Search for ‘TWiT’

Mathew Passy is to join Libsyn as LibsynPro Customer Care Specialist, replacing Dave Jackson. “Mathew will also be our lead to work with the Podcasting 2.0 folks,” said Libsyn’s Rob Walch. Passy has described Podcasting 2.0 as “more than just upgrades; it’s a transformation”.

How many listeners to make Hyperfixed, the new podcast from Alex Goldman, pay its bills for the 5-6 staff he’d like? Writing on X, he says it needs around 200,000 listeners to be able to pay for staff - made from a mix of paid subscriptions and ad revenue. If he just relied on ads, he says he’d need a million listeners.

In the Midst feed is Moonward, a semi-improvised four-part miniseries which blends live video, audio, music, and lighting effects to transport audiences into an immersive black box theater setting. The show also launched yesterday on YouTube and Twitch.

X, Elon Musk’s social network, is to put live streams behind a premium paywall, the company has xitted out. (We’ve got the new names right, yes?)

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard has signed with Wondery. The show became a Spotify exclusive in Jul 2021, becoming available everywhere in Aug 2023; the new deal starts on Sept 1 and will include video shows for the first time (and merch rights). Wondery+ subscribers will get it a week early.

Conshax, a value 4 value analytics service, is to close on July 15. “We want to take Conshax into a new direction,” the company says on X.

Riverside has launched “VideoDub” in early access: a way to correct a transcript to generate the corrected words in the audio, and correct the lipsync in the video too. It’s worth a watch.

The Lex Fridman Podcast recorded a three-hour episode in the Amazon jungle. Impressively, he does so in a suit and tie.

Apple has apologised for its much-criticised iPad ad. The company, traditionally the first choice for creatives including many podcasters, said that it “missed the mark” with the video, which showed creative symbols like a piano, a metronome and tins of paint being crushed by a hydraulic press. However, the ad - which is a copy of a fifteen year-old TV spot for an LG Android phone - still remains on Tim Cook’s Twitter account, and on YouTube, where the company has turned comments off.

Buzzsprout’s Kevin Finn talks more about the service in the Podnews Weekly Review podcast this week; and Cameron Moll of Buzzsprout says on Twitter that it was built in six weeks.

Captivate has launched a set of integrations with YouTube onto podcast websites and for supporting podcast players.

TWiT is to close its studios in Petaluma in the next six months, Leo Laporte said in Macbreak Weekly. “Every little bit counts,” he said, referencing the environmental benefits. ”Our 15 employees won't be driving all the way to Petaluma anymore. They will be staying home.” TWiT made staff layoffs late last year.

During Q1/24, PodMatch paid $58,116 to podcasters, says founder Alex Sanfilippo.

Truefans got a good magazine article writeup in the City, University of London alumni magazine. (CEO Sam Sethi went there).

Rephonic has started rolling out details of Spotify follower numbers for every podcast in its directory. The data appeared in some users’ apps a few weeks ago.

If you think Twitter is still a place you want to be seen in - @podnews is still there - then The Podcast Host gives you ideas to Promote Your Podcast on X/Twitter With These 4 Strategies

Pocket Casts appears to be looking at supporting websub, according to John Spurlock. We’ve written about websub, which is used to indicate to podcast directories that an RSS feed has just been updated (and its Podcasting 2.0 cousin, podping).

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.

Vox Media’s SB Nation has closed its local sports podcasts - even locking some podcasters out of posting final episodes. A long post by Kyle Scott Laskowski gives some potential reasons.

Who are upcoming guests for the SmartLess podcast? Peter Hamby suggests that Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton taped an edition of the show yesterday all together. Quite the guest booking.

The TWiT network “missed ad sales by 13% and club growth by 24%” in this quarter, according to Lisa Laporte.

What would you do for a podcast? Don Lemon reportedly wanted a free Cybertruck from Elon Musk, and to be launched into orbit by SpaceX to record “the first podcast in space”. The demands, including an $8mn salary, were passed on by UTA, the talent agency that represents him, says the New York Post; though UTA says the story’s nonsense. Lemon says his partnership with X was cancelled.

PodMatch, a podcast guesting service, has added support for interviewers (or interviewees) that charge a fee.

“We are losing our network to ad tech.” Writing on X, Lisa Laporte explains why podcasting is struggling. One reason, she says: advertisers are requiring an ever-wider set of technologies in podcast feeds, leading to unreliability and privacy issues.

As one open standard gets integrated by Apple (the transcript), another has been integrated by Spreaker. The company now supports podping, a near-instant way of communicating to podcast directories that you’ve published a new episode. Already supported by companies like Buzzsprout, Blubrry, Transistor, RSS.com and Captivate (and us!), the addition of Spreaker adds a signficant number of shows, says John Spurlock.

Yesterday evening, Gimlet, Parcast and Ringer Unions appeared to have failed to have reached a deal with Spotify management. Ringer Union claims 86% of their members are ready to walk out, while 100% of Gimlet’s team are.

Podcast Follower is a script for a “Lindy” that gets you an email containing a weekly digest of all the podcasts you listen to.

Podpage is now supporting the Podcasting 2.0 chapters feature. Chapters published in this way are independently editable, and can be displayed by a wider set of tools.

Audacy is to cut twelve jobs at Pineapple Street Studios - about 25% of the staff - says a report by Bloomberg. The staff union says it’s heartbroken and will fight for an appropriate severance package. The company filed for bankruptcy protection last month.

The Gimlet Union reports that Spotify management are not participating in contract discussions. The Ringer Union “has made notable progress” on its negotations though, but differences remain.

PodcastAddict’s latest update has been denied by the Google Play Store. The podcast and radio app is used 60,000 times every day by users to set alarms to wake up to their favourite podcast; but Google is now prohibiting this functionality.

Erika Ayers Badan is to leave her role as CEO at Barstool Sports. She posted a video to Twitter saying she is “super sad”. Dave Portnoy added: “It's been quite a run and we couldn't have done it without her.”

Does your podcast inform people at the heart government? “This podcast series is worth listening to ... the best insight into Yemen.,” tweets the UK’s Minister of State for Security, Tom Tugendhat. He links to Message Heard’s Conflicted, a podcast looking at the heart of conflicts in the Middle East.

Zach Kahn, until recently the PR person for Apple Podcasts but tweeting personally, shares his 2024 Podcasting Wishlist. “Make shorter shows”, he suggests, “trust your gut”, and “let the past die”.

PodMatch paid more than $185,000 to podcasters last year, and the company announced it has now achieved more than a quarter of a million dollars overall.

Congratulations to our supporters Message Heard, which is celebrating its six year anniversary this week.

American conservative television host Laura Ingraham says she is owed almost a million dollars by podcast company Quake Media, according to a court complaint. The Daily Beast reports that Quake Media repeatedly failed to make payments to Ingraham. Quake Media was a $2.99/month podcast subscription platform: it stopped posting on Twitter more than a year ago, and its website appears to have stopped working over the last few months. Its show with Andrew Cuomo closed last week.

Listening app Podfans has rebranded to TrueFans. Founder and CEO Sam Sethi said on the Podnews Weekly Review podcast last week: “We do more than just straight podcasts. We were obviously looking at music. We're looking at books, video, and so, talking to several music artists, they said Podfans doesn't really say music to us and it's a bit narrow focused.”

Stew Cornelius has joined Acast as an Account Director based in NYC. Stew has a broad background in media and has held roles at Turner Broadcasting, Hulu, and Twitter. Andrew Mongarella is a new Account Director with Acast in NYC. Andrew has spent the bulk of his career in digital audio sales with roles at SiriusXM and SoundCloud.

The man who single-handedly destroyed Twitter? Or a visionary? On Musk with Walter Isaacson is new from iHeartPodcasts and Kaleidoscope. Evan Ratliff (“Mastermind,” “Longform” Podcast) sits down with Isaacson to draw out the behind-the-scenes stories of this epic biography, and what the writer has learned as an outsider inside Silicon Valley.

TWiT, one of the oldest podcast networks, has made a number of layoffs “in order to keep operating without a loss”. Hosts Jason Howell and Ant Pruitt and editor Victor Bognot have left the company. TWiT was projected to lose $1.1mn next year. We’ve a full transcript of Leo’s announcement.

As we reported yesterday, Vogel sold more than $9.3mn of Spotify shares on the same day the job cuts were announced. He’d previously sold $3.3m in September. HotPod’s Ariel Shapiro notes that Eve Konstan, Spotify’s General Counsel, also sold $1.1mn of shares on the same day (under her married name). The day before, Spotify board member Shishir Mehrotra sold $0.5mn. These sales may have been automated; but the timing has been described as insensitive at best.

Podcast app Castro is “actively seeking a new home with new owners”. Last week, we reported that Mohit Mamoria, a former Castro employee who works for Tiny, Castro’s current owners, said it was to close; but “any communication or publication regarding the app's future is not official and does not represent Castro’s views” said the blog post. The blog post was the first for three years, and did not have a named author. (The app is now working again after an extended outage last week.)

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.

Wallet of Satoshi, a lightning wallet used by some podcasters and podcast listeners, has pulled out of the US. You'll still be able to use the app if you have it; but you should pull your funds out and stick them somewhere else.

RSS reader Flipboard has launched a podcast about social media called Dot Social, to coincide with the company pulling off Twitter/X.

Saying good bye to Twitter/X? Podnews is on the fediverse, as are 262 other people involved in podcasting who are following us. Follow us! Follow them! Follow everybody! (And if you prefer BlueSky, we're there too as @podnews.net)

Everyone at Buzzsprout is working a support shift over the next few months. "It helps us build empathy with our customers but also identify issues we could solve with marketing or in the product," says Alban Brooke.

Podcast producer Neal Veglio sent an open letter to Libsyn yesterday, criticising the company's direction. Acting CEO John W Gibbons (who's Twitter bio now says he is "reinventing Libsyn") responded.

It's a year since Elon Musk bought Twitter. Vox Media's Land of the Giants returns for a new series today. Hosted by Vox’s Peter Kafka, the show will tell the story of Twitter (now known as X) at a crucial moment for the platform, including interviews with former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, first VP of Product Jason Goldman, Yoel Roth, a former head of trust and safety along with additional early and recent employees.

Ever had a podcast guest bail on you at the last minute? Spotting a growing issue, PodMatch is adding a 'reliability score' to its guest booking service.

Further reading/viewing: "Don't make podcasts radio," said Oxford Road CEO Dan Granger in a speech made at Podcast Movement which was made available this week on the company's YouTube channel … Acast's Megan Davies has posted about what she calls a revolutionary female podcast landscape in Saudi Arabia … NPR left Twitter six months ago; but the broadcaster says traffic to its websites has dropped by only one percentage point … and The Verge covers more about redundancies and cancellations at WNYC.

TWiT podcasts were added to an advertising block list used by Eero and PiHole, rendering them temporarily unplayable. We've seen this behaviour affect other shows, too; technical details are below in the tech stuff.

The journalist Glenn Greenwald calls it "one of the world's most repressive online censorship schemes"; The Toronto Sun has also posted criticism.

NPR's Digital Media, Audience Growth, and Communications divisions have a tentative union agreement ready for ratification.

Announced on the same day as Spotify's AI translations, Wondercraft AI also launched an AI dubbing tool. Unlike Spotify's pilot, the Wondercraft tool is available to all podcasts in thirteen different languages. Here's our own daily podcast, dubbed into Spanish.

On its seat-back entertainment, Delta is now listing two Spotify video podcasts within the TV series section.

PodcastAddict has added enhanced search on its website.

Podhero, a podcast app, appears to have closed. It used the Twitter API for login, which is no longer available for developers to use; the website was last live in early July.

Podcast app Snipd has launched Premium, which adds AI episode summaries and transcripts. The app has been rewritten to also work with private RSS feeds.

A podcast network based in Dubai in the UAE, Kerning Cultures has suspended operations and laid off staff, apparently due to lack of funding. The female-led Arabic and English network was eight years old; the website lists 33 staff. They were a partner with Acast.

In a social media post, Glenn Beck said Apple Podcasts had removed The Glenn Beck Program - falsely claiming it was political censorship by the company.

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.

Vox Media's Land of the Giants, a narrative podcast about big tech, has a new season out today: it looks at twenty years of Tesla, including its forgotten origin story as well as its polarising CEO. If that's not enough Musk for you, in October, there'll be a new season on Twitter.

Even though 86% of Americans know what it is (compared to 83% for podcasting), Twitter is rebranding as X. (If you're still mentioning your Twitter name on your podcast, you're probably best stopping that).

Charles Ubaghs has been promoted to Managing Editor of Global Player, and Digital Content Director at Global. He's worked for the company for over 13 years. (Eight years ago, he spoke about how Classic FM was using Facebook at a radio conference; possibly good tricks to learn for today, too.)

