Spreaker Prime: The A24 Project focuses on every single movie released by A24, a ground-breaking movie company. They're using Spreaker Prime to earn money and save on their hosting costs.
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Spreaker Prime: Sistah Speak: Claws is a podcast devoted to the TNT series, Claws. Sistah A, Sistah J, Sistah K, and Sistah LM are using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut hosting costs.
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Is YouTube really the #1 destination for podcasts? Here's a sneak preview from the Canadian Podcast Listener with more information from the hundreds of people they surveyed who said just that. "What we’re learning about podcast listening on YouTube could create some strategic opportunities for podcast networks and content creators."
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Formerly of 99% Invisible and NPR and now host of Bellwether, Sam Greenspan did a Reddit AMA last week. Among many things, we learn that he was born with the name Gordon.
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Spreaker Prime: True Crime Bullsh**t is a serialized, investigative podcast exploring meticulous and enigmatic serial killer Israel Keyes. it's hosted by Josh Hallmark, He's using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut his hosting costs.
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Spreaker Prime: Jade and XD describe their podcast as "the blackest show about nothing" - offering social commentary on anything and everything. They're using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut their hosting costs.
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Breaking: Veritone One has announced Influencer Bridge, a pay-per-performance advertising platform for podcasters, YouTubers and Instagrammers. Podcasters earn money once a transaction takes place – for instance, when a listener uses a podcast's unique promo code to purchase an advertised product. You can sign up today.
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Advice: how to make breathtaking podcast cover art (G2); how to remove background noise with Audacity (The Podcast Host)
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Spreaker Prime: Southern Fried True Crime explores historical and contemporary true crime in the South. Join native Tennessean, Erica Kelley, and her Southern sass to see just how fried the justice system can be in the Deep South. She’s using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut her hosting costs.
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Spotify have released their first quarter 2019 earnings results, and a fancy infographic. Revenue is up 31% year-on-year. Of note from the report:
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Spreaker Prime - Switch, Pivot or Quit is a podcast that lets you sit in with your girlfriends and chat all things career changes and challenges. These influential women often find themselves in Apple Podcasts's curated list of "Inspiring Women." They’re using Spreaker Prime to earn money and cut their hosting costs.
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We've learnt that Apple's previously-announced podcast categories were quietly altered earlier this month. Changes include a removal of
Arts>Literature
, Society & Culture>History
and Sports>Outdoor
; a new Education>Language Learning
; Health
is now Health & Fitness
; Sports>Fantasy
is now Sports>Fantasy Sports
; Religion & Spirituality>Other
was announced but has since disappeared; and a tweak from TV & Film>Aftershows
to TV & Film > After Shows
. We've updated our list of the changes.
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Black Enterprise focuses on the team behind Earn your Leisure, which was launched in January, now has "more than 6,500 subscribers". (Anchor)
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RadioPublic interview Kate Krosschell about Lantigua Williams & Co's 70 Million, and learns about the benefit of transcripts.
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The folks behind Single File have released their podcast as... a cassette. In the comments, we learn many others have been released as a "USB tape", a USB key that looks like a cassette.
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While paid-for bots are one way of getting one-star reviews, some podcasters have encouraged their listeners to leave one-star ratings on competing podcasts that just launched, we've learnt. Other podcasters have been targeted too.
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Andy Richter, "best known for his role as sidekick of Conan O'Brien", launches a new podcast today. The Three Questions sees Andy ask the same three questions to each of his guests: "Where do you come from?" "Where are you going?" "What have you learned?" (Team Coco / Earwolf / ART19)
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The RTX Podcast Festival with WarnerMedia's Rooster Teeth, is in Austin TX, USA next weekend, as part of RTX, a gaming, animation and internet culture event.
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Previously, on..., hosted by UK broadcaster Jamie East, helps you get up to date with TV shows. Choose a show and an episode, and learn what happens in it. Here, at random, is S1E3 of Stranger Things. (Acast)
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Danny Baker, a much-loved and much-sacked UK radio presenter, is to start a podcast based on his most recent BBC 5 Live show. He was fired after an ill-advised tweet a few months ago. Previously on another station, he learnt of his imminent sacking before going on-air, and proceeded to broadcast a full show railing against the management. His new podcast starts next year.
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If you use it to produce podcasts, be aware that Google Hangouts On Air is going away later this year.
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EXCLUSIVE: Polish radio station TOK FM is earning money from subscription podcasts, with over 17,000 paying subscribers. We spoke to Jarosław Śliżewski, the station's CDO.
