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PodX-owned Platform Media have acquired a majority stake of the world’s biggest rugby show, The Good, The Bad and The Rugby. Platform Media has produced and commercialised the show since its inception.

Oops. Libsyn Ads has made payments to podcasters twice, by mistake, according to an email. Users of its Auto Ads service will see future payouts reduced to account for this.

The untold story of English football hooliganism, The English Disease, launches today from Stak. Presented by football writer Sam Diss, the show featuring interviews with former hooligans, fans up and down the country and experts who have researched the primal instinct to fight for your team. It is a story of what happens when society disenfranchises its people, dismantles social structures and pits them against each other.

In 1999, five-year-old Elián González was rescued near the Florida coast after his mother and others drowned in the Florida straits after fleeing Cuba. The question of whether Elián should stay with Florida relatives or return to his father in Cuba ignited a media firestorm, placing Elián at the center of a high-stakes political conflict between Cuba and the US. Chess Piece: The Elián González Story was launched yesterday.

We were excited to see The News Quiz, part of the BBC’s Friday Night Comedy podcast, publishing immediately after transmission at the end of last week. The show had been subject to a 30-day windowing trial for the past 18 months, with the newest episodes only available on BBC Sounds. The bad news: that was a mistake, we’re told. The good news: the show now only has a 7-day window.

Campside Media is now majority-owned by Sister, the global content company owned by Jane Featherstone and Liz Murdoch.

From Airwave: Big Picture Science’s Seth Shostak says: “Airwave's expert services free us to use our creative energies to make the best show we can. Without a doubt, our program is simply better thanks to the efforts of Airwave.”

Prognosis: Misconception is a new season from Bloomberg focusing on the fertility industry. A Bloomberg News story was published alongside the podcast, which takes a deep dive into how problems in the IVF industry have fueled conservative, anti-abortion forces who argue we need to restrict the industry.

Good Game with Sarah Spain has launched from iHeartPodcasts, as part of the company's new Women's Sports Audio Network. We're promised the biggest stories, stakes, stars and stats to help fans keep up with women’s teams, leagues and athletes.

Around the NFL has been cancelled. No reason was given. It was produced with iHeartMedia.

Podnews wasn’t supporting Gzip for our RSS feed (a mistake); it was accounting for 3.86GB of data per day. We turned it on last week; our bandwidth bill for our RSS feed has more than halved, and is now 1.22GB. We also now fetch feeds with gzip where we can.

With Airwave: Big Picture Science’s Seth Shostak says: “Airwave's expert services free us to use our creative energies to make the best show we can. Without a doubt, our program is simply better thanks to the efforts of Airwave."

Avoiding these mistakes can make your podcast grow faster - Podwritten suggests batch-recording and considering solo episodes.

Gordon Firemark is planning a free webinar next week: “Podcast Growth & Profit: Mastering the Fundamentals; Avoiding Common Mistakes.”

Had it with election coverage already? The hit comedy podcast I’ve Had It has a special interview today with Vice President Kamala Harris, who tells us what she's had it with. We're even promised that we'll learn what she thinks of Beyonce, as well as everything that’s at stake in this upcoming election.

Impromptu is new from Washington Post Opinions. The show invites listeners to eavesdrop on the newspaper's columnists as they go beyond hot takes and have frank, thoughtful conversations on the news and cultural debates. In the first episode, Ruth Marcus, who has covered the Supreme Court for more than two decades at The Post, speaks with Alexandra Petri and Amanda Ripley about what’s at stake as the Supreme Court hears arguments on abortion pill access.

From Seven Million Bikes, Niall Mackay shares his eight dumbest podcast mistakes, hoping you don’t do that too.

In 2012, a mysterious challenge appeared on 4chan: the first step in one of the most complex and mind-boggling puzzles to rock the internet age – later known as Cicada 3301. From riddles to impenetrable codes and QR codes in the outside world, one thing became clear: Cicada 3301 was no ordinary puzzle. Theories emerged that was the work of recruiters for a US intelligence service. The World’s Hardest Puzzle looks at who was behind it - and why it ended in silence. It's new from Stak today.