A number of news podcasts are being censored by Meta's Facebook, Instagram and Threads in Canada, after the Canadian government passed Bill C-18, a new law requiring tech companies to pay to link to news content. The 905er podcast is one of those affected. In a video, Canadian YouTuber and journalist J.J. McCullough calls it "ill-conceived" and akin to extortion; our Editor has personal thoughts too.

TWiT is switching away from Spotify - the company is now using Podscribe, and is testing Libsyn's AdvertiseCast instead of Megaphone. "Advertisecast has a higher fill rate, plus we hope to partner with them on the host-read ads side of our business," says Lisa Laporte.

Raffi Krikorian, a former executive at Twitter and Uber as well as former CTO of the Democratic National Committee, is the host of Technically Optimistic which launches today - examining the use of technology for good, with a particular focus on AI and its potential to transform society.

In Cannes, Spotify announced a new Spotify Original Podcast with Trevor Noah. He made the announcement on Spotify Beach with Daniel Ek. It will not be an exclusive show.

Elon Musk asked one of his favourite podcasts, Fall of Civilisations, to upload their show to Twitter. The response was probably not what he was hoping for: "the platform is too compromised for me to consider it … everything that once made Twitter special seems to be leeching away."

Apple is threatening to remove Damus, a NOSTR-based chat service, from the app store. The company's concern is that "zaps" - a way to send people a small amount of money - could be used to circumvent Apple's payment system. If upheld, the ruling threatens "value4value" podcast apps, which use a similar system, and even services like PayPal or Venmo.

Separately, The Athletic appear to be scaling back on its slate of soccer podcasts in the UK, according to tweets from David Cameron Walker, The Phil Hay Show, and The Square Ball.

Jemele Hill is "to leave Spotify" (Bloomberg), and is looking for a new home for her podcast (Hollywood Reporter), but "a lot of what’s been reported just isn’t true" (Jemele Hill via Twitter). Her show is exclusive on Spotify. In June 2021 Hill announced The Unbothered Network, which launched two shows in Oct 2022: Sanctified and The Black Girl Bravado.

The Ben Shapiro Show and other Daily Wire podcasts will be distributed on Twitter, the company has announced, after success with one of its shows.

Lex Fridman wants Twitter to become "the best podcasting app". In response, Elon Musk suggests he uses Twitter Spaces when recording his podcast.

And, the number of daily podcast episodes about AI has increased by 500% on Spotify in the last 30 days, tweets Spotify CEO Daniel Ek.

Eli Chen, Jacob Pinter and the team who ran Overheard at National Geographic have been laid off. The company is majority-owned by Disney.

Radio Ambulante's contract with ViceNews to produce El hilo has been terminated, according to a tweet. "This is a turning point", the company says, kicking off a fundraising drive. Vice Media made twelve people redundant in November.

Wondery has just announced a six-episode show The Bird: Elon vs Twitter. The show will tell 'the wild story of when the world’s richest man took charge of the world’s “digital public square.”' - it's available now on Wondery+ and everywhere else next week.

This is Ariel Shapiro's last week writing for Hot Pod for a while. "I am very pregnant," she writes. Amrita Khalid (also here on social media) will look after Hot Pod in the meantime.

A generally held truth is that none of Spotify's The Ringer shows are exclusive to the platform. That's not quite true: The Ringer MMA Show has been mainly exclusive on Spotify. The show was once produced on Spotify Greenroom; it appears to now be made using Twitter Spaces.

Joe Rogan thinks things will get "real slippery" after a fake AI-generated podcast appeared featuring his voice. (Again).

NPR has quit Twitter.

Twitter: After, well, everything - and following the lead from Eric Johnson, we will no longer link directly to Twitter from our newsletter stories. All links in our archive now redirect to Nitter, a privacy-respecting, non-censored alternative.

Our Editor dresses like this every day to record the Podnews Daily - as spotted by Podnews field reporter Arielle Nissenblatt. You can hear the Podnews Daily on Apple Podcasts, where you can subscribe to an ad-free version.

Data: Jean-Louis Queguiner posts the breakdown of podcasts by language. English accounts for 60.9% of shows (though only 20% of the world speaks it).

After announcing $100mn for a 'creator diversity fund' in February 2022, Spotify has only spent 10% of that amount, says a report from Bloomberg (syndicated). Spotify's Parcast Union has also highlighted that less than 5% of an internal diversity budget announced almost a year ago has been spent.

The final episode of the three-season podcast Equal Parts is posted today. Each episode tells the story of a couple meeting and falling in love, with partners interviewed separately then woven together. The final episode tells this story. However, with the last episode comes potentially a first: an exhibition of artwork from the show, which will be at KERB wine bar in Ancoats, Manchester, from 6 Apr to 9 May. Images for each episode are produced by different artists from the audio alone.

In a tweet, YouTube has announced that "podcasts are a go!" We think this means that podcast tools are now available on YouTube Studio for all (and 9to5google suggests this too); though podcasts are not visible in YouTube Music for anyone yet. An explainer video has been published, along with a new section in YouTube's FAQs. YouTube has not responded to a request for comment.

BBC Local Radio journalists went on strike, after plans were unveiled to merge programming between stations. BBC Radio Humberside's Amanda White, tweeting in a personal capacity, explains why there isn't enough local digital content on BBC Sounds: pointing the finger of blame at BBC senior management. Particularly, while she broadcasts live on TV and can control a radio station, she points out she isn't trusted to publish a thing on the BBC website.

Devon Taylor has been made Senior Editor of The Daily from The New York Times. She joins from Spotify's Gimlet: "I'm very excited to join this extremely talented team and dive headfirst into the world of daily news," she tweets.

Rob Greenlee has left Podbean, and is starting his own podcast network consultancy business, Spoken Life Media. "For me to be a trusted partner I need to be seen as unbiased in my view on distribution and monetization tools", he writes in a statement.

You can watch the show in full here

Hindenburg Pro 2 beta has added Mandarin, Swedish, Norwegian and Italian to its supported transcript languages.

There were also layoffs at iHeartPodcasts this week, according to the iHeart Podcast Union.

Few people listen to podcasts in Japan. Why is that - and what kind of shows could work well in the country? In the first of our deep-dives into different podcast markets across East and South East Asia, Guang Jin YEO looks at the Japanese market: where Twitter is popular, copyright laws differ, and Amazon Music is #3.

Sunday is Africa Podcast Day 2023. You can celebrate with digital graphics and use #AfricaPodcastDay2023 to tag your posts, and follow @afripods on Twitter to watch a live stream with panels and advice.

Juleyka Lantigua gives Apple Podcast twitter readers a tour of her home office.

Further reading: Nour Eldin writes about the smart way to listen to podcasts using AI … The Observer writes Podcasts in pivotal moment as number of new shows drops by 80%, except, as we covered last week, this figure is misleading … Eric Nuzum, writing in his newsletter, says that "Podcasting is now acting like a mature media platform, subject to the laws of economics and physics, as well as the realities of audience taste, engagement, and return on investment that governs other media platforms." … Erik Johnson is hurming and murming about podcast awards

Companies like Spotify and Amazon are "ultimately bad for podcasting," according to "Chief TWiT" and longtime podcaster Leo Laporte. Speaking in today's Podnews Weekly Review, he says: "Their complete model is to get you to listen in their app so that they know everything about you. They know exactly what you listen to, when you listen to it, how many times you listen to it, and which ads are listened to, and they want to sell that information ... Advertisers foolishly, I think, want that information." You can hear his interview in full.

Twitter has announced that all free access to the Twitter API will end on Feb 9, without announcing pricing or usage detail. This is likely to break many cross-posting tools and services. You can follow Podnews by searching for updates@podnews.net in Mastodon and other compatible platforms, where we'll continue to keep you updated.

Malvina Goldfeld has joined Podimo as Chief Product Officer - she's ex Meta and PayPal; Johann Querné has been announced as VP of Growth, a position he's held for three months according to his LinkedIn. He's a former Twitter, Uber and Alibaba exec.

The BBC has removed its radio stations from Radioplayer, the cross-industry radio and podcasts app that it helped fund: listeners will now need to download BBC Sounds.

Behind a paywall, The Information posts an article about Patreon, used by many podcasters (including Podnews) for support. All is not well, the article suggests: bits of it are readable via the author's twitter.

Seven audio workers have been laid off by Vox Media, reports Vox Media's Hot Pod, including the team producing Cover Story. Vox Media declined to give exact figures. Around 130 people were laid off in total, or 7% of the workforce. Spotify is also to cut staff this week, according to Bloomberg.

Our Editor tweeted a question about whether the Apple Podcasts Connect "Remember me" option actually worked for anyone. After a number of responses, 90% of whom said it doesn't work for them either, today we notice the option has disappeared from Apple Podcasts entirely. 💪 (Hmm. With this new power, let's try this…)

Jack Dorsey uses Fountain to listen to podcasts, the former Twitter CEO says.

Apple Podcasts has posted a list of shows recommended by the company's country editors, including shows from New Zealand, Brazil, the UK and Korea.

"The latest update of Slack automatically produces transcripts when you upload audio files."

Apple Podcasts talks to Daniel Alarcón about how Radio Ambulante was created in 2012.

Congratulations to Tom Merritt, who with Sarah Lane has reached the 10th year of the Daily Tech News Show. Originally as Tech News Today as part of TWiT, and relaunched as Daily Tech News Show - "a placeholder name that stuck" - in 2014, Tom has been podcasting since Buzz Out Loud in 2004. Fun fact: he was a country music DJ for WGEL in 1986, aged just 16.

The host of Sword and Scale, Mike Boudet has posted a racially unpleasant poll on Twitter. Boudet was sacked by Wondery in 2019 after similar Twitter comments, and was widely accused of orchestrating one-star reviews against a competitor. He has denied that he left one star reviews; and is also the subject of a YouTube documentary. We've again asked for comment.

UK comedian Michael Spicer has posted a video about podcasters appearing on other podcasts

Festival Estéreo happened last month in Argentina, which is the largest podcast event in the country. Pablo Fisher covers what happened at the event, and links to video and twitter threads.

Elon Musk has been mentioned in nearly 44 million downloads across Acast's podcasts, says Georgie Holt, Acast MD for the Americas. She highlights why podcast advertising is a rather safer bet than Twitter.

Pocket Casts and Spotify are also offering algorithmic looks at your 2022 podcast activity. We like Shane Smyth's most listened-to podcast.

From CBC Podcasts #1 is: Front Burner. Canada’s essential daily news podcast. We take you deep into the stories shaping Canada and the world. Hosted by Jayme Poisson.

The death of Twitter: what does it mean for podcasters?

Leo Laporte is to retire - from radio. The Tech Guy radio show, which started on KFI-AM in Los Angeles in January 2004 and is carried on over 160 stations, will end on Dec 18.

Writing on Mastodon, Leo Laporte likens the current implosion of Twitter, a centralised social media platform, to where podcasts might end up. "If you like podcasts, use an RSS-based podcast player. Support the open ecosystem," he asks.

Cameron Moll has joined Buzzsprout as VP of Design. He is a design leader formerly of Meta and Pendo, and also founded short-form audio platform Spoken in 2015.

From CBC Podcasts #9 is: The Dose A weekly look at the health news that matters to you. Bestselling author and practicing ER doctor Brian Goldman pulls back the curtain on healthcare, talking to top experts in plain language.

PSA: Applied for a job with JAR Audio only to find they want money? It's not them: it's just a phishing scam. Tell your friends.

At end of an era at podcast production company Gimlet - Alex Blumberg, the co-founder of the company, left Spotify last month, it's emerged.

Wondering what your new business owners are going to do with your company? Twitter employees were told to listen to All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg, according to reports: a ninety-minute show with "six interesting quotes", according to Business Insider. Both Jason (Calcanis) and (David) Sacks are working at Twitter now.

Eric Johnson's Follow Friday podcast and newsletter is another casualty of Twitter's purchase by Elon Musk. "I believe the era of social media as we’ve known it is coming to a close," Johnson adds.

Breaker co-founder Leah Culver, who's recently been working on Twitter Spaces, is still at Twitter; though she's offering to help people hiring. Kimberly Le, the product designer of Twitter Spaces is, however, out. Or perhaps she might not be: Twitter is apparently asking people it laid off to please come back.

Changes to Twitter making you itch for somewhere else? Arielle Nissenblatt is working on a Podcast Community on Discord, which already has 400 people involved. Here's an invite to join!

Twitter employee Leah Culver, the co-founder of the Breaker podcast app, has pictured herself holding the source code of part of Twitter Spaces, following an apparent order by Twitter's new owner Elon Musk to print out all the code for a code review with Musk himself. There are rumours that blue-ticked users will be forced to pay $20 per month to keep the verification tag.