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From the luxury retailer, The Barneys Podcast returns for season three with a new host: journalist and activist Noor Tagouri. The podcast promises "heartfelt conversations that challenge convention and celebrate people who are pushing culture forward".
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Our Editor spoke at Podcast Day last week with three podcasts that everyone can learn from. Here's what he said, in podcast form.
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WarnerMedia Podcast Network is working together with Rainstream Media on season two of Somebody Somewhere. In an interview with Podnews, GM/VP Tyler Moody explains the strategy behind the move, as well as his thoughts on Apple's new categories and what he gets out of Podcast Movement.
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As a side note - the British Podcast Awards appear to have invested considerably in PR for their winners. This piece in The Guardian features a pre-ceremony photo shoot taken at the awards (even crediting the sponsors). Much to learn for other countries. The company responsible is Carver PR.
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Podiant may be the first hosting company to let you choose from Apple's new categories. The new functionality comes with a lengthy warning, in particular: "Apple gave no warning when they released the new categories, so we don’t know much about how they’re going to be implemented". We, and they, would advise: do nothing.
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Back for a new season, Somebody Somewhere follows former prosecutor David Payne and former CNN producer Jody Gottlieb as they investigate a double homicide in a homeless encampment in Seattle. It's the first podcast from WarnerMedia Podcast Network that isn't associated with an existing TV, video or digital brand. (WarnerMedia Podcast Network / RainStream Media / knit)
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A free service, which apparently "uses machine learning" - feed Podcast Transcribe with an MP3 file, and it'll transcribe it for you within ten minutes. We fed it this episode, and it took less than a minute to transcribe it like this. (Our podcast features an aloof British accent, which can throw automated voice-to-text software).
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Postcard Academy this week features Podnews's world HQ in Brisbane, Australia - and interviews our editor about what he learnt when he moved here. (Libsyn)
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Podtrac is changing their measurement algorithm. A blog post appears to indicate that they're undergoing official IAB compliance, and warns "you should expect to see your download numbers decrease to be consistent with the new guidelines". Podtrac claimed last July that their figures were, and have always been, consistent with the IAB Podcast Metric Guidelines v2.0; but say this change is due to "more coalescing around specific interpretations of the guidelines" in the industry.
Welcome to almost 400 new subscribers in May so far, including people from Himalaya, PodcastOne Australia, Media Monitors, Cadence13, Vox Media, ESPN, Luminary, Acast, NRK, NPR, Spotify, PRX, ARN and Radio-Canada. Please, tell your colleagues (and tell your HR people about our free jobs board).
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Advice: How to write a podcast script (G2Crowd), and why characters and storylines aren't just for fiction podcasts (The Podcast Host)
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Similarly, if you are a podcast app developer or someone who cares about your show notes, we'd also be curious for your comments about a document we're working on which attempts to explain to podcast app developers what we want as a bare minimum to display in show notes. Hit the 'reply' button if you'd like to learn more, or have any suggestions on a next step.
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Seth Resler from radio consultants Jacobs Media thinks there's a lesson for radio from Luminary, advising broadcasters interested in podcasting to "tread lightly, invest the proper time toward learning the ropes, and do so with humility." Writing on Medium, Mike Raab thinks the future of podcasting is subscription, though - and "we should be excited".
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But that's another story, a podcast about books that changed peoples' lives, has Melinda Gates as their current guest. "She talks about what James Baraz’s Awakening Joy taught her about meditating, learning to take a step back, and trusting her soul." (Macmillan / Megaphone)
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An app which rewards podcast listeners for listening, Podcoin has been 'acquired' by the Meet Group, in a cash-free deal. Our Dec 2018 coverage noted that if you listen to podcasts for three hours a day using the app, it'll take three months to earn $2.
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More radio activity - Corey Layton has been hired by ARN, an Australian radio broadcaster, as Commercial Product and Audio Partnerships Director. He joins the company from Whooshkaa, the Australian podcast host. ARN has also signed a licence extension for the iHeartRadio platform in Australia until 2036. In the US, iHeartMedia itself has completed its restructuring, and owes just US$5.75bn instead of $16.1bn.
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The BBC talked to potential US advertisers earlier this week, highlighting some work they're doing for targeted audio. (The BBC earns revenue outside the UK from advertising).
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RedCircle launched. It's a podcast host offering tools like free hosting, analytics and a cross-promotion marketplace to help smaller podcasts get heard. The company has $1.5m of funding, and is built by five ex-Uber software people; it plans to earn revenue by selling advertising within podcasts. The Verge has more.