The top 10 podcasting mistakes podcasters make and how to avoid them (We Edit Podcasts)

When director, actor, critic and historian Peter Bogdanovich passed away in 2022, he was working on One Handshake Away - a podcast interviewing some of the biggest film directors working today. His ex-wife Louise Stratten stepped in to serve as narrator and co-host, with three-time Academy Award-winning director Guillermo del Toro filling in as host for the final three episodes. It's new today from Audacy and Stak.

Yesterday, we mentioned that Apple Podcasts had mistakenly included Libsyn as a company supporting Podcasting 2.0’s transcripts feature. Libsyn had criticised the standard and clarified it didn’t support the feature. Today, we note they’ve disappeared from the list - along with Acast, Firstory, Pinecast, Podigee, Simplecast, Ximalaya and ZenCast. (We think Fireside and Pinecast support transcripts, incidentally).

Those amazing competitive bike riders might be secretly hiding electric motors in their bikes. New today from Stak, Ghost in the Machine is an investigative podcast looking at the truth behind the rumour - and featuring a world-exclusive interview with Femke Van den Driessche, the only person to ever be banned by for having a motor in her bike.

Exclusive: A copyright enforcement company is sending demands for money to podcast directories for reproducing thumbnail images from RSS feeds. Instead of contacting the podcaster or podcast host, as the law allows, they are coming after podcast directories like ours who rely on the open nature of RSS. At stake - a whole lot of money. This story is three months in the making - read it in full.

UK comedian Joe Lycett launched Turdcast last week... but then cancelled it after mistakenly releasing "raw sewage" into Liverpool Albert Docks in a launch event... and then came clean that it was all a stunt - fake sewage, from a fake toilet, for a fake podcast - to draw attention to the UK's water companies, who release raw sewage into rivers and coastlines.

Meghan Markle isn't the only member of the UK Royal Family doing podcasts. Floodlight is hosted by HRH Princess Eugenie and Julia de Boinville; and it returns for a new season today, Anti-Slavery Day. The first episode is out today, with former UK Prime Minister Theresa May. It's from Stak and The Anti-Slavery Collective.

Part of the Airwave podcast network: Big Picture Science looks at modern science research, through smart and funny storytelling. Seth Shostak and Molly Bentley host a show which recently has looked at tapeworms and parasites, tiny robots that can travel through our blood vessels, the last day of the dinosaurs, and why the US hasn't gone metric.

Part of the Airwave podcast network: The Art of Crime focuses on unlikely collisions between true crime and the arts. Season two looks at assassins - artists who have committed, attempted, or been implicated in an assassination, like Andy Warhol, Nero or Leon Trotsky. Each episode is painstakingly researched with a unique musical score; the latest focuses on John Wilkes Booth.

Audio drama BOOM returns for a new season today. Produced by Stak, it's set at the turn of the millennium in the offices of Enron, with dial-up modems, big hair, soaring stock prices (or not) - and an email from the future. We're promised a timeless, mystifying story of greed and the human condition.

Congratulations to Stak, which has reached a milestone of 300 million all-time podcast downloads.

Former head of Spotify's Parcast, Max Cutler, spoke to Foundr magazine about what's next in podcasting. He appears to gently criticise Spotify; suggesting that it's a mistake to go after Hollywood talent, and discussing the slowness of decisions at the company. Shows that are "resourceful" rather than entertaining are what's next, he suggests.

The Verge writes a feature article: Spotify’s podcast plan is going off the rails.

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%.

Current focuses on the public media companies committing long-term to narrative podcasts, including NHPR, NPR and others.

Some big deals change the world. The Closer is new today, with stories that are everything you want in a good drama: tales of failure, betrayal, high stakes and big risks. Every episode, financial journalist Aimee Keane reveals how a deal made in a boardroom somewhere has an impact on our everyday lives. It's new from Project Brazen and PRX.

The UK's Podcast Radio has a new investor: another UK radio group. Tindle Radio is the latest to invest in the company, taking a 10% stake (and joining Nation Radio who invested last year). You can hear news from Podnews every day on the station.