Why Joe Rogan is one of the best communicators that Max Marchione has ever seen

iOS 16.1 and iPadOS 16.1 was released. On the iPad, Apple Podcasts has been redesigned with a new sidebar. Disappointingly, it's still not using the new useragent functionality. Apple, which has made $167B in profit for the last twelve months, is also raising prices for TV+, Music and Apple One.

Spotify now indexes 5,523,475 podcasts, according to an app notification. We notice that Distractible was the #1 show on Spotify yesterday in the US, rather than Rogan.

A live show for UK politics podcast The Rest is Politics apparently sold out in seven minutes, says one of the podcast's hosts.

How much does a podcast cost to make? Dustlight Productions founder Misha Euceph explains a "super lean" price for a weekly show: $244,000 for a year.

The Gimlet Union and Parcast Union have tweeted a statement about the 38 layoffs across Spotify. They say that some shows lost as much as three-quarters of their audience when going exclusive; and that employees were given as little as an hour to close out their work and leave. Parcast Union has tweeted some of its members who are now available for hire.

Spotify is cancelling eleven of its original shows, says The Hollywood Reporter. Those cancelled represent less than 2% of Spotify's more than 500 original podcasts; but it's likely to result in "less than 5% of Spotify's staff on original podcasts" being laid off. If you're hiring, Connor Sampson has volunteered to connect you. Spotify didn't respond to an invitation to comment.

Even without PowerPress until now, Podping is continuing to grow in use. "Of the 1.66 million new episodes published in September, podping found 11.6% of them first", says John Spurlock.

The feed to Kara Swisher's former podcast Sway has been repurposed by the New York Times to now be used by tech show Hard Fork. Swisher is annoyed, Walt Mossberg is upset, as are others.

Players get game tokens if they listen to a podcast for just twenty seconds. (Carman posts a graphic). But, because more than 60 seconds of audio are downloaded by the player, as demonstrated in this article in Sounds Profitable, these plays count as an IAB-certified download from podcast hosts and in prefix services like Podtrac. That allows podcasts promoted in this way to charge for the ads delivered in the show, and for that traffic to be counted in rankers.

Elahe Izadi has been named as co-host of Post Reports, the daily podcast from The Washington Post.

Manuela Bedoya has finished up at LWC Studios, where she was Marketing Lead.

Twitch, a streaming video platform, is to change the money it pays out to larger creators. Subscription revenue had been split 70/30 in favour of premium content creators; but, those creators will get the standard 50/50 split next year after their first $100,000 of earnings. The company, which is owned by Amazon, claims it has high bandwidth costs.

Spotify's Nir Zicherman calls it an epic shift in a personal blog post. Former Spotify exec Michael Mignano calls it a big deal for creators in a Twitter thread, comparing it to Audible's "effective monopoly" and flat-rate pricing model.

Adnan Syed is now out of jail and in home detention, having had his murder conviction quashed by Baltimore Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn after 23 years in prison. Now aged 41, Syed is not officially innocent: he faces a new trial into whether he was guilty of the death of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. A new episode of Undisclosed was released last week after the prosecutors asked for this new trial; host Rabia Chaudry highlighting that Serial's reporting was unreliable. A new episode of Serial is due today.

Amazon Music is celebrating two years since the launch of podcasts in the app. It currently has a 0.7% share globally, though is a top 3 app in Japan.

Headliner now supports YouTube videos from your podcasts up to four hours long. The company has also integrated with Podomatic.

Twitter's podcast player is now rolling out to Twitter Blue members - on iOS only for now, though. Twitter Blue, the company's premium service, is only available in four countries: US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Jason Calcanis, an American entrepreneur and podcaster, is considering "hosting a 48-hour event for podcasters only".

iOS 16 will be released on Monday. The new OS release for iPhone includes a number of updates to Apple Podcasts. Developers can submit their apps with support for iOS 16 features today, like the new support for a useragent in AppleCoreMedia.

Podcasts hosted on SoundCloud have, for the past week, not been appearing on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. Multiple podcasters have reported the issue but we understand it doesn't appear to be fixed.

Radio analyst Adam Bowie has looked at how podcasting works in Twitter. He notes that the algorithm correctly deduced that he is a fan of Arsenal, a British football team, but also that it is trying to get him interested in WWE wrestling, which he isn't.

Are comments coming to podcasts on Spotify? Chris Messina notes some new code in the company's iOS app suggesting the new feature is in development. The company also seems to be adding a method to discover what your friends are listening to.

Kyle Fulton has joined the Globe and Mail as Podcast Producer. (Almost: at the time of writing, he's getting ready for his first day.)

How many podcasts are in Spotify now? According to a notification from the Spotify app, there are 5,290,396.

Want to see what podcasts look like in Twitter? Our accounts aren't in the test list; but Ileane Smith has got it: she shares a look at how the thing works on her website.

Do we know anyone with podcasting enabled on their Twitter app? (It's in the Spaces tab). Want to write some impressions, or give us a screen recording? editor@podnews.net if so.

Podcasts are coming to Twitter, the company announced late Thursday. Shows appear in the redesigned Spaces tab. However, you'll not be able to choose individual shows: the interface gives pre-selected shows in topic-based playlists, called "Stations". It uses RSS, and is curated from what people you follow listen to. A spokesperson has told Input that there is no search facility nor any ability to add your own RSS feeds. Described as a "test", it'll be available to random users around the world in English.

Spotify has put the company's new podcast ad experience live in their app. Chris Messina has captured and posted what it looks like, on an ad with multiple advertisers: giving the listener a set of links for the ads they heard. Ads open in a webview, which potentially means Spotify can monitor the actions taken by the listener.

The Latino Podcast Listener Report 2022 was published by Edison Research. The number of US Latino podcast listeners over the past month has slightly declined year-on-year to 38%. Of Latino podcast listeners, 47% are women. Elsie Escobar, who co-presented the results, writes her big takeaways; as has Maribel Quezada Smith.

The Pitch is to return this November, as an independent show. Host Josh Muccio has bought his show from Spotify's Gimlet; it last released shows in Dec 2020.

Podcast hosting company CoHost has gained IAB Certification for its analytics. The company launched in May.

Clubhouse is to undergo a "huge evolution" to add individual communities, or "Houses", to the app.

Jeff Meyerson, the founder and host of the Software Engineering Daily podcast, passed away last month, it's been announced.

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.

Christopher Phin, the Head of Podcasts for UK publisher DC Thomson, has announced that he's been made redundant.

Sounds Profitable has announced it is to use Spooler to produce its future podcasts.

Jane Lynch, an actor best known for a character she played in Glee, has tweeted that women who host podcasts should "lower their annoying high-pitched voices". As you might guess, Twitter wasn't convinced.

Tanner Campbell is spending money on Overcast to promote a show, and explains why. He's also posted a number of other places you can pay to promote your show (costs and details).

James Parkinson is to start as a Podcast Producer at ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia from Monday; he joins from Lawson Media. "I’m beyond excited to be joining a fantastic team at ARN", he tweets, adding "Also, a nod to Podnews where I first spotted the job ad. If you want a job in podcasting, it’s become a great resource for new opportunities. And companies that aren’t posting their ads there are probably missing out on great talent." Thanks!

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.

Following the acquisition of Podchaser by Acast, Acast's Ross Adams and Podchaser's Bradley Davis will be on the Podland podcast this Thursday. Meanwhile, Mathew Passy wonders if the acquisition enables Acast to "spam more podcasters", Matt Cundill wonders whether to keep information on Podchaser, and Blubrry's Todd Cochrane says he'll pull all his shows because of Acast's "spamming and poaching". Acast tell us the acquisition is "completely unrelated to our email marketing strategy"; and we would also note that Acast doesn't appear to have sent a cold email marketing campaign, to anyone, since mid-June. Perhaps they've heard us.

The app appears to be listing some third party content. It's also added variable-speed playback for iOS users last week; we're told it's rolling out on Android, too.

Arielle Nissenblatt writes a twitter thread on how to launch a new show.

The developer of Overcast, Marco Arment, describes "cheap, sloppy dynamic ad insertion in podcasts" as something that "continues to degrade the experience for listeners" in a tweet, concerned that listeners are blaming the podcast apps.

Reddit is to start live audio Talks, much like Twitter or Clubhouse. The difference, says Arielle Nissenblatt in a twitter thread, is that Talks are promoted to people who follow subreddits on the topic your talk is about: which could be millions of people. There's a form to fill out if you're interested in hosting them.

The Writers Guild of America East's Audio Alliance, which aims to represent writers of scripted podcasts, is running a Town Hall meeting tonight from 8pm Eastern.

The Infinite Dial Australia also shows that average podcast listening (among podcast listeners) has surged in the country - from five hours a week up to just over seven hours a week.

Arielle Nissenblatt writes for Podnews: "When I read the news about the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, my heart sank. But then I thought that, as an industry, there's something we can do: use our platform to share resources, come together, and help those who are (or will be) at risk. We quickly organized, creating suggested language for host-reads that can be placed as pre-roll ads on your podcast as a way of voicing our opposition to this decision. To take part read this document, record a pre-roll for your next episode, share that episode with me so we can credit you, and let me know if you have questions."

The app also produces shareable clips and supports other Podcasting 2.0 features.

During Pride Month, Google Podcasts is blocking and hiding some podcast episodes apparently because they use the word 'lesbian'. RPG: Realms of Peril & Glory's Jun 13 episode - visible everywhere else, like on Apple Podcasts - is not available on Google Podcasts in the US, UK or Australia, even to logged-in over 18 users. "There is nothing adult in this episode", say the podcast creators. (Using Podnews's Google Podcast RSS Helper, we were able to confirm that Google is using the podcast's full RSS feed.)

"Every new Anchor show brings 2.5 additional monthly active users to Spotify", said Maya Prohovnik. The company also unveiled that Anchor powers 3m podcasts on Spotify - so, "these figures suggest that Anchor has been responsible, singlehandedly, for 7.5m new users to Spotify. Given a majority of people do not listen to podcasts, the majority will be new podcast listeners. This is good," said our Editor on Twitter.

Bloomberg's Ashley Carman noted in an entertaining Twitter thread that Joe Rogan was missing from their presentation, and that the company has three more businesses to come (X, Y and Z).

Podcast growth strategist Jeremy Enns posts a Twitter thread about how to use the right marketing tactics for your podcast.

Headliner now supports direct sharing to TikTok, as well as YouTube playlists.

If you're on Twitter, you've probably seen little cartoons about podcasting from Erik Jones. Courtney Kocak's Podcast Bestie newsletter interviews him about them.

Podcast Movement has announced Criminal's co-creator Phoebe Judge as a keynote speaker at the upcoming Podcast Movement 2022 in Dallas, TX. (Podnews will be there.)

New RØDECaster Pro II units are being shipped ahead of its release: but they won't work until release day, June 12.

A new app, Snipods, is launching in alpha for iOS and Android. It lets you save and share snippets of interesting parts of the podcasts you listen to.

Twitter Spaces recordings may not disappear after 30 days in future.

Want to convert Twitter Spaces to YouTube? A new, automatic tool to do just that is launching today from AudioLabs. Among the benefits: unlike Twitter Spaces, YouTube videos aren't deleted after 30 days. Here's an example.

More people are leaving Gimlet: and this time it's Reply All hosts Alex Goldman and Emmanuel Dzotsi. It's unclear if the show will continue. "This iteration of Reply All will be ending in late June", the company tweeted. PJ Vogt and Sruthi Pinnamaneni left in Feb 2021 after allegations were made against them.

Johan Seidefors, the Nordic Head of Content at Spotify, thinks there is a future in scripted podcasts, and that podcasting is intimate and that the connection between the host and the listener is important. He was speaking in an interview with Podnews's Editor, James Cridland, at Radiodays Europe.

Elena Fernández Collins is now working with Simplecast in communications and content. She is a well-known podcast critic, reporter and host.

Spotify is testing a new homepage layout that allows a toggle between music and podcasts.

After a petition with over 300 signatures and wide condemnation about tweets many considered highly offensive, The Podcast Academy issued a statement that Daniel J Lewis no longer serves on the Board of Governors, acknowledging that the podcast community were questioning Lewis's commitment to inclusivity. Podnews asked Lewis for a statement, but after receiving it, we have declined the opportunity to publish.

Gimlet's union reports three layoffs at the company.

12 Simple Ways to Promote Your Podcast on Twitter include creating a content calendar, and not forgetting about Twitter Spaces.

The world's largest podcast host, Anchor was down for much of yesterday; from around 8.45am to 5.15pm Eastern. Publishers had problems accessing its website or posting new episodes; listeners were unable to download episodes either.

The Radio Advertising Summit took place yesterday in Köln, Germany. James Cridland, Podnews's Editor, told delegates that podcast advertising is growing because "for brands, it’s a much more human and personal way of marketing than press or radio. It’s literally marketing by word of mouth."

Podchaser now has 16m credits in their database.