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HotPod's editor Nick Quah has had enough of @not_nick_quah, an unfunny twitter account. We had enough of it a while back. The coward's account has now changed name; this request's for you.
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The host of Earshot, a radio promotion and imaging podcast, has gleaned some useful learnings from Spotify's analytics.
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The Guardian is advertising its daily news podcast to commuters in London Underground trains. It is, Digiday report, earning increasing revenue from its (re-)embrace of podcasting.
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The Rhino Podcast, the official podcast from "the catalog division of Warner Music Group", is focusing on Aretha Franklin for a short mini-series.
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If you do a daily news podcast every day, what do you learn? ABC News's Brad Mielke. One lesson learnt: "talk like a freaking person".
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Spotify has published new podcast terms and conditions. It'll take 40 minutes to read. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports on Spotify's recent purchase of podcast production company Parcast: "one person close to the negotiation said that Spotify is paying more than $100m in cash and earn-outs to buy Parcast. The price equates to an enormous multiple on Parcast’s limited revenues, this person added."
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Language-learning company Babble has signed Voxnest as the exclusive distribution partner for Babbel’s first US-based podcast, “Multilinguish.”
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Jacobs Media is, once more, bringing the radio industry to Podcast Movement with their now well-known Broadcasters Meet Podcasters portion of the conference. One of those broadcasters that goes is Cumulus, who own the Westwood One Podcast Network. Last year, it earnt US $12.5m "in profitable podcasting revenue" according to CEO Mary Berner.
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In a statement, Libsyn says its podcasting revenue grew by 30%, and in total the company earned double the amount of revenue year on year: earning over US $22m. The company has $11m in the bank. Congratulations to them. (Cough)
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Sword and Scale earns at least $75,000 a month from Patreon, and after a review, Patreon has decided that its host, Mike Boudet, can remain on the platform, in spite of his denigrating comments and social media bullying. We reported on Monday that Wondery had sacked him from the network. He's also deleted all but 65 of his tweets. Patreon removed some creators last year.
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DiscoverPods writes about EX-IQ, an app that makes learning from podcasts easier. (EX-IQ are a Podnews gold supporter).
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Plus 7 Intelligence has launched a seven-part series on gaming and education today. You'll hear from the educators who are pushing past boundaries to find the games that make learning more effective and more joyful. (The Podglomerate / Megaphone)
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Apple has sent an email to podcasters reminding them to ensure decent-looking metadata. They particularly don't want spammy-looking names or authors, and no episode numbers in titles. There's a tag for that. "These practices could result in your show being rejected or removed from Apple Podcasts," they warn. They have, though, unveiled a mechanism to resubmit podcast feeds if required.
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Google Assistant's voices are getting an upgrade in most countries. You can go and listen to the new, higher quality voices on the Google developer website, and learn more at Wavenet's website.
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Joan Warner, Commercial Radio Australia's CEO, has responded to our Editor's comments yesterday. "Our submission does not propose restricted access to podcasts; podcasting has grown and thrived because of access via a multitude of third party podcast apps. The Australian radio industry is Australia’s leading investor in podcast creation and promotion, and has benefited from having its content being available everywhere," she says. This directly contradicts her quote which we published yesterday.
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Commercial radio in Australia have recommended to government that there be a legal requirement to remove links to podcasts and live streams on request of the content owners. Says Joan Warner, the CEO of the lobby group Commercial Radio Australia:
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ESPN is all-in on podcasts. As we learn from Steven Goldstein, interviews ESPN's Traug Keller, ESPN's first podcast was in 2005; and podcasts skew significantly younger than any other platform at ESPN.
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The #2 radio advertiser in 2017 is now also the #2 podcast advertiser, according to data from Magellan's podcast ad report for January. Magellan details all 110 ads the company found in the US top 2,000 Apple Podcasts trending chart. The top three: #3 Indeed, #2 Geico, and #1 ZipRecruiter. While this does show that US radio's $15.9bn annual revenue is beginning to come to podcasting (which stands at a more meagre $314m), none of radio's other big advertisers are yet visible in the podcast top 15.
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Fancy a podcast from Trinidad? It's the height of their carnival season, and Talk 'Bout Us is a culture and carnival podcast from the country.
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Can you learn a language only using podcasts?, asks Conor Reid.