PodX Group has acquired a majority stake in Filt, a Swedish independent podcast company with more than a million weekly listeners. It's the fourth acquisition for the company.

"First-Look Deals Emerge In Podcasting" says Deadline, reporting that "first-look deals - common in TV and film - are coming to podcasting" in a story about Campside Media signing three first-look deals. They're hardly new to our industry, though: among others, Podnews has covered first-look deals between Sky and Tortoise, Audible and First Produce, SiriusXM and Audio Up, Kudos and What's The Story?, UCP Media and iHeart, Parcast and Noiser, and Goldfinch and Stakhanov.

Audio-editor-like-a-word-doc Trebble has added a number of new features, allowing you to download transcripts and correct mistakes in them.

Luminary's Telephone Stories is now available on all platforms - a show examining the hall of mirrors that was Michael Jackson’s life, painstakingly, sometimes painfully, reconstructing the complex narrative of an iconic and troubled performer haunted by criminal allegations. It was produced by Ninth Planet Audio.

PodX Group has acquired a majority stake in Posta, a podcast production company in Argentina. The acquisition will help PodX expand in Latin America and the US's hispanic market; PodX has recently invested in podcast companies in France and the UK.

You're watching the news on TV, when all of a sudden the picture wobbles and a strange alien voice, calling himself Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, starts giving orders to live in peace or leave the galaxy. That happened 45 years ago this week in the South of England. The Interruption looks at the mysterious voice, and what it could have been. It's new today from Stak.

In the UK, October's Pod Bible magazine was released inside some copies of The Sunday Times, and is available to read online. It features interviews with cover star Brett Goldstein from Films To Be Buried With and Jolyon Rubenstein from The New Conspiracist. There’s also Helen Bauer picking her top 5 shows, and regular columns from Acast, Audible, Stak and Apple Podcasts. We like page 27.

International podcast investment company PodX has taken a majority stake in French podcast studio Nouvelles Écoutes. In the same release, Nouvelles Écoutes announced it has acquired Studio Minuit, which claims it's the second largest podcasting group in France in terms of monthly listeners.

What's going on with Audioboom's shareholders? Investor Nick Candy sold Aaquaverse £6.75m ($7.9m) of his Audioboom shares in 2021. Aaquaverse is owned by controversial entrepreneur Robert Bonnier, and is connected to All Active Asset Capital who made a £188.3m ($220m) offer to buy Audioboom in July this year. It later withdrew the offer, Aaquaverse sold a third of its shares, and Candy accused Bonnier of fraud, applying in court for his assets to be frozen. Bonnier is now claiming £150m ($175m) in damages.

The five most common podcast launch mistakes include not having a decent trailer.

Missing Pages is the first original podcast from The Podglomerate, which reopens cold cases from the book world. It's hosted by world-renowned literary critic and publishing insider Bethanne Patrick. Across its eight-episode debut season, Missing Pages uncovers the power struggles, mistaken identities, and unfathomably bad behaviour within the secretive world of book publishing. Each episode brings in authors, experts, publishing insiders, and a circus of NYC media elites to tell the real story; unfit for print.

It's 1999 and Enron finance manager Jim Yang has received an email from the future. Then, everything changed... BOOM is new today from Stak, and features actor and voice-actor Akie Kotabe, two-time Olivier Award winner Sharon D. Clarke MBE, and BAFTA nominee and star of the smash hit It's a Sin Omari Douglas. Put on your dungarees, reconnect your dial-up, and get ready to be thrust into the heart of America’s tech boom, where nothing is as it seems...

Congratulations to Kevin Goldberg, who has sold a majority stake in Discover Pods. James J Griffin is to run the site.

UK radio group Nation Broadcasting has acquired a 10% stake in Podcast Radio. Podcast Radio is planning international expansion.

Back in the 1980s, TV and films promised us everything from jetpacks to flying cars and holidays in space - so Where’s My Jetpack? Space journalist and author Sarah Cruddas and broadcaster Luke Moore take a look at some of those crazy inventions to discover if they're actually just around the corner. It's new today from Stak.