Twitter, which was planning some form of podcast integration, has been bought by Elon Musk for $44bn. Musk is the world's richest man, and also owns an electric car company, a space exploration and communications corporation, a tunnel construction company, an artificial intelligence research laboratory, and a company making silicon chips that can be implanted in your brain, yet inexplicably doesn't appear in this list.

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

Podcast transcripts need non-speech elements in order to be accessible to those who need them. Ma'ayan Plaut explains what they are, and what to add.

"To help me check for level - what did you have for breakfast this morning?" - many people don't eat breakfast, so Australian radio journalist Avani Dias asked for better questions to ask. She got plenty.

An Anchor podcast called Soldier of Misfortune has been accused of being a shameless rip-off by Brendan I Koerner, a journalist for The Atlantic who wrote the story. His piece took him nine years to report, he says, and he accuses the podcaster, Jesse Rapaport, of knowingly stealing his work, and even pronouncing the name of the main character wrong throughout. "Perhaps we can start a frank discussion about what constitutes fair use for podcasters?" Koerner asks. We've approached Rapaport for comment; plagiarism has unfortunately been a recurring theme for many years.

The Parcast Union have reached a tentative deal with Spotify, according to a tweet last week.

The Podcast Academy has announced its newly-elected members of the Board of Governors. They are: Chirag Desai (Founder, Amaeya Media); Steve Wilson (Chief Strategy, QCODE); Valentina Kaledina (Director of Business Development, Castbox); Ami Thakkar (Host, Tuckered Out), Ilana Susnow (Head of Marketing and Audience Development, PodcastOne); Daniel J Lewis (Host, The Audacity to Podcast and founder, My Podcast Reviews); Martha Little (Editor, Audible); and Becky Celestina (Content Partnerships, Acast). If a member, you can meet the board on Apr 19.

Fun fact: The last BBC podcast, on Apr 1, marked Mayo's last employment with the BBC. After 40 years with the broadcaster on some of the biggest shows, HR cancelled his security pass while he was still in the building, forcing him to ask for help to get out.

Alban Brooke retells a story he'd heard at Podcast Movement last week about automated advertising for podcasts. Attributed to NPR (who deny they've ever done this), the system would turn on Facebook marketing when shows dip out of the Apple Podcasts charts: and turn it off when shows re-enter. Sounds a clever idea.

Want to play with the new Spotify interface for podcasting? It's already on your phone. On an iPhone or iPad, open Safari, visit spotify:internal:podcastclips and you'll go straight there. /via @chrismessina

Spotify is working on a brand new podcast interface. Spotted by Chris Messina, who posted a screen recording archived by Podnews here, the new interface adds a dedicated Podcasts tab, vertical scrolling, and live captions for all shows. Messina is running a pre-release version of Spotify; it's unclear when this will be released, if at all. #exciting

Also at the event, James was able to announce that the EarBuds Podcast Collective from Arielle Nissenblatt is to join the Podnews Network. For five years, EarBuds has been helping people find new podcasts to listen to: and we want to help each other grow and reach new audiences. You should subscribe.

Just 1.1% of active podcasts in 2021 had transcripts, according to new data; and far fewer for non-English shows. The transcript tag is a relatively simple part of the new podcast namespace, but in spite of accessibility laws in most countries mandating them, no podcast app with more than 1% of the market supports in-app transcripts. SiriusXM was sued in December last year for not supplying them.

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).

Is Robert Riggs the first independent podcaster to turn a podcast into a TV show? (For the record, no, he isn't). But FOX Nation will debut a new docuseries, Freed to Kill, on Friday. It's fronted by the host of True Crime Reporter, Robert Riggs. The program will focus on serial killer Kenneth McDuff - a death row inmate, freed on parole under a cloud of corruption.

Fireside Chat has a new app icon. The website now promotes video, rather than audio. Co-founder Falon Fatemi is speaking at Podcast Movement Evolutions.

What's an indie podcast? In The Ambies, Aftershock has been nominated in the Best Indie Podcast category. The show was announced in July last year as a co-production with the very un-indie iHeartMedia. Indie podcaster Maribel Quezada Smith is disappointed, saying "The intention behind creating an indie category is to amplify and celebrate the work of indie creators".

Related: an impressive use of Twitter, @paygapapp is retweeting any UK company who tweets about International Women's Day with their gender pay gap. Some companies: Amazon Web Services, the UK tax office, the Natural History Museum, magazine publisher Haymarket, Access Hollywood, or IBM.

Amazon has released Amp, a "live radio app" seen as their version of Clubhouse or TwitterSpaces. It's available in the US for iOS users only in a waitlist; it'll enable you to DJ your own music show (with "tens of millions of licensed songs" they say), and you can take callers, too. Amp's website is live, and you can download the app to join the waitlist (although we're told one code that works is twitter but we suspect it won't work for long). You don't have to use music; you could use the tool for a Clubhouse-like experience too; the app will alert your followers to upcoming shows. Guy Raz is doing a show for it; so is Nicki Minaj.

Undisclosed has announced it has come to an end, with the final episode published yesterday. Hosted by Rabia Chaudry, here's the history of the show. She's on a panel at Podcast Movement in two weeks.

TikTok on the clock, but the party don't stop: except, says Rephonic, podcasters are ignoring TikTok. Twitter is significantly over-represented across all podcasts, the company summarises; but TikTok has by far the highest average number of followers.

Will we see a podcast player in Twitter? Alessandro Paluzzi has spotted a podcasts option in the latest Twitter code, and Jane Manchun Wong has also unearthed a Podcasts tab. Nathan Gathright has brainstormed some ideas about what he hopes Twitter is up to - let's hope it's not just reruns of Twitter Spaces.

Amy Woods, Content 10x founder, will be flying the B2B podcasting flag at digital, media, tech, and marketing event, Digital City Festival, in Manchester, UK. Content 10x is sponsoring/exhibiting on 9 & 10 March and Amy will be speaking on day two. See event coverage on Twitter.

iHeartRadio has given union recognition to the iHeart Podcast Union. "The company has engaged fairly and in good faith so far in the process", the union says.

How to Use Twitter to Promote Your Podcast

Elsa Silberstein is now a producer for Australia's ABC Audio on Demand.

Acast has been been "spamming podcasters", says competitor Buzzsprout, which has published an unsolicited email from Acast sent to many of Buzzsprout's customers; we're aware they've also been sent to Anchor users too. While legal in most countries, it's seen by many as bad behaviour, and this proposal could remove email addresses from RSS feeds altogether. We asked for statements:

Maple Media's PlayerFM and Breaker suffered server issues. Meanwhile on Spotify, Joe Rogan's podcast has mysteriously disappeared twice; we suspect it's just a glitch.

Podcast host Ausha has launched a complete social media management tool, and says its the first in the world to do so. Ausha is connected to Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Tyler Moody looks at the recent Podtrac data for publishers, and works out per-show numbers. We overlooked that this data also includes This American Life's total download figures for that one show: 12 million downloads in January.

Poddin is a new podcast transcript service. Jo Moh is the founder, and looking for feedback.

Amazon and Spotify are both said to be considering buying Audioboom. The company, which monetises and publishes podcasts, has a market cap of more than US $370m.

James O. Boggs, who left Apple Podcasts in July, is hiring Ruby developers for his new company, the New River Bluff Company, which is making "next-generation audio tools".

Spreaker is rolling out podcast achievements.

Right-leaning video service Rumble has offered Rogan $100m to move his show to the platform. A video has also emerged of Rogan joking about sexual assault.

Joe Rogan has apologised for repeated use of "the n-word" on his Spotify-exclusive show, after India Arie shared clips of Rogan using the racial slur more than 24 times. Rogan claims they were taken out of context. Spotify appears to have removed 70 episodes of his show over the weekend, according to a monitoring website; the company hasn't made any comment as to why. Scott Galloway and Roxane Gay both announced they're removing their podcasts from the platform; and the Obamas are hunting for a new podcast deal. Meanwhile, Spotify's Science Vs has released a special show, fact-checking Joe Rogan's interview with Robert Malone; and the BBC's Ros Atkins has posted an explainer about what's going on: it's a worthwhile, and balanced, five minutes.

For Morning Brew, Dan Toomey posts a satirical peek at how Spotify's content advisory message might work.

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.

Link to the Breaker podcast app on your website? Check they still work. The app was acquired by Maple Media a year ago; as of today, no Breaker links to podcasts work on the service, and the Breaker website forwards to Player FM. The app's still listed in the app stores, though; it now appears to be a blue-skinned version of the Player FM app.

Other artists have followed Young's lead. Joni Mitchell pledged to remove her music from the platform, while Nils Lofgren has also removed much of his work. David Crosby said he would like to remove his songs, but sold his publishing rights last year. Belly, an alt-rock band, criticised Spotify and placed a message on their Spotify page, after noting it's very complicated to remove their music. Trade organisation Songwriters of North America supported the action; as did Howard Stern. More concerningly, British musician James Blunt threatened he will release new songs if Rogan doesn't go. Anything but that!

Facebook is a dying breed and you shouldn't focus on it for your podcast, says Hala Taha from the YAP Media Network; Twitter is not the place to promote your podcast either, and audiograms don't work. Speaking to the Podland podcast, she says she recommends looking into LinkedIn instead; and never to just promote Apple Podcasts.

A Spotify "multi-series deal" with Paul Bae, announced in a blaze of press in February last year, is not going to happen. Bae says: "I walked away from this deal last year. It was purely a business/creative decision."

Laura Mayer has left Three Uncanny Four and Sony Music Entertainment to launch her own podcast content development studio.

Anchor podcasts are unplayable in some podcast apps. Popular podcast app Overcast rushed out an update after files are "now being served as AAC in some way that breaks Apple’s ExtAudioFile API," said developer Marco Arment, which "makes them unplayable in Overcast as downloads, but playable as streams". The fault in Anchor's audio also affects other apps. Arment tweeted more technical details; and added, in a tweet to Anchor: "It’s been two weeks that you’re serving malformed files, breaking media players, and losing the audiences of your customers. Do you care about this medium at all?" The company hasn't responded.

Sachin Doshi has joined Podimo as Chief Content Officer. He was formerly VP of Content at Spotify and Director of Product at Twitter.

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.

Twitter Spaces can now be recorded by anyone - on Android and iOS.

A content warning and privacy notice has been added to the Google Podcasts app, in multiple languages and territories. The app is a top 5 podcast player according to most podcast hosts - the notice links to this page.

Jen Thorpe writes about how they use Twitter effectively for their Shattered Soulstone podcast. It's particularly good for discovering what to focus on next, they write.

The Gay Agenda has been launched by Netflix, its first LGBTQ+ podcast - The Gay Agenda, produced by MOST, the home of LGBTQ+ storytelling (Twitter, Instagram). The new podcast takes a look into the lives of LGBTQ+ creatives at the top of their fields across different industries, and celebrates their success stories in the community through a loving and humorous lens. It's produced by Multitude. - read more

Audie Cornish has resigned from her role as a co-host of NPR's All Things Considered.

Rob Byers is to join Vox Media's Criminal Productions as fulltime Technical Director. He's currently Director of Broadcast and Media Operations at American Public Media, and a Board Member of AIR; he's been mixing Criminal and This Is Love for many years. Vox Media is hiring for a number of production staff.

Could the UK's Podcast Radio be heard in more countries? A senior executive at the station, Paul Chantler, says the company has plans to expand into the US and Australia.

Shared on Twitter by Clare Vaughan, The Soundtrack Show is a "joyous explainer of how film soundtracking works and the emotional impact of music in film, told in a fully sincere and warm manner The Soundtrack Show is lovely (listen from the start for a primer)"

Spotify doesn't support chapters - but here's how to do chapters in Spotify. Kind of.

A San Diego district judge has ordered the makers of the Fat Leonard podcast, which uncovers bribery in the US Navy, to turn over their unaired recordings. Lawyers acting for a navy officer charged with bribery think the tapes may help get their client off. Journalists aren't normally asked to hand over reporting notes, and it's seen as against the First Amendment; "we believe it sets a dangerous precedent for courts to demand journalists to hand over reporting notes", said one of the podcast's producers, Tom Wright. Instead of just handing over the tapes, they've making them - all twenty hours of material - available to the public.

Paul Bae, the producer of The Black Tapes and The Big Loop, is looking a little worse for wear today after an argument with his car door. We wish him well.

72% of people who find a podcast on YouTube go on to subscribe to it in a proper podcast app, according to the Canadian Podcast Listener 2021 report.

The Washington Post has found bad things on Twitter Spaces.

Buzzsprout now supports the podcast:person tag for hosts and co-hosts. It's available to everyone (and added to Podland).

The New York Times Audio app has been released to beta testers. Here's a little look from Alex Rainert, the NYT's Head of Audio Product & Design. Sara Fischer at Axios has access and posts a detailed look - it contains other audio features in addition to podcasts.