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Pandora's plans for podcasting are explained in this conference session video from AdWeek's BrandWeek with Alex White, who's VP of Content and Programming for Pandora. He says Pandora earns three times more ad revenue than the entire podcasting industry.
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Deliver Us launches tomorrow, featuring interviews with experts, advocates, and survivors to learn what the church can do to move forward from its sexual abuse scandal. (Libsyn)
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"I made US$23,000 from my podcast in 2018", says a podcast producer, who gives plenty of tips learnt along the way.
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Podest, a podcast app for iOS, has released a new version. Michael Nisi, the developer, wrote a lengthy blog post explaining why he's released it. Unusually, all its code is open on Github. He says: "I’ve open sourced the app, not only to give back to the community, from which I’ve learned so much, but also to improve code quality. The more components are used in other contexts, the better."
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Relax, Reply All listeners. Here's a full transcript of the investor's call - including Daniel Ek saying: "Just to be very clear, the goal is not with Gimlet nor with Anchor to make any of their existing content exclusive, but to focus on the content that we're developing at Spotify and make more exclusive deals going forward."
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Spotify is in talks to buy Gimlet Media, it's been reported. Recode quote the price as being $200m; Nick Quah adds that "a source ... tells me that the specific price is $230 million". The WSJ's Ben Mullin underlines that "talks are ongoing and it is still possible that a deal won’t happen". There's a Spotify investor's Q4 earnings call on Wednesday, so we should know more this week.
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Wil Williams writes about her experience at PodCon 2 - "lovely, frustrating". Kyle Marshall also looked back at the event - learning about the importance of iteration and innovation; it's also the subject of the latest Creative Block podcast.
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Awkward S#x and the City - the podcast is a podcast version of the touring storytelling show Awkward S#x and the City, making its special blend of earnest and often shocking honesty available to the world.
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Too Late To Die Young claims it's one of the first podcasts to be aimed at an over 60 audience: hosted by Nina Miskow, each episode interviews a high-profile guest who is at that time of life when they are closer to the end than the beginning. 'If you want to know about living your best life, learn from those who have lived theirs', says the description. (Audioboom)
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Closed-captioning is coming to Google Podcasts: a forthcoming version of the app will include the option to produce an automatic live transcript on-screen, enabled with a "CC" button - good for noisy places or for those with hearing difficulties. Website 9to5google have enabled the feature on the beta version of the Google app, and report that it works well. Also, the new app will highlight major items in the show notes and offer search terms to learn more. New features prepped in beta versions can take months to arrive, though.
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Death, S#x and Money is back for a new series. (Mis)Educations focuses on those that have realised that what they learned about the subject might have done more harm than good. (WNYC Studios)
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In a letter to investors, Apple had to revise their earning guidance, downward. An illuminating article from MG Siegler points out the themes in the letter: China, yes, but also fewer people are upgrading their iPhones, perhaps they're too expensive, and Apple's future income lies in "services" rather than hardware. (We'd note that the total direct podcasting income for Apple since launch in 2005 has been exactly $0.)
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Unlike some other hosts, Transistor's SSL implementation correctly forwards from http:// to https:// and doesn't produce two duplicate websites or feeds, which Google explicitly warns against.
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Danielle Emans and Geert van de Wetering explain how they earn money from podcasting in the latest Podpraat newsletter (in Dutch) - five different ways.
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Voxnest has published The State Of The Podcast Universe Report (pdf). It looks at the podcast marketplace across the globe, and reports that podcasting is growing fastest in India; while the podcast market in China is "huge": earning at least ten times more revenue than the US.
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In a new episode of Chartable Radio, we learn that there have been 200,000 new podcasts in 2018. A quarter of all podcast reviews (on Apple and Stitcher) were written this year, too.
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David Hooper gives us A 21-Word Sentence That Will Guarantee Your Podcasting Success; meanwhile, Aidan Vuocolo shares his 5 lessons every podcaster must learn in order to be successful
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Genetics Unzipped is a new fortnightly podcast from the Genetics Society, presented by Dr Kat Arney, science writer, author and broadcaster, and former host of the Naked Genetics podcast. The press release promises we'll learn about spider-goats, which sound terrifying.
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Jack Rhysider has looked into the top-earning podcasts on Patreon, including how much they earn. He gives some advice based on what he's found.
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Supernatural drama The Black Tapes is to become a TV show on US television network NBC.
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If you've been listening to Surviving Y2K, here's a helpful postscript - we're finally learning the lessons, and it's all a bit too late.