Google is randomly switching podcasts in its app to point to pirated copies with ads. Jason Calcanis noticed his podcast, All-In, mysteriously had ads in it; Google's Danny Sullivan replied: "we appear to have mistakenly pointed to a duplicate version of the podcast": a pirated copy held on Spreaker, according to Nathan Gathright. "There are loads of benefits from our constantly checking for new RSS feeds and trying to make our own determination about which feed to use for a given show algorithmically, but we've also seen instances where we get it wrong," a Google spokesperson told us in July last year. Podnews offers a Google Podcasts RSS helper so you can check what RSS feed Google has for your podcast; we would also suggest you claim your podcast and then set the preferred feed. Pirated podcasts have been an issue for a while; if you've been affected, here's how to report a pirated podcast.

We reported yesterday that podcast hosting company bCast had pulled all "lifetime" accounts with just two weeks notice. The company has now changed its mind, calling the decision "misguided, irresponsible and a mistake"; it's also refunding customers if they bought a new plan.

YouTube video creators had 729 million copyright claims in the first half of the year, almost all automated. There were 2.2m mistaken copyright claims, overturned on appeal by the creator. (The number of incorrect copyright claims that creators didn't bother trying to appeal, or didn't know how to, is unknown)

If you're looking for a job in podcasting, meet Stephanie Coombes, who has read a LOT of applications for aspiring podcast producers. Here's how to write a really bad job application for a podcast producer.

Promoting your podcast on social media? Linking to just one player would be a mistake - how many people don't have those phones or apps? Use universal links instead, we think.

Mumbai's Kuku FM, a music and podcast platform, is currently raising between $15-20m in a funding round. Meanwhile Florida's Relevnt has raiseed $2.5m in seed funding for its "group messaging platform that takes a fresh stake in the podcasting experience".

Carey Green has written the first in a series on creating an efficient and effective podcast workflow, which he says will make your show easier, manageable, mistake-free and effective.

Music streaming platform Deezer has acquired a stake in Driift, a live-streaming company.

8 Podcast Marketing Mistakes You Might Be Making - Sharon Taylor from Omny Studio talks about the benefits of a trailer, advertising, and being clear.

The Offensive, an award-winning, critically acclaimed mockumentary podcast that follows fictional Premier League club Ashwood City FC, returns for a fourth season today. From Stak, the show won a British Podcast Award in 2019.

When Ian Coss decided to get married, every living member of his family who had ever been married had also got divorced. Forever is a Long Time is a hybrid podcast and album, a look at love with people who have made mistakes. It launches today.

The Podcast Host share 5 Mistakes Journalists Make in Writing About Podcasts. They don't mean us, right? Right?

YouTube "mistakenly" suspended Bandrew Scott's Google account for spam, locking him out of all his YouTube accounts for a while. The microphone reviewer is now back: but, as our look at YouTube's terms of service makes clear, YouTube/Google can terminate your Google account in full if they think you've done something wrong. Opening a separate Google account for publishing on YouTube might be a good plan.

Bernie: Who Killed The Prince of Soho? looks at the untimely death of one of the most famous people in London Soho's club scene: and how his life was falling apart. It's from Stak, the producer formerly known as Stakhanov.

Richard Heyse, the CFO of Libsyn, has resigned as the company gave the stock market an update on their incorrect financial reports. Libsyn underpaid a number of different taxes between 2015 and 2020: mistakes worth around $3.7m in unpaid tax and fines. The incorrect returns have also put Libsyn out of compliance with a number of bank loans.

How to podcast on YouTube - Captivate did some experimentation recently and discovered some mistakes you want to avoid.

Sudhir Breaks The Internet is a new short show from the Freakonomics Radio Network - who is building the tools and platforms we work with every day? How can these tech companies with seemingly infinite resources face so many challenges — and make so many mistakes? All three episodes are now available.

Sorry again for sending you a copy of our Sounds Profitable newsletter by mistake yesterday. Our email systems are now entirely separated for the two newsletters, so we'll be unable to do that again. Technology will beat human idiots every time.