PodLP is enabling transcripts shortly within its app, and has posted a demo. The podcast:transcript tag is supported by podcast hosts like Buzzsprout, Captivate, Castopod, Fireside FM and others.

Jon Ronson has apologised to audiences who are unable to hear his new BBC podcast. "It'll be freely and easily available in the new year", he says of "Things Fell Apart", his new podcast - it's on BBC Sounds in the UK only, though promoted on it across the world; and on Apple Podcasts as a paid subscription in the US only.

Subscriptions to podcasts may be coming to Facebook - eagle-eyed tweeter Stephen Robles has spotted a "subscribe" button in his app.

In Podland News, James Cridland and Sam Sethi interview Lisa Laporte from TWiT, and Franco Solerio from podcast app Castamatic: as well as wondering what Spotify's new relationship with Netflix is all about.

Apple Podcasts has sent an email to podcasters. In it, they flagged up the new feed refresh button in Apple Podcasts Connect, and added a tool to promote Apple Podcasts on social media, which look like this: although we'd recommend using universal links too.

Ricky Mulvey has joined The Motley Fool as Podcast Producer. He was a podcast producer for Allworth Financial, and recently freelanced with NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money.

The Signal from the Australian ABC, is to end, according to an announcement from one of the podcast's hosts. The show was launched in February 2018, a daily morning news podcast for 20 and 30-something Australians. "The market has been crowded with similar offerings all largely chasing the same under 40s listener and we've watched our growth slow", says an email sent to ABC News staff obtained by Podnews. The feed will be replaced with ABC News Daily from the end of January, aimed at 40-55 year-old women. The new target competes with the ABC's local radio audience, and leaves the broadcaster without any daily news audio output aimed at audiences between 24-40.

Chadd Hollowed has finished up as Director of Data for ART19. He'll be working for Apple (not in the podcast division, sadly).

Podchaser has added a feature for Podchaser Pro users that allow them to find podcasts that accept guests. The service now has more than 13,000,000 podcast credits in its system, it's announced.

Backstage by Headliner is now able to record individual Twitter Spaces. Here's what the recordings look and sound like.

On Twitter, Arielle Nissenblatt suggests a great idea for independent podcast apps.

Mohsin Ali has joined the Wall Street Journal as an Audio Producer. He'd been with Al Jazeera.

Michael MacDonald has joined QCode as Vice President of Sales. He was with PMM, selling ads for S-Town, This American Life, Serial and Joe Rogan.

In Podland this week - part-recorded in Australian bushland - Bryan Barletta co-hosts, and Adam Bowie tells us some of podcasting's upcoming trends.

She Podcasts took place over the weekend. We're looking forward to reading blogs and posts about it; but here's a snapshot of the top 10 podcasts, according to the Podcast Consumer Tracking Report from Edison Research, split by men and women. It made Arielle "glum".

Theo Balcomb is to leave The Daily from the New York Times after five years as producer. "I’m looking to dive into tape, hunker down with stories, edit and produce beautiful things," she says.

Now you can stop playing The Secret of Monkey Island, and enjoy some quality podcasts. Launched in 1985, the Commodore Amiga has finally got a podcast app.

Melinda Wittstock, the CEO and founder of Podopolo, has published an open letter to "clear up some misconceptions". It follows a story in Friday's Podnews about "poorly worded" tweets.

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).

Twitter has launched crypto tipping using the lightning network: the same tool used by Podcasting 2.0 value4value apps. The tool uses the Strike API. It's "rolling out" on iOS, but Strike itself - marketed as "money without borders" - is only available in the US and El Salvador.

Perry Tripp has joined Libsyn's AdvertiseCast as Director of Brand Partnerships. He joins from media company Talkhouse.

ReplyAll's Alex Goldman appears to have deleted his Twitter account.

Etiquette and manners podcast Were you raised by wolves? has been chosen as Apple Podcasts' new monthly spotlight.

Podpage can now automatically post your new reviews and episodes to Twitter and Facebook.

Podcast hosting solution JustCast now supports value4value and soundbites.

Last week, Clubhouse mentioned that there are 700,000 clubhouse rooms a day on the service. They've added that those rooms last 70 minutes on average.

Twitter has confirmed that it is working on a tipping process using Bitcoin and the lightning network. This is of interest for podcasters because it uses the same technology as value4value listening, including 'boosts'. "If every Twitter user has a lightning wallet, the listener onboarding problem gets solved overnight," said Podcast Index's Dave Jones.

The founder of Google Podcasts, Zack Reneau-Wedeen, has left Google. He's now working on cryptocurrency for investment platform Robinhood - though we understand he hadn't been working on podcasts within the company for some time. Gabe Bender, Google Podcasts' product lead, left in April. So who's driving Google Podcasts today? Steve McLendon, a former co-founder of 60dB (which Google bought in 2017), describes himself on Twitter as "working on podcast stuff at Google". The team is also working on a tech refresh of Feedburner.

Dub is a new podcast host that uses Notion to host your podcast. Follow along with host Adam Rochette in his #buildinpublic Twitter thread.

If Spotify's not getting much value from Gimlet, that feeling's mutual - Gimlet's ReplyAll has posted a tweet apologising for an ad in their show for the US Military, and blaming it on being "sold to Spotify". Nick Hilton uses this to highlight the close relationship between podcasters and advertisers.

Strange coincidence of the week: Podnews highlighted Fireside Chat's revised terms of service earlier this week. Today, our Editor's access to Fireside Chat has been blocked. 🤷

Osman Faruqi has been promoted to Head of Audio at Schwartz Media.

"Nearly one in five weekly listeners say that YouTube is their primary service for podcasts. This is why I twitch a little every time I hear a podcast tell listeners to 'subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcasts.' Are you sure?" - in his latest newsletter, Tom Webster shares some data that might convince you to get your podcast onto YouTube.

Chris Messina has noticed that Spotify has added a "most shared" badge on popular podcast episodes.

Podkite's has added social channels, like Twitter or Facebook, to its KiteLinks pages. Here's ours

Being unable to travel from Melbourne VIC, Australia, didn't stop Triton Digital's Sharon Taylor from attending Podcast Movement (seen above with Edison Research's Tom Webster). Based at Triton Digital's stand, #RobotSharon has been dancing and making friends with many conference-goers. It's unclear how it works with a glass of wine.

Acast suggests it's the #3 podcast network in the US in a blog from COO Oskar Serrander. The company has paid $110m to creators so far, he says. He signs off by saying "Hooo-aahhhh-ting", which... wait, that's a quote from us.

Podcast host Justcast now supports podcast chapters in RSS feeds following the Podcast Namespace.

Facebook has been showing off more of its plans for podcasting and audio. Ashley Carman tweets videos of Clips, a new podcast discovery service, and apparently automated captioning is coming. The service is unavailable to most podcasters, and entirely absent for the 97% of the world's population who don't live in the US.

Tanzina Vega, the host of WNYC's The Takeaway is the latest to leave the station amid claims she shouted at staff. On The Media's Bob Garfield was fired in May; in April the station laid off 14 people.

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.

Analysis: Launched in January 2011, and especially keen on Android, Pocket Casts was bought in 2018 by a consortium of US public broadcasters; but was put up for sale in January 2021, after NPR's accounts said its 34.6% share had lost $812,000 (a figure PocketCasts denied). The app appears to have stalled in recent years, with a shrinking market share and no investment in new features. Podnews's Editor uses it every day - he hopes they invest in Podcasting 2.0 enhancements to differentiate it from the competition.

"Research" from a loan company claims that British podcasters are making an average of £954 (US $1,325) a month from podcasting, says the Oxford Mail. Selling handmade candles is apparently the second most popular way to earn money on the side, earning £670 (US $930) a month. We're not entirely sure this is true; Brits we've asked say it sounds dubious, or just plain bollocks.

Spotify is basically killing podcasts, says Mike Masnick, the editor of Techdirt.

How much do people in podcasting earn money? Misha Euceph writes a Twitter thread that tells you.

Use Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces? Headliner is working on a tool to turn your recordings into short promo videos for social media. You can sign up for early access here.

SoundCloud has permanently banned Things You Should Ngo, says the host, the controversial writer Andy Ngô. The last episode was uploaded more than a year ago. You can still listen on YouTube, he says.

The ivy․fm podcast player now supports podcasting 2.0 episode chapters. More than 26,000 episodes have them; try this.

Amazon has bought enterprise podcast hosting and adsales company ART19, announcing the news on their podcasters portal. No details of the deal were given. ART19 already hosts Wondery podcasts: this gives Amazon access to podcast hosting technology and a monetisation platform for dynamically-inserted advertising across all apps. Kintan Brahmbhatt, GM of Amazon Podcasts says that the company is hiring. Podnews has been predicting the purchase since Amazon bought Wondery in December.

Spotify has released the Spotify Greenroom app. The app, similar to Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces, includes recording capabilities. It's available on iOS and Android. We've added support for it in our Podevents website.

Melon is a new livestreaming service for video, allowing you to stream on Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and LinkedIn simultaneously.

After an explosive article on Peter Vincer on Friday from The Verge, an anonymous article has appeared in The Hype Magazine, breathlessly praising the Notorious CEO. On Twitter, Vincer has said of The Verge piece: "I like to have fun. And I certainly border inappropriate often. The rest is nonsense."

Atlanta's Frqncy Media, a podcast production company since June 2018, is understandably irritated with FRQNCY for using their established brand name. We've asked FRQNCY (not Frqncy) for a comment.

Arielle Nissenblatt shared how she almost reached 100,000 downloads for a show of hers without spending money on ads or being part of a network.

Buzzsprout now supports any Podcasting 2.0 channel tag. Libsyn supports channel or item tags.

Julian Shapiro writes how to grow a podcast (spotted by Eric Nuzum)

Congratulations to Adrian Bradley, who is to leave the BBC to produce podcasts for the New Statesman.

Megaphone appears to have been added to Eero's Block Ads service. If you use this service, or similar, you may discover that no shows hosted on Megaphone currently play. Overcast users will get a helpful error message.

Julian Shapiro writes a Twitter thread explaining how to quickly grow an online audience.

Follow us on Twitter, and now we'll also periodically post new podcast events from pod․events, as well as podcast jobs, too.

Podclips is one of a new set of podcast apps that offers clips of podcast shows as a form of curation. However, it appears today that it takes podcast audio without permission and re-hosts it on its servers, which denys podcasters stats and revenue; and, by clipping shows up, removes valuable context. "This is wholesale theft," said Jason Calcanis, the host of This Week In Startups, adding "they refused to take our audio content down until I sent letters to their hosting company. You can link to our audio files, and if a fan makes a clip or two I’m generally ok with it, but to take entire shows without permission is insane."

Last August, we reported that Anchor was hosting pirate podcasts; and today Jake Warren says that Message Heard's Finding Natasha is one of those - copied and available, with a random piece of generic art, on Anchor, then syndicated to Apple and Spotify. Curiously, the Anchor pirate has edited the audio to remove any mention of Message Heard…

Bob Garfield has been fired by New York Public Radio for apparently violating their anti-bullying policy. The co-host of On The Media, Garfield claims he was fired for "yelling in 5 meetings over 20 years". He is taking legal advice.

No more AppleCoreMedia for the Downcast app, which has fixed its useragent when streaming episodes.

Mark Asquith from Captivate has added a new Twitter list of 'people doing amazing work in the industry' - might be worth a follow.

In a tweet, Dan Misener suggests there is change on the way with the Apple Podcasts iOS 14.6 app, currently in beta. That will support proper links, and will support content:encoded, according to the current beta anyway.

Apple Podcasts Connect still appears to be unavailable for many users. As one example, Quill point out on Twitter that they've been locked out for two weeks. Apple have no statement and have made no public acknowledgement of any issues. In Podland podcast later today, James Cridland, Podnews's editor, suggests that Apple are still treating podcasting as a fun hobby rather than a $1.4bn global business.

Twitter Spaces is now available to (almost) everyone, on iOS and Android, if you have more than 600 followers. The company has also allowed plans for people to charge for Spaces; to schedule Spaces in future; and to co-host. It has 187m daily users.

Apple Podcasts Podageddon: After 13 days without access to Apple Podcasts Connect, someone at Apple has bothered to reach out to Paul Colligan to help. Dirk Primbs, too, is on day 13 without access, but no such luck for him.

Apple's Podcasts Connect still isn't allowing new podcasts from some users, with error messages about missing artwork and copyright statements. Podnews lost access to our account again last week (it's since returned, minus any stats). Still, we're doing better than Dirk Primbs, who has been waiting for more than ten days to access his.

The Apple Podcasts Connect service is still down for many people. Ominously, the set-up message, which used to say "this could take up to two hours", now says "this could take up to a day". The comments to this tweet aren't great.