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Tim Romero shares what he learnt as Japan's first professional podcaster.
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Koo! is a "social network for short-form podcasts", profiled in TechCrunch. It's similar to what was once called Audioboo, the original incarnation of Anchor, and SoundMite.
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"Podcasting vs Radio" still is a thing, it seems. When making podcasts, it turns out you have to unlearn some of what you learnt in network radio, says Richard Davies. Meanwhile, Leslie McMurtry, Lecturer in Radio Studies, University of Salford, compares podcasting to radio.
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Panoply writes about Apple Podcast ratings, and what we can learn from them. Their conclusion? "Pay extra close attention to the first few hundred ratings and reviews you get".
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Many podcasters seem to turn into private investigators when producing a true crime podcast. It's only fitting that a Tennessee private investigator has turned into a podcaster. Nashville Public Radio profiles Sheila Wysocki, who is hosting a podcast called Without Warning
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Ricky Gervais is special guest today in Films To Be Buried With with Brett Goldstein. "As well as discovering exactly which is the funniest movie of all time according to Gervais, listeners will get to hear the film that traumatised him from the age of six, the film that kept him up at night for a month, how many times he’s watched Pretty Woman and an incredibly moving story of how he learned to accept death through a cinema visit."
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NPR has announced their Student Podcast Challenge. Students and teachers participating in NPR's Student Podcast Challenge can take a topic, a lesson, or a unit they're learning about, and turn it into a podcast between three and 12 minutes long. Winning podcasts will be featured on NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
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Players is a new crossover podcast with former ESPN sports anchor Lindsay Czarniak. "She connects with the biggest names in country music and beyond about perhaps the only thing as important to them as music.. sports." (Cadence13)
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For all the excitement about The Daily, The New York Times's digital advertising revenue is flat, according to their new figures.
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To learn from 1: UK radio station LBC posts "how to listen to podcasts", a simple guide that directs people towards Google Podcasts or Apple Podcasts.
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Nico Vetesse, a composer, has written a guide to how to use music in your podcast. "Learning where the music should take the focus, and where it sits in the background (or not at all) will send you greatly on your way".
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22+ Podcasters Share Their Best Strategies for Getting ROI from a Podcast Show - the way to earn money isn't, according to these, to fill a podcast full of ads.
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Canadian Podcast Listener have written up learnings from their recent survey into podcast listening in the country. Breaking down the doors to the podcasting club argues that podcasting need to be more welcoming to new listeners, and shows the full data from the research. They also publish a shareable infographic.
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iHeartRadio Australia is celebrating its fifth birthday. It claims Australia's largest podcast library. The brand is run by ARN in Australia (and similarly run by broadcast networks in Canada and New Zealand).
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The Guardian is getting into daily news podcasts - again. Here's what it learned the last time it tried.
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Neil Cowling, founder of the UK's Fresh Air Productions, posts a call-to-arms to podcasters. "A constant stream of series involving two men talking to each other for a bit too long is not the future for a vibrant medium," he says, in a piece with a fruity title
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Podtrac's top US publishers for August have been announced. Total global downloads is up 48% year-on-year; earlier, we learnt that Podtrac measures 2.8% of available podcasts.
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In May, we learnt that HBO and Sky are planning a Serial Podcast Docuseries The Case Against Adnan Syed
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AdResults Media is celebrating twenty years in the audio advertising industry; they blog lessons learnt. Congratulations.
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Podchaser have launched their Podchaser Creator pages, billing them as "pages that allow listeners to follow, share, and learn about the podcast creators who build the podcasts they love". Registering early also gets you a free t-shirt from TeePublic branded with your own podcast artwork.
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12 Podcasts That Will Make You Smarter (Refinery29)
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The Radio Show (a US broadcasting event from the RAB and NAB, in mid September) will have a podcast session. Meanwhile, Westwood One expects the company to earn $10m in podcasting revenue in 2018 - they earnt $100,000 last year.
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Following announcements last week from Overcast and Anchor about donate links - RadioPublic is also supporting calls to action.
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The BBC Studios Voice, a viewer/listener panel for the BBC, says this in a recent communication: "We were surprised to learn 38% of [our] panellists have never listened to a podcast before. Accessibility and awareness of interesting, quality podcasts were cited as barriers to listening. For those that do listen regularly, commuting has become a time to embed podcasts into people’s daily lives, with comedy coming through as a popular genre."
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Alex Jones's podcast can still be found even if Apple et al have removed him because he controls his RSS feed, notes Todd Cochrane.