SoundCloud has signed an ad sales agreement with AdsWizz for 14 European markets. (SiriusXM owns AdsWizz and Pandora, which sells SoundCloud ads in the US; SiriusXM also owns a minority stake in SoundCloud itself.)

Evergreen Podcasts is "taking an ownership stake" in Ars Longa Media, a healthcare podcast network which delivered more than a million downloads last year.

Race at Work is new from the Harvard Business Review. "Hear leaders from business and government trace their personal journeys with race, equity, and inclusion. And learn from their mistakes and their triumphs."

A podcast has produced its own conference. GovComms: The Future of Government Communication is producing the GovComms Festival, a 24-hour long festival with 160 speakers from 15 countries, examining how governments around the world can improve their communication with citizens and stakeholders.

Goldfinch Studios has signed a first-look deal with UK podcast creators Stakhanov.

JaackMaate's Happy Hour from Stakhanov has become a Spotify exclusive. "Spotify has offered me a life-changing amount of money. This is a game-changer for us." Jack announces in a YouTube video. "I have never had any communication with YouTube," he adds, saying that the negotiations took over six months. The comments from YouTube viewers are all positive.

She Podcasts has a special show called the world record for most podcasting mistakes in an episode, highlighting what not to do. It was recorded at the recent Podfest Global Summit.

"The externalized nature of the [podcasting] revenue model causes inefficiency for all stakeholders," says strategy consultant Paul Hanke, writing in The Startup, highlighting how things are changing in the podcasting business, and predicting three main players for podcasting in the future.

John Gilroy writes about mistakes to make on the Apple Podcasts directory, especially focusing on your metadata.

Common Podcasting Mistakes to Avoid If You Want to Grow Your Show’s Audience (Aaron Dowd)

Bill Simmons has apologised for comments made in The Bill Simmons Podcast, according to a report in the NY Daily News. "I’m 50 years old, I still barely know what I’m doing, I’m still gonna make mistakes," he said. An apparent commitment to diverse hiring was criticised by the Ringer's staff union on Monday.

Mistakes to avoid when starting a podcast (Podcast Generator)

Seven mistakes to avoid when starting a podcast (Ashley Grant, Podcast Generator)

Entertainment company MGM has bought a stake in Audio Up, a new podcast company. Terms weren't disclosed; Audio Up will make five news shows a year for MGM, and MGM will get first look for development opportunities.

Streamiverse, the fan podcast that was about Quibi until Quibi decided to send a lawyer's letter to stop them, had a special guest - Jeffrey Katzenberg, the founder of Quibi. He was, they report, "polite, tolerant, and overall much nicer than he needed to be". He also said that sending the lawyer's letter was a mistake.

Google Podcasts's new iOS app unfortunately uses a near-identical user-agent to Apple Podcasts, and we noted the potential for misattribution at launch. Speaking on The Feed, Libsyn have admitted that stats from the new Google Podcasts iOS app are mistakenly lumped in with Apple Podcasts in Libsyn stats at the moment: they hope to fix this in the next few weeks. Full marks to Libsyn for being open and letting folks know; a community-maintained list of useragents is over here.

A free event in the UK this Wednesday Feb 26 at the University of Bedfordshire - Fantastic Noise: Making Radio Drama features Jeremy Howe, who's the Editor of The Archers, and Adam Jarell, the man behind Stakhanov's The Offensive. It's free - tickets here.

SiriusXM, the owner of Pandora, has bought a minority stake in Soundcloud for $75m. Soundcloud is used by some podcasters as a podcast host: Pandora already sells advertising on SoundCloud in the US.

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.

WeCrashed, a Wondery podcast about the rise and fall of WeWork, has been accused by one podcaster of taking multiple clips from his own podcast without attribution. The clips of the interview, featuring WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey, were originally from an episode of the Rich Roll podcast in July. Contacted by Podnews, Wondery claim "an honest mistake: we had, under fair use, taken portions of three interviews from different podcasts, and we mistakenly gave credit to only two of them." The clips have now been removed, and Wondery have reached out to Roll to talk more.