Whitney Jones has joined NYMag's audio team. Formerly a Producer at APM, she's also worked freelance for people like 99pi, CBC and NPR.

Unconnected to any of the above, there's some big podcast news at 9am Eastern today. Our Twitter account will keep you updated.

Missing episodes: "We've been having issues with the crawler. Hoping to have it resolved today," a mystery Apple person tells Transistor's Justin Jackson.

Apple Podcasts Connect has bugs, too. It's currently impossible to submit a new show to Apple Podcasts, and it's changing information about already existing shows. More below.

Others on Twitter are also reporting their podcasts have disappeared, too.

Apple are making a slew of new announcements today in their Spring Loaded event, live from 10am PT. It's widely expected that Apple will launch a paid subscription podcast service. We'll cover everything podcast-related in tomorrow's Podnews.

Your podcast app might be calling itself AppleCoreMedia; and your podcast host might be claiming that's a play from Apple Podcasts. Our editor posts a list of apps that use AppleCoreMedia under certain circumstances.

Gabe Bender, the product lead of Google Podcasts, left Google yesterday. He's off to work at Stripe.

Poductivity, a privacy-friendly method of offering interaction and engagement for podcasts, has launched an early alpha with The Gerry Anderson Podcast, which includes interactive elements. Mark Asquith, CEO of Rebel Base Media, tweets about Poductivity's journey so far. (Podnews's Editor, James Cridland, is an advisor).

Sometimes, we get given news with an embargo for 8am ET. We've got some news like that today. We'll tweet it.

Facebook is testing Hotline, a Clubhouse-like service. Meanwhile, it's emerged that Twitter thought about buying Clubhouse for $4 bn.

There's a new edition of the UK's Pod Bible magazine, distributed in The Sunday Times over the weekend, and available free on their website.

Antonia Cereijido has joined LAist and KPCC as Executive Producer, Podcasts.

Spotify has bought Locker Room, an iOS-only live sports audio app. Like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces, it will let anyone host audio conversations. It's to rebrand under a new name, and Gustav Söderström, chief R&D officer at Spotify, hints at integration with Anchor and Spotify's podcasts.

Stop using your pop filter wrong

Sports podcasting company Blue Wire has signed NFL Network's Colleen Wolfe for an NFL Draft miniseries. It's part of a focus for female voices in their sports coverage.

Religion podcasts have the most episodes per series, points out ART19's Data Director, Chad Hollowed.

Aaron Mahnke has been podcasting for six years this week; and as he tweets, his first show got just 9 downloads on the first day. It took four months for him to be able to give up his day job.

PodLP, a podcast app for KaiOS in developing countries, has announced that it will also now skip some analytics prefixes, citing incompatibilities with IPv6.

Pro-tip: if you ask someone to appear on your podcast and they politely say no, don't behave like this.

Welcome to almost 300 new subscribers followers over the past week, from companies like the ABC Australia, Europe 1, the Broadway Podcast Network, NPR, Spotify, Bayerischer Rundfunk and TWiT.

Twitter says it will let people record Twitter Spaces in future. And scheduled Spaces are coming.

ART19's "Director of Data", Chad Hollowed, says that we're now seeing 72,000 new podcast episodes per day (that's five new podcasts every six seconds).

On Clubhouse, and quoted in Recode, Guy Raz says: "If I was starting a podcast today — I wouldn’t start a podcast, I would just come right here [to Clubhouse]." Thankfully, Guy Raz has restored our faith in him by clarifying what he meant on Twitter: "If you just want to broadcast your voice quickly without friction (or production), much easier to just go on Clubhouse than start a podcast. A produced audio show? No. A podcast is still better." Phew.

Paula Rogo, "the Podcast Shuri", writes delightedly that Spotify is coming to much of Africa. Until now, they'd only been available in one sub-saharan country: South Africa.

Please help spread the word about Podnews - if you like what we do, please consider a mention on LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook (we're back there!), or wherever you socially hang out. We'd be really grateful to get more people reading us every day.

Twitter Spaces appears to be slowly rolling out to users. Our @podnews account - on an Android phone - can see (and hear!) Spaces discussions. We took part in two over the weekend.

A website rebroadcasting Clubhouse chats has been shut down, just one of many security issues with the service. It is also being threatened for closure in Indonesia (population 270m). German newspaper Zeit Online is holding its morning news conference on the service. (via Splice Slugs)

Buzzsprout, Podbean, Spreaker and Captivate were all subject to a denial-of-service attack. The same attackers appear to have been involved. We were wondering why they've targeted podcast hosts: so we talked to the group behind the attacks.

Also from Obama's Higher Ground podcast company, a new season of Tell Them, I Am, hosted by Misha Euceph, was announced for Ramadan - promising "a compelling collection of narratives from Muslim voices". The show was previously produced by KPCC: Euceph had said she "doesn't own a single percent of the show", and had railed against KPCC to "give us our shows back". The new season will be on the same Apple Podcasts ID, suggesting that KPCC has reached an agreement.

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.

PJ Vogt and Sruthi Pinnamaneni have left Gimlet Media's Reply All. Eric Eddings, former host of Gimlet’s The Nod podcast, accused the two of working against efforts to diversify Gimlet's staff and content. Vogt has apologised, saying he had behaved "like a baby and a jerk"; Pinnamaneni said "I feel great regret". Gimlet Managing Director Lydia Polgreen said, in a staff email, "From the moment I arrived at Gimlet, it was clear that our culture needed work, and that there were big things that needed to change to make this a better, more equitable place".

Spotify's up to something on Feb 22.

Chris Messina doesn't think much of the logo, either. #awks

Meanwhile, Michael Barbaro has written to WAMU, a radio station that takes the radio version of The Daily, with a number of action points and apologies for some of the NYT's, and his, actions around Caliphate.

Your Podcast Takes Flight With Twitter - Blubrry tells us how to show your podcast the big angry blue bird.

Clubhouse uses user IDs which increment, one by one, when new users register. That's how we know that they've got over 5.6m registered users and they're growing at ~20k users/hour.

The New York Times's Audio department is to be "more fully integrated" into the newsroom, according to a memo tweeted by Cliff Levy, who'll be assisting with the process. While Caliphate isn't mentioned by name, the memo also describes 'new procedures to vet ambitious audio series'.

London-based radio station Podcast Radio has hired Claire Stacey as Head of Sales. Bob Fazlali will work with her; the station has also hired Will Guyatt to work with the press. Gerry Edwards, the station's boss, will be on the Podland podcast tomorrow.

The BBC World Service's International Podcast Competition, which was open to podcasters in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, attracted over 1,000 entries, according to one of the judges.

ProPublica is the latest publication to highlight that "Apple Podcasts" is being used by people banned from other platforms to reach large audiences. Steve Bannon's podcast, Bannon's War Room (hosted by Podbean), is highlighted.

Michael Barbaro has apologised for attempting to silence detractors of Caliphate, and blocking people "who raised concerns about a Caliphate producer". He has not addressed other criticisms. The Daily has now been dropped by four public radio stations: KUT in Austin, Houston's KUHF, Marfa Public Radio and Santa Monica's KCRW, who says "concerns we raised … were not fully addressed, such as transparency about potential conflicts of interest in its own coverage of these matters".

Matt Deegan tweets: "New podcast rule: Anyone that tweets excitement over an Apple Podcasts position should also be made to tweet that week's actual download numbers too." 👏

Justin Jackson from Transistor has played with both Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces. Which does he think is better? And which is likely to be better for podcasters?

Social podcast app Breaker is not to close after all. The app has been acquired by Maple Media, an LA-based publisher, which already owns Player FM and Podkicker. The Breaker team will still be joining Twitter.

This week in 2006, UK radio station LBC started charging for podcasts for its talk shows. £12 (then US$21) got you six months of ad-free access: the service attracted 10,000 subscribers in its first year.

How much is it to listen to a free podcast on Amazon? Apparently $8.95 according to Charlie Harding, who tweeted a screenshot of the Amazon website yesterday. The Verge covered the story. Amazon have removed those prices but have not responded for comment; however, Nick Quah's Hot Pod Insider has been told it was a technical error. Podnews's podcast appears to be free again, as we go to press.

Mikel Ellcessor, the co-founder of WNYC Studios, is joining Supercast as Partnership Lead. "They're cracking the code," he says: "podcasters + paid fans = sustainability".

The Breaker team is to join Twitter. CTO Leah Culver, Designer Emma Lundin and CEO Erik Berlin are "joining Twitter because we believe in the future of audio communication and are inspired by the ways Twitter is facilitating public conversations for people around the world".

Congratulations to Answer Me This! - Helen Zaltzman and Olly Mann's podcast which is 14 years old this month.

Spotify's listener privacy policy has been highlighted by Pat Walshe, a privacy advocate. He points out that his premium Spotify account in the UK shares his listening data with 246 different third party advertising vendors (each with their own privacy policy), and alleges the company is using 'dark patterns' in user interface design to confuse.

Adam Curry calls Amazon's purchase "clearing the decks for more independent and free voices". Austin Rief, a co-founder of newsletter Morning Brew, suggests in a thread that this is further evidence that media companies do not provide the scale and returns needed for VCs.

Meanwhile, some point out that while Caliphate reporter Rukmini Callimachi was made to publicly apologise and forced to move to a different area, the podcast's producer and reporter Andy Mills - who made the podcast and accepted its Peabody Award - was hosting The Daily this week. On Twitter, Barbaro appears to be blocking those criticising the decision.

As Pete Buttigieg learnt he'd been nominated as Transport Secretary, he was doing a podcast with Hillary Clinton: The Deciding Decade.

Union members at Spotify's Gimlet, Parcast and The Ringer stopped work for two hours on Friday protesting the slow pace of agreeing a contract with the company.

The Innov'Audio conference started yesterday in Paris. Joanna Peel took good notes on Twitter, including our Editor's keynote. It continues today.

A prolonged failure at Amazon AWS caused issues for some podcast hosts as well as many other services: Anchor had to remove its website altogether, while RSS Podcasting also had some issues, as did WNYC. Podcasts, however, remained available throughout; and all services appear now to be up and running.

One for those still wondering how the Apple Podcasts charts work - "I know all the cool kids say it's ratings and reviews that get you places at Apple Podcasts. But our client (Strength Changes Everything) is currently (and legitimately) at #5 in all of Health and Fitness without a single review" says Paul Colligan. Only one episode so far, too. (We reported about ratings and reviews back on Christmas Day 2019).

Spotify, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have all pulled an episode of the Podbean-hosted Steve Bannon's War Room podcast, after Bannon called for the beheading of Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI director Christopher Wray. Twitter have also permanently suspended Bannon's account. The episode in question is still available via Apple Podcasts and the Podcast Index.

The host of The History of Ancient Greece, Ryan Stitt, has been accused of sending multiple women abusive and sexually inappropriate messages and images. The podcaster, who has previously defended other men accused of sexual harrassment, has deleted his Twitter account.

TWiT has announced they're to test Podsights for attribution data.

Listener is a new podcast app for Android. It promises: "Now you can remember everything you find interesting in a podcast! With Listener, you can tap one button, save the time, and convert what you just heard into text!" Twitter user Podcast Conglomerate checked it out for us.

Google has announced a new feature for Google Podcasts Manager. Podcasters can see how many times their show appeared in Google search, as well as top discovered episodes and search terms that led to their podcast. Podnews's podcast got 10,745 impressions in Search in the last 28 days (our website got 4.2m though). Google have also added optimisation tips for podcasters.

Spotify has voluntarily recognised the Parcast Union. The organisation will collaborate with unions at Ringer and Gimlet. (Spotify Studios are not unionised).

Spotify has signed a new exclusive - the Just Break Up podcast. Of note - it was hosted on Libsyn; had a short incubation period on Anchor some time between September 7-14, and then announced its exclusivity a week later on September 21. It'll become exclusive from October 19.

In March 2015, Roman Mars tweeted that "if someone made a show like #99pi but for video games, that person could crush the world". Challenge accepted. Gameplay launched yesterday, with stories about video games and the virtual worlds that power culture and community. They've got one listener already.

Captivate, a podcast host, is to integrate with Zapier, and are looking for beta testers. Zapier allows a number of automation triggers with over 2,000 apps and services - Podnews uses it to post stories to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. (Disclosures)

Joe Rogan has apologised after spreading false information about the Portland bushfires, for which he was widely criticised. On Twitter he says he repeated false news without looking into it, adding "That won't happen again. I'm sorry."

Podcast host Captivate has become the first podcast host to allow podcasters to directly add their show to The Podcast Index, Adam Curry and Dave Jones's alternative index for podcast apps. (Disclosures) Meanwhile, The Podcast Index has added a twitter-like discussion system, using Mastodon.

Podyssey wants to play Podcast Lover Bingo.