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The New York Times has reported US$24m profit.
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Podcast Movement: Fred Jacobs shares quotes from many of the delegates; Wil Williams describes it as an informative, invigorating whirlwind; Jeff McHugh posts new trends in podcasting for broadcasters; for the radio audience, James Cridland posts about the positivity felt at Podcast Movement; Rick B has some interesting observations and "Jag in Detroit" writes about his biggest takeaways.
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Acast releases data from their Acast Audio Intelligence Report for the US and the UK. Podcast listeners are big earners and big spenders, says the research, earning 28% more in the UK, and 51% more in the US. They also trust the ads in podcasts more (UK, US).
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Jabberjaw Media have launched music podcast A New Level, hosted by bass player Blasko. "You want a career in the music business? It can be done and you can learn how through these experts."
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Amanda Abella posts How I failed at podcasting and what I'm doing about it - some useful points of pain to learn from.
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The folks behind the Daily Detroit Newsbyte post 8 things we've learnt producing more than 80 episodes of a daily podcast. Also in listicle corner today, AV Club's Best podcasts of 2018 so far.
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A year running a podcast consultancy: Richard Miron reflects on the learnings of Earshot Strategies so far.
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The New York Times have announced the results of their student podcast contest. They had 675 entries; the page lists the winning ten.
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A podcaster on Reddit hits 1,000 downloads a day, and shares his lessons learnt, including branding, consistency and Spotify.
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Podcast app Breaker highlights how their machine-learning algorithm works to recommend you new podcasts.
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A Forbes blogger writes an article entitled 5 Ways to Grow Your Side Podcast Into A Six-Figure Business. Podcaster Michael Sacca apparently earns $10,000 a month doing podcasts.
Welcome to our new subscribers this week, including excellent new folks from Saycaster, Slate, Patreon, Norddeutscher Rundfunk, Europe 1, Westwood One, Adlarge, Audioboom, Global, the Carnegie Corp, iHeartMedia, WNYC, RadioMedia Finland, and AdResults Media.
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Where is podcasting's Family Feud? asks Pacific Content's Steve Pratt: comparing the genre of the most-watched TV shows with podcasting and asking if we can grow podcasting's popularity by learning from it. He concludes: "We are not creating enough programming specifically designed to reach first-time audiences". (If you're a Brit, he means Family Fortunes, the one with Les Dennis, Max Bygraves or Bob Monkhouse, not really the one with Andy Collins.)
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Omny Studio tell us that they are planning to roll out an automated tool that will automatically help migrate any of their customers' HTTP feeds to HTTPS. (They already support it, and it's default for new podcasts). Libsyn support https links (just 'add the s'), but they're also working on automatic migration.
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BREAKING: The Audioboom takeover of Triton Digital is no longer going ahead. The note released to the markets notes a £1m loan that Audioboom got in February, says Audioboom only has "sufficient working capital for a further period of up to four weeks from today's date", that the withdrawl will cost Audioboom a further £700,000 in a break clause, and that its "financial position remains uncertain". The note also warns of a possibility of winding up the company. Shares in Audioboom remain suspended. Audioboom's also announced they have a new CFO, Brad Clarke.
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On Mar 30, we reported a bootcamp run by Spotify: "a weeklong intensive program for (10) aspiring female podcasters of color". Total number of applicants? Over 18,000. If you applied, you'll get to learn the decision by 20th May.
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A thing you never thought you'd want: "Pod Papers" is a magazine consisting of podcasts turned into print. It's available at Barnes & Noble stores, and is created by the Paper and Packaging Board, an industry group that works "to help slow the decline in paper use and expand demand for paper-based packaging products".
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Photography website FStoppers covers a photography podcast, On Capturing Stories. "I began On Capturing Stories as an experiment to learn the steps of putting together a podcast while reconnecting with interesting people I've met".
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Spotify (the second-largest source of podcast listening) posted their first quarterly earnings data as a public company. 170m users, 75m paid subscribers. Revenue €1.14bn (US$1.36bn). It's still losing money.
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Fashion store Barneys New York is launching a podcast, The Barneys Podcast, on May 2. It will "feature discussions with some of the today’s most dynamic creatives, speaking with in-house Barneys hosts who are authorities in the same area". Other new podcasts released recently include ABC Classic Kids, a classical music podcast.
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A new podcasting network from D. Scott Karnedy, (XM Satellite Radio, AOL, iHeart Radio and MySpace), Stuffed Sausage Media goes live, promising to 'connect great talent with great brands'.