Revisiting is back for a new season. "The only podcast you'll need for nostalgia", episode one looks at Ugg boots and Rachel from Friends, among other things, as Laura K and Laura G mine their old diaries for inspiration. (Stakhanov/Acast)

And an event in London, UK: the Pitfalls of Podcasting. An evening of mistakes, so you don't have to. It's on Jan 14, and tickets are free.

Laurel Staples shares three mistakes she made when starting her first podcast. Spending too much on podcast equipment? Check...

David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder of Basecamp and host of Rework, has reacted angrily to ART19's video, which we shared last week. "I abhor person-targeted advertisement(s)," he writes, "we will ditch ART19 for another provider for @reworkpodcast immediately," noting that he is "never making the mistake of using a provider URL again". He's chosen to move to Transistor.

Want to make podcasts on the cheap? Steve Pratt from Pacific Content has some advice as to how: and the mistakes people make when cutting costs.

If you missed our Editor talking about Google Podcasts at Podcast Movement this year, here's the talk, painstakingly recreated on YouTube.

A Variety article announcing the deal, claiming that Conan O'Brien is driving the podcast revolution, has come into quite some snarky criticism online, with people claiming that Conan turned up ten years late. Mind - that's not the worst mistake. Variety put Conan on its cover with the words "Audio Boom!" when everyone knows Conan's podcasts are actually hosted by ART19. (<-- weak podcast joke)

Correction: no, Brittany Luse wasn't in Johannesburg last week. With Eric Eddings was WNYC producer Veralyn Williams, who's working on The Stakes with Kai Wright. We apologise for the mistaken identity, and have updated Friday's web edition.

Advice: top mistakes podcasters make (We Edit Podcasts); how to start a music-focused podcast (Hypebot); edit more, worry about gear less, says Roman Mars (Lifehacker); how to podcast anonymously (Polymash)

A BBC television presenter managed to play a podcast on air by mistake during a live TV show. Conveniently, the podcast was hers, but we're sure it was a proper mistake and not a way to market the podcast.

It's not every day that someone else appears in our local coffee shop with podcast stickers emblazoned over his laptop, but J.M. Donellan, author of audio fiction podcast Six Cold Feet, made that mistake today. We hear there may be more from him soon.

Top 10 mistakes that podcast guests make (Jason Rigden)

Top 10 Mistakes Podcasters Make (Jason Rigden)

Wil Williams shares Common podcasting mistakes: what they are, and how to avoid them - consistency wins out

Yesterday was GCSE results day in the UK, where teens hear how they've done in examinations. The Teenage Diary Podcast from Radio Stakhanov (the team behind The Football Ramble and Abroad in Japan) published a Results Day Special. "It was brilliant fun to make and packed full of memories of 3am revision starts, CGP textbooks, and being completely covered in highlighter for 2 months of the year."

A Forbes blogger writes about podcast advertising, included branded podcasts and notes that CPM for advertising is higher in the podcasting space than others. Meanwhile, Business highlights 11 reasons why you're failing to monetise your podcast.

Listicle corner: 5 mistakes when launching a podcast (Podcast VA); 30 art podcasts (Paul Jackson)

High 5 Media, parent company of Dallas-based YEA Networks, announced that it has acquired a majority interest in Spoke Media, a podcast company based in Dallas that specializes in branded content.

Vice interviews the producers of This Sounds Serious, a Canadian parody true-crime podcast.

A new UK podcast about Japan has been launched - Abroad in Japan is from Radio Stakhanov, hosted by Acast; it's a podcast adaptation of Chris Broad's YouTube channel.

Richard Miron from Earshot Strategies looks at 2017's year in podcasting. "The sheer numbers of programmes staking a claim in the new world of online audio, has created some chaos and confusion."

Sennheiser announces a collaboration with MouthMedia Network, the NYC-based podcast producer. Two new studios are powered by Sennheiser solutions. Mouth Media also announce a sweepstakes to win $500 worth of gear: that sweepstake page also includes a 25% discount code on Sennheiser product.

SoundCloud is about to "sell stakes" to a bank and the Singaporean state's investment firm, says Bloomberg. Should stabilise the company.