On August 17, we reported that Anchor was hosting pirated podcasts. Aaron Mahnke is the latest high-profile podcaster to publicly criticise the platform, after discovering a pirated copy of his new podcast American Shadows on Anchor. "Same art, same description," he adds.

iVoox has opened the voting for the third edition of los Premios iVoox de la Audiencia 2020. You can vote for your favourite podcast here - en Español. You've until 20 September to vote; here's more information on Twitter.

"The most abusive podcast app, by an order of magnitude": podcast host Pinecast is not happy with Deezer, accusing the music and podcast app of costing listeners significant money in terms of bandwidth, and putting stress on podcast hosts by downloading every episode every day. "They're a bad member of the ecosystem," the company's tweet concludes. (We don't see this behaviour replicated on our own podcast; but have seen some convincing detail from Pinecast).

Popular music podcast Song Exploder is to remove many of its shows because of music licensing costs. Creator Hrishikesh Hirway posted on Twitter that "I’ve always hoped they’d all be available forever, but the reality of music licensing makes that impossible". In a plot twist, since we reached out for comment, those posts have been removed: could that mean that a music and podcast service with a full licensing deal might have reached out? Here's hoping.

Advertising within Pocket Casts is sold out until November, the company says. Pocket Casts also no longer takes podcast listings automatically from Apple's directory: "Call it a hunch, but I doubt that directory is going to remain open," says CPO Russell Ivanovic. (We link to their submission page, and everyone else's for that matter).

A competing app for Google Podcasts is Podcast Addict: an update has been rejected by the Google Play store, because "of a policy violation", though no details have been given of what the policy violation actually is. The app has been removed multiple times by Google in the past: if you'd like to help, here are all 18,112 words of the Developer Programme Policy.

Staticast is a new "simple, static podcast website generator" - if your idea of 'simple' includes composer, Markdown and a .phar file, that is.

Yesterday, we linked to a long Twitter thread containing various accusations against PRX management from a black woman who has since left the company. CEO Kerri Hoffman has responded via an all-staff email. "I do not get things right plenty of times, and I have a lot to learn," she said, outlining a number of steps the organisation will take.

A twitter thread has made a number of accusations against PRX management, quoting an internal email from a black woman who had resigned from the company.

Thank you to The Podcast Engineer for becoming our latest supporter. Based in Atlanta GA, USA, The Podcast Engineer does podcast editing, mixing and production, so you can treat your listeners to quality audio. They've made sure that our LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts are always updated every day with new posts, so you'll never miss a thing.

Podchaser has added the ability to connect your Twitter account to discover new podcasts and friends. (Psst - you should follow us: we're @podnews).

Never Not Funny, the Jimmy Pardo podcast is selling branded face masks, they've announced in a tweet. A portion of the proceeds goes to front-line workers.

We published Amazon Music/Audible's content license agreement for their upcoming podcast service yesterday. Kristofor Lawson points out that one clause says you can't say anything mean about Amazon in your podcast if you want to be on their platform. We've added this to our list of unusual terms and conditions from podcast hosts.

Non-English podcasts are growing fast, according to ART19's Chadd Hollowed, posting a set of graphs on Twitter. In April, May and June, there were more non-English podcasts launched than English ones. "This overturns a lot of assumptions about industry trends," he says.

That new 'exclusive' Apple News Today podcast, that we reported on yesterday? It has an RSS feed after all, and has been added to some podcast apps, including Overcast (via a 'hack', says Marco Arment, though apparently the feed address is visible in iTunes desktop software). However, the RSS feed is hidden from third parties in Apple's API and its mirror URL has also been disabled: so the intention appears to be that it's an exclusive, and The Verge described it as such.

Castopod is "an open-source hosting platform made for podcasters who want [to] engage and interact with their audience." It's due to launch later this year as part of an initiative called podlibre.

Spotify is working on shareable quotes from podcast episodes, according to Jane Manchun Wong. The quotes appear to be editorially featured; and, we'd suspect, not based on standard RSS.

How to use Twitter's new voice tweet feature to reach your audience (Modus)

The Podcast Academy has relaxed the terms of new registrations. "No more letters of recommendation", says the Chair, Rob Greenlee: you'll just need to give the names of two people to vouch for you.

After opening memberships on Monday, the first members of The Podcast Academy are being told they've been accepted (including our Editor). Rob Greenlee says that the organisation is working on a faster, more streamlined registration process, after some people report being deluged with requests to write letters of recommendation.

Big numbers: Podchaser says they just surpassed 6,000,000 podcast credits; while we hear that Great British Podcasts, the weekly podcast recommendations newsletter from the British Podcast Awards, has just signed up its 100,000th subscriber.

Brittany Luse, host and EP of The Nod, points out in a Twitter thread that even though the show is their idea, they don't own "not one single percent of The Nod podcast or brand: Spotify does!"

Twitter has added mini-podcast-like audio posts to its iOS app. Android users will have to wait. The company follows Audioboom, which had this idea more than ten years ago - here's a "boo" from our Editor from 2010.

Pocket Casts has confirmed a report in Podnews on Jun 5 that they've been removed from the Apple App Store in China. The company tweets that they were removed "by Apple, at the request of the Cyberspace Administration of China. We believe podcasting is and should remain an open medium, free of government censorship. As such we won't be censoring podcast content at their request. We understand this means that it’s unlikely that our iOS App will be available in China, but feel it’s a necessary step to take for any company that values the open distribution model that makes podcasting special." Apple Podcasts continues to be available but only carries selected podcasts in the country.

Pex, a service that is scanning podcasts for music, has revealed that 17% of podcasts contain at least ten seconds of music. Of all types, they add.

Podyssey have added a way of sharing podcasts on Instagram Stories and Twitter.

The Australian ABC posted this urgent Twitter message which we feel our public duty to pass on, given our subscribers are especially affected.

No terms were given but the Wall Street Journal claims the deal is worth more than $100m, "depending on performance metrics". Yashar Ali, a contributor to New York Magazine, claims it's $200m.

Podcast Addict has returned to the Google Play app store today. The app had been suspended for linking to third-party podcasts about the coronavirus. Hiroshi Lockheimer, an SVP for Google, has posted on Twitter that "We are still sorting out kinks in our process as we combat Covid misinformation, but this app should not have been removed." The notification from Google Play asks the developer to "continue to monitor your app's content", and there appears to be no guarantee that the app won't be suspended for a fourth time for linking to third-party content.

Stuck at Home is a new podcast from Starburns Audio with Cliff Dorman. The company's press release highlights that the show streams live on YouTube, Facebook Live and Twitter, as well as a podcast.

The Skimm is laying off 20% of its staff. However, Skimm This and Skimm'd from The Couch have both posted episodes in the last 24 hours, and the producer of Skimm This appears to deny that she's been let go in a tweet.

And here's the BBC, explaining how things are working in Broadcasting House in London. If you've ever done work with the BBC, you won't be astonished to know that, yes, it involves red tape.

Plink, a podcast link service, have released data showing when people are clicking a link to listen. Weekdays - and Mondays/Tuesdays particularly.

This Week In Tech, the first show from Leo Laporte's netcast podcast network, celebrates its 15th anniversary on Sunday with a special episode featuring the original team of Leo Laporte, Kevin Rose, Patrick Norton and Robert Heron. The network now has twenty tech podcasts, over 16,200 episodes, and a monthly audience of four million; it has twenty staff, including four full-time hosts. Congratulations, Leo.

Spotify appear to be enabling new episode notifications, according to a tweet. Google Podcasts has also switched notifications on with their recent redesign. (We're over here on Google Podcasts.)

Dr Holly Powell-Jones, a UK journalist and media law trainer, is running webinars on the law. We spotted a tweet saying "Book a session with her before you end up in Podnews for all the wrong reasons." Spoilsport. Whatever will we write about then?

The Improv Chronicle focuses on how improv is having to reinventing itself because of the stupid virus - running online workshops and performing shows on Zoom, Twitch and Facebook Live.

Gary Leland is planning a Bitcoin Podcasters Network, to go live in early May. If you're doing a Bitcoin podcast, hit him up on Twitter. "Only Bitcoin podcasts," he adds, "not blockchain, not crypto, and not sh*tcoins". (Talking of the latter, our Editor wrote a personal piece on the geo-mining app COIN, which promises its own crypto-currency token.)

BBC producer Tony Churnside has posted "tips for broadcast quality audio from your spare room"; and 'creative audio storytelling post-production team' Final Final v2 has also posted a long thread.

Ira Glass seemingly recorded this week's This American Life in his closet, having taken the time to get dressed in a suit, but having forgotten to wear shoes or socks. U okay, hun?

Richard Fidler, host of Conversations, which we believe is the most popular podcast in Australia, has posted his home studio setup, complete with cardboard box. Meanwhile, 'podjock' Gene "Bean" Baxter shares his soundproofing booth for Podcast Radio in the UK: less carboard, more curtains.

YouTube is warning that more videos than normal may be removed from the service: content moderation on YouTube, and many other platforms, is now being done by algorithms rather than human beings. This may impact podcasters, many of whom use the service for posting video versions of their show.

Satire, thankfully, continues. News Fighters, an Australian news comedy clips podcast, is to double its output to weekly; Harry Shearer's Le Show is continuing as normal, he says; The Last Post will be produced by Alice Fraser from mandatory self-isolation in Australia when she arrives back tomorrow; A Rational Fear will be weekly via Google Hangouts; and longrunning Podnews favourite The Bugle will be "bugling through this", they've said on Facebook.

Apple is not allowing anything about the coronavirus into its app store, excepting from governments, medical or educational institutions, or health-focused NGOs. This doesn't affect podcasts (though we'd encourage you to report anything that's wrong). Meanwhile, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter and YouTube have released a joint statement.

On Twitter, podcast producer Tom Green plots the growth of Coronavirus podcasts.

Spotify's Gimlet has a new Head of Content: Lydia Polgreen, who steps down from Editor in Chief of HuffPost. She'll be responsible for overseeing the entire slate including strategic planning and setting a creative vision for the studio; she'll report to Alex Blumberg.

Be cautious of adding any old redirect or prepend service. Leo Laporte tried testing a new service which ad-blockers saw as an ad-tracker, according to a tweet, meaning that it didn't download. Leo was trying Barometric's click tracker, Adentifi, which is used for measuring clicks on web properties. It's on EasyList, an ad blocking list that can be used by Pi-hole and other router-based ad-blocking services.

A PRX Podcast Privacy Symposium is taking place today in New York NY, USA. They've posted a list of stories to read on the subject. We'd have loved to have been there; they're not streaming the event, but apparently we can watch #podcastprivacy on Twitter.

Andrew Yang, a former US presidential candidate, is to launch a podcast.

NPR is not publishing many of its podcasts outside the US in Spotify. The full NPR catalog is available in other podcast apps, and "on all of NPR's platforms". "This isn't new", a spokesperson tells us.

The Hall of Fame, which was run by the similar-sounding Academy of Podcasters, is unconnected with the above announcement. Podcast Movement, who ran the Hall of Fame, said in a statement: We're excited to see the launch and growth of The Podcast Academy, announced at Evolutions 2020, and equally excited for our planned return of our Podcast Hall of Fame. Podcast Movement was founded on the idea of community and collaboration. We think new initiatives working in conjunction with existing ones, as opposed to competing with them, is a healthy evolution for podcasting as a whole.

Google Podcasts Developer Fun Corner: We went digging through the Google Podcasts code, hoping to find a way of finding additional search operators, like searching by publisher, perhaps. We couldn't find that, but we could find language to help people subscribe to podcasts, so perhaps that functionality is coming soon. However, the Google Podcasts code also contains a hardcoded link to this unstyled test page, called 'A testing podcast from RCB' that contains someone drumming. This podcast also appears in proper Google Podcasts, and has an RSS feed. Our guess is that this might be Robin Bhaduri's drumming; he is a product manager for Google Podcasts, and was present at Podcast Movement last year. (We assume he's a better product manager than drummer).

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.

The BBC's personalised audio app within the UK, BBC Sounds, has released some usage data. "There were more than 100 million plays of podcasts and on demand radio programmes on BBC Sounds (last) quarter", they say, "double the number (from) the previous quarter." Veteran radio executive Phil Riley tweets that "this is about 4% of total BBC listening", using some generous maths.

The "IMDB of podcasting " Podchaser hit three million creator credits (hosts, producers, etc) in December. They've just hit 4 million.

Is Spotify or Apple #1? They both are, explains our Editor. Depends what you're measuring.

The iHeart Podcast Awards winners were announced on Friday. The Dropout won the Podcast of the Year award. Joshua Dudley reports the event was head and shoulders above last year. Libsyn's Rob Greenlee shared some video from the event on his Twitter feed; it was streamed on iHeart's LiveXLive platform, visible in the US only.