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The NYT has also trailed a student podcast contest, and shares a lesson plan for teaching podcasting.
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Spotify are doing some behind-the-scenes work on their podcast platform. Libsyn warns of delays in new shows. (We're on Spotify with a special weekly version of our podcast).
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Many people fall asleep listening to podcasts. We learn today about a podcast especially made for that: Sleep Whispers, a podcast which is 100% whispered. Shhh.
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Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything has a new series, False Alarm. How do we learn to "live with the fake"? Benjamen will explore nuclear fallout shelters in Manhattan, venture to a strip club in New Jersey to meet a very newsworthy stripper, and create his own cryptocurrency, among other things.
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29% of Americans listened to a podcast last month; 35% listen 2-4 times a week. 31% say they listen to a podcast to learn something new.
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The Australian Commercial Radio Awards this year, for the first time, has three podcast categories. Joan Warner, CEO of Commercial Radio Australia, says: "Radio is now once again leading the way in producing and commissioning original, cutting-edge podcasts on topics ranging from arts and comedy to social commentary, sport, health and politics. Radio is key to driving the future success of the podcast sector." You need to be a CRA member to enter.
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A good example of niche podcasting fulfilling a need: we learnt about Berlin Briefing earlier this week. It's a round-up of local news for people who live in Berlin, aimed at English speakers who don't speak German.
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Payne Lindsay, the creator of true-crime podcast Up and Vanished is interviewed in USA Today; he explains how he created the podcast and what he learnt.
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Martech writes about voice technologies - notably Podible, a podcasting platform using machine learning for podcast recommendations; and VoxSnap, a service that turns written text into voice (using real people).
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Twitter has written-off most of its US$70m investment in SoundCloud, according to Variety. Their annual report notes that there's no chance in "a reasonable period" to get that money back. (On Feb 12, an Apple Podcasts marketing executive also warned podcasters off from using SoundCloud.)
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A piece from a Boston MA, USA innovation blog about RadioPublic, and how they are "helping define the future of podcasting". They're also covered in the latest episode of Early Stage. The company has also added a payment calculator to work out how much you could earn from their Paid Listens program.
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A California newspaper, the Ventura County Star, is experimenting with podcasting, and learning at the same time. Some advice in here from journalists about interview technique and promotion.
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Another course in podcast production, this time at Trinity University in San Antonio TX, USA. Meanwhile, at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, they've launched a podcast about LGBTQ media and culture.
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Variety reports that talent agencies are "turning to popular podcasts for new IP, developing film and TV projects, and more." Lots of quotes from talent agencies about the ascendancy of podcasting. To underscore this, today we learn that The Dope Queens have a TV deal with HBO.
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A journalist for the Deseret News writes about attending PodCon in Seattle, and is taken aback by the draw of "live podcasts".
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A podcast for managers, Manage Smarter, has launched. It's branded content from SalesFuel, who offer tools for salespeople. "Good managers improve numbers. But great managers improve people, their most important asset. This podcast is a way to expand the skills and thinking of leaders who are interested in truly learning new ways to manage that move the needle toward more positive results."
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In St Paul MI, USA, American Public Media announces The Summer Podcast Institute, a two-week "learning experience" for high-school students.
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Two explanatory videos from the archives, of interest - How to listen to a podcast, from Ira Glass and a lady called Mary Ahearn. Also, How to listen to a podcast, from Tim Watkin of RNZ.
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Language-learning product Duolingo launches a season of real-life story podcasts in Spanish. It's called Mi héroe, mi amigo and is on general release. (The web-page also contains the episode with text subtitles/close-captions).
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Brittany Hoffman shares What I’ve Learned From Starting a Podcast, including consistency, distribution, and how to be a good interviewer.
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A Nordic startup, Kieku, aims to learn from your listening habits and, using AI, give you more podcasts that you might like. The website is bright and colourful. Kieku is based in Helsinki, Finland.
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Belgium: an article all about podcasting in Belgium, summed-up best by its headline: Podcasts: a new journalistic medium, attracting people, building a reputation, maybe earning something.
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US: fancy spending nine weeks in a residential workshop next spring learning how to make great story-telling audio, being taught by people like Ira Glass and Shereen Marisol Meraji? You want the Transom Story Workshop - you've not got long to apply.
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Event: The Irish Learning Waves radio training organisation is running its first podcasting event, 21st November, Dublin, Ireland. The organisation is funded by Irish commercial radio and government.
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What I learnt producing a podcast for a college, by Jackie Vetrano. The college is Skidmore College in Saragota Springs NY, US. One thing you need? "Buy in — you can’t do this within your own silo."
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The Chicago Tribune covers the Dunc'd On podcast, a super-dull sports podcast that's earning money. Of note: it's produced in San Francisco, where the three-hour time-difference helps the production process.
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Noted: Nevertheless, a podcast celebrating women transforming teaching and learning through technology.
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MixCloud, a DJ music hosting platform, announce a deal with Warner Music. Previously, it used the standard statutory internet radio licences; going direct means potential flexibility with rates and usage models. WMG is the third largest record company in the world.
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Lessons learnt while making the New York Times's Daily podcast. Lots of audio examples of what Andy Mills, a producer for the NYT, has learnt.
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Event: Podcasting It Yourself, in Phoenix AZ, USA, on October 28. "For people who want to start a podcast – or – want to learn more about podcasting from experienced and respected podcasters".
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Also at the ABC - seven things we learnt about podcasting at OzPod 2017
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John Lee Dumas's podcast Entrepreneur On Fire earns him a million dollars. Here's how.
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22 things I learnt about audio from three days in London and an hour on a boat: Steve Austins, former BBC man and now audio producer for Bengo Media, writes up the London Podcast Festival, Next Radio, and Cardiff's Digital 2017.
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A good piece about monetising podcasts, and the challenges in the 30-second ads that you might typically hear. With stats showing, apparently, that NPR is making $1.4m per month from podcasting (average revenue per listener per month is 3.8 cents). By way of comparison, UK radio earns 3.6 cents per listener per HOUR; but then, those 12 minutes of ads probably help.
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Also in Australia, ARN and Whooskhaa create a 'radio podcast network': Whooshkaa will host ARN's podcasts, and appear to also have some sales role. (Recently, SCA partnered with PodcastOne, and Nova partnered with Acast).
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Midroll reports on lessons learned producing Missing Richard Simmons, with Dan Taberski who spoke at Podcast Movement. On monetisation: "I’m ready to read ads, because they’re supporting the story I’m telling."
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A new platform to listen to podcasts - Feedcast. Being developed open-source, with a crowd-funding plan for infrastructure costs; using machine learning for recommendations. "If you can imagine netflix's recommendation with youtube's content, that is close to what we think."
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Mark Asquith writes What I learned from Podcast Movement. "The big players are just as curious as us little guys!"
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"Teaching radio broadcasters the new tricks of podcasting". Good quote from John Rosso of Triton: "[Radio's] first question is 'can you help me fill this inventory?' That's great for remnant but you have to harness your sales team and figure out how to sell [podcasts]."
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Spotify reaches a licensing deal with Warner Music. WMG is the third largest record company in the world, and the last of the deals that Spotify needed to proceed with a much-awaited stock market listing in the US. Of note: the deal was announced on Instagram.
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Also from Canada, a new podcast network from Alberta is highlighted in the Edmonton Examiner. There are, apparently, over 100 podcasts from the city; the APN has ten founding members, each of whom will earn CA$25 (U$20) per episode from playing ads.
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A company to look out for: Placard Media is a company putting podcasters together with advertisers. Based in Melbourne, Australia, and talking to Aussie or Kiwi podcasters. (Increasingly, many people are discovering they're both Aussie and Kiwi anyway).
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Nine lessons learnt turning a podcast into a book.
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How much are (US) audio producers earning? The results from an anonymous salary sharing project. Public media pay way less than podcast companies.
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A piece about the actual cognitive result of listening to your podcasts at a super-fast speed. "When you get past 1.5x you’re starting to really sacrifice learning."
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Buzzfeed writes SoundCloud's obituary and explains where it all went wrong and "how it all came crashing down". Premature or not, there are some useful learnings here for any product.
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A talk from Adam Gamwell, a Design Anthropologist. "Reflecting on four years of podcasting at This Anthro Life and challenging academic tradition, Adam will share some key lessons learned about storytelling and data and speculate on where podcasting may be taking us."
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If SoundCloud is in financial trouble, how do you protect your podcasts on it?
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The seven most common podcast formats - it won't surprise you to learn that a one-on-one interview is #1.
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A piece from Ben Thompson that delves into podcasting's history before tackling, you guessed it, Apple's podcast analytics and Apple's role in podcasting in general. He makes the point that Apple are relatively anti-advertising, and they're unlikely to enable the podcast industry to earn more cash.