The MorganStanley and MIDiA data both measure people saying what podcast apps they use, not downloads. Everyone could be right: Spotify could be #1 for number of users; but Apple Podcasts appears to be #1 for downloads. Our Editor writes more on that.

HuffPost published a Best Podcasts of 2019 list recently, including an award for Underunderstood. The podcast reports that they've been asked for $1,995 for an "accolade licence" so they can tell people. This one's on us!

The team behind Entiende Tu Mente, a podcast about psychology in Spanish, have announced it is to become a Spotify exclusive. "We know that changes are not always easy, but you already know us and know that we take firm steps when we feel we should take them," they say. The host, Molo Cebrián, started an exclusive music podcast with Spotify in July 2018. (Spreaker)

Walt Mossberg, a respected US tech journalist, says that Spotify's podcast ad targeting technology (Jan 9) is a planned violation of privacy, adding: "Most podcasts are already narrow enough that sponsors can do a decent job of figuring out where to place their ads. There’s no justification for offering them targeting based on personal information."

Inevitably, the idea of more targeted advertising has concerned some. Pat Walshe, a privacy campaigner, has posted information on Spotify's sharing of listener data with third parties, and the company was the subject of an investigation by Swedish Data Protection officers in June, which does not, yet, appear resolved. Another point of view is that advertising for products that are unavailable in a listener's country or irrelevant to the listener's needs, are not advertising but just an unwanted, useless, interruption.

Kaveinthran Pulanthran, a blind podcast listener, has done an accessibility review of Podchaser, Podyssey and Listen Notes. There is work to be done for all three websites. As he adds: accessibility is a design principle, not a feature to be added later. (We would welcome feedback on our accessibility).

Paul Bennun has been appointed Chief Content Officer for Santa Monica's KCRW, he's announced on social media. British, Paul was Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer at UK audio production company Somethin'Else. He's a nice man and we wish him well.

A reminder of the power of word of mouth: someone on Reddit has just discovered podcasts. "I've seen that little Podcasts icon on my phone for years and never once was tempted to click it before. I just clicked it because someone told me I could listen to the Dirty John podcast there. ... I can hardly believe it's free. The content of the podcasts seems to be all quality stuff and there are hardly any commercials." (HT: Paul Bae)

An event in Lagos, Nigeria: three female podcasters are presenting Podcasting 101: Tips & Tricks of the Trade. It's on Jan 4, and costs ₦5,000 (US $13).

Podfollow, a free URL that redirects your listeners to the right podcast app on their device (Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, your website) has just had its 1,000,000th click thru. The service now offers free stats as well as automatic social images and has announced more features in the new year.

On our story yesterday, Mike Kadin from RedCircle says, in a Twitter thread, that "measures of true engagement and influence will be far more important" than downloads. Lindsay Patterson from Tumblecast tweets "if these rankings are so fallible, what's the point of publishing them?"

Birds. Graceful in flight, but really noisy. Spotted on Twitter (where else?), DeBird is standalone software that removes bird noises with a single click from your recordings. Sadly, it's not very cheep.

And another big number: 14 billion podcast episodes were downloaded in the US in 2019, according to an estimate from Courtney Carthy.

The My Podcast Reviews service, by Daniel J. Lewis, tells us that there are currently 799,482 valid podcasts in Apple Podcasts. He promises "a little gift" when it hits 800,000, which will probably be later today.

A staffer at The Late Show with Steven Colbert, Aaron Nemo, has made a weird and slightly dark The Daily Remix. Stay for the end.

The company has also announced a new independent director: Brian Kibby, CEO of N2Ventures and Senior Partner of N2Growth, an executive search firm that works with private equity companies and venture capital firms. He's over here on Twitter.

Yesterday, we quoted Libsyn's Rob Walch about what happens if you mark your podcast as explicit: that you're removed from Apple Podcasts in many countries. Jack Rhysider, who hosts an occasionally potty-mouthed podcast Darknet Diaries, says things have changed somewhat, and that "it's hardly a hurdle now".

YouTube have released new terms of service, which allow the company to terminate your access if YouTube think you're "no longer commercially viable". The company says this is nothing to worry about. We've added them to our unusual terms of service section.

American Public Media are to cut twelve positions in a reorganization. Irish broadcaster RTÉ is closing a number of digital radio stations, shuttering their DAB broadcasts entirely, making 200 people redundant and cutting pay for others. In Australia, the ABC will no longer produce Olympics radio coverage in a cost-cutting move.

Audio fiction podcaster Sean Howard has posted a view of the iHeartRadio Podcast Awards judging screen for the audio fiction category. He notes that judges get to choose from five different pre-selected podcasts, and are unable to select other shows. It's unclear how those initial podcasts were chosen.

In a radio conference in Barcelona yesterday, Rune Born Schwartz shared some podcast stats from Denmark, showing significant growth over the last two years.

Apple TV+, the company's new streaming service, has a show about a podcaster. Truth Be Told airs on December 6th. (via Benjamin Bellamy)

There's a new academic paper on podcasts: "Podcasting as Social Scholarship", including "recommendations for social work scholars, practitioners, and leaders related to the effective use of podcasting to increase the public impact of scholarship and research." Nele Heise links to it, noting that it's behind a paywall: it'll cost $20 to access.

Jack Rhysider from Darkside Diaries - a man who knows his way around a computer or two - managed to accidentally delete all his podcasts over the weekend, "due to bad UI". "I selected a single episode, hit delete, are you sure yes, it deleted all episodes," he added, noting that his hosting provider doesn't have 24/7 support. His podcasts are now back.

Googlewatch: Our version of the Google Podcasts app, launched 16 months ago by Google, now calls itself "Google Podcasts Beta", we notice. Wonder what's going on there? Android Police claims a new now-playing UI, but we don't see it, nor the automatic downloads that they're reporting on.

The British Library's Sound Archive is to permanently archive the Radio Moments Conversations podcast, "so that future generations may enjoy the character and colour of the analogue age". The podcast contains interviews with nearly a hundred well-known radio professionals, mainly from the UK: we would recommend US radio consultant Valerie Geller, Australian broadcasters Bryan Hayes and Jono Coleman, and the much missed John Myers. The British Library Sound Archive contains other radio and podcast material.

Which social channels should you concentrate on for your podcast? The newly-minority-governmented Dan Misener uses Chartable's SmartLinks to look at conversion rates from different social media outlets. Spoiler: LinkedIn and Instagram. But the comparisons with Facebook and Twitter are interesting; and this is conversion rates, not total numbers.

If you run live podcast shows, how much do you pay your cast? Sean Howard discovers some startling behaviour.

Also speaking at the Radio Alive conference was Hedley Thomas, host of The Teacher's Pet. He said it was incredibly stressful, and that when he'd launched episode one, he only had outlines for three episodes. (The podcast is currently geoblocked in Australia, due to a pending court case).

Marco Raaphorst notes that Spotify appears to be normalising the audio level of podcasts. Meanwhile, the method YouTube uses to normalise audio for their platform appears to have changed - it now aims for -14 LUFS rather than the previous algorithm, which didn't, apparently, use LUFS at all.

The number of podcasts in the Apple Podcasts directory has broken 750,000 today, report My Podcast Reviews. They note that Apple added 2,200 new podcasts in just one day this week. Related: there are 2.2m new books published every year, and the NYT report that, in the US alone, 487 original TV shows aired in 2017.

Podchaser now has three million podcast credits in its database, the "IMDB of podcasting" has posted in a tweet. Podnews shows selected data in our podcast pages - anyone can add credits like hosts, producers and musicians to podcasts.

Apple Podcasts has demonstrated "browse by hosts and guests", showing Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend's guests (and if you're running iOS 13, you can see that too). We also found it in the desktop app in MacOS Catalina. The documentation for the feature, earlier this year, describes the image requirements but just says "these search enhancements will first be available for selected top shows in English"; we can't see any evidence of them in the podcast's RSS feed, and the guests appear not to include Conan's latest guest, David Letterman, highlighting that this may be a manual process.

The ABC's Kellie Riordan shares this from OzPod: their favourite podcast pitch ever. We're unclear why they've not made it.

Podcast hosting platform Pinecast was down for two hours in the morning of October 2nd. Traffic had mysteriously "more than tripled" in the hours previous. It's back up and fine.

Spotify is testing the ability to report podcast episodes and songs, according to Jane Manchun Wong. Reasons given include "hate speech", "violent or gory content", and "I just don't like it".

Yesterday, we linked to Spotify's advertising on Twitter and Facebook. Today, here's Luminary, advertising in Taboola across many different websites. (via Oliver W)

Spotify are advertising podcasting heavily on social media. We saw this in Australia on Facebook, with some Australian as well as international podcasts being highlighted. Jason Hirschhorn saw some significant marketing on Twitter: "the best new shows aren't on TV".

In Spain, Movistar Home, a smart speaker from the country's broadband provider Telefónica, has been updated to now include radio from iVoox, and - in the future - podcasts.

Plagiarism, even accidental, isn't a podcast-only problem. The Sunday Times from The Western Australian, a newspaper in Perth WA, Australia, has "spoken to" a fugitive hacker, posting a full-page article accompanied by a photograph of a man with an awful old-fashioned haircut. The only problem? They didn't. All 23 quotes with the 'hacker' in question were in a story from Darknet Diaries which was not credited in the piece. "And that haircut hasn't been rocked for many many years", adds the hacker himself, who also confirms he's not spoken to the newspaper. The newspaper, published by Seven West Media, has told Podnews that it was the result of a "production error", and has fixed the paywalled online version.

Those iTunes "Shows in English" pages we've mentioned in the past few days? Yep, also appearing in Russia (благодарю вас, Ilya).

Belgian users of iTunes also see a "Shows in English" page, in case you're interested, says Podnews reader Jan. And in Germany, says Levin. And in Spain, adds Emilio. Merci, dankeschön, gracias everyone.

More details on Brexitcast, a podcast which was aired on BBC television last week. Benefiting from a slot directly after Question Time, over one million viewers tuned in; and the programme on TV was subtly edited from the podcast original, as radio consultant Nik Goodman points out.

Of note: the dutch version of iTunes (on desktop) has a Podcasts In English page. Research in the country seems to suggest that most young people have no language barrier to English content.

FeedPress, an RSS analytics service, spent at least six hours offline yesterday, making many podcast episodes unavailable. The company hasn't posted to its Twitter or status page, and did not respond for comment; but an email seen by Podnews blamed "multiple incidents, first hardware then network". It costs $48 per year.

The BBC has announced that it is to remove its iPlayer Radio app later this month for UK listeners, in favour of its BBC Sounds app. However, the iPlayer Radio app will continue to be available outside the UK, the corporation has clarified to us. (It's not as if anything's going on in the UK right now.)

Gavin Gaddis reviews how the /r/podcasts subreddit works.

Spotify appears to be generating automatic episode images from episode descriptions, we notice today. This week they're rolling out podcast playlists to everyone: Dan Misener wonders what you could do with them.

Another accusation of plagiarism has surfaced. Josh Levin, Slate's National Editor, has accused improv podcast The Dollop of lifting an article he'd written about welfare fraudster Linda Taylor over three years previously. His thread covers other accusations against the podcast team.

Late last month, the podcast managed to get well over 3,000 new reviews in just one week - seemingly the result of just asking their audience.

Apple Podcasts appear to have turned on transcript search in their beta podcast apps. A search for "Google Pixel" appears to return a bunch of podcasts that have mentioned the device (albeit mainly in ad copy). Daniel J Lewis says that transcription search has been available for a while for select shows, but that they may have enabled it for many more.

Podcast episodes within Google Search are now appearing again in Australia and the UK, and also in France, Germany and Sweden. The search engine has 63,000 searches every second.

Spotify is adding podcast playlists, allowing anyone to share playlists with their friends. Zach Kahn has spotted this, and added this playlist including some episodes of Today, Explained. Meanwhile, Spotify is also working on Stories for Playlists, says Jane Manchun Wong, including video clips and tracks from a Q&A from an artist.

Kellie Riordan from the Australian ABC Studios posted some things she learnt at Podcast Movement 2019.

Expect to see more podcast hosts gain IAB Certification today. We're here on Twitter.

Later today, we're expecting an announcement about music licensing in podcasts. Follow Podnews on Twitter to stay in touch.

As seen above, someone likes their Podnews podcoaster. And so will you - find us five new readers, and one of these can be yours. Share the unique link you'll find at the bottom of this email everywhere you can. Here's more details.

After nearly ten days without any categories in Apple Podcasts, the new categories are now live in the company's apps. Our own podcast's listing is correctly in the new Daily News category, in the iOS and new macOS versions of the Apple Podcasts app.

There are now more than 731,000 podcasts in Apple Podcasts, says My Podcast Reviews.

Michael Barbaro's trademark ... stresses and ... pauses? They're written into his script, which is single line-spaced and all in capitals. Sadly missing from this script: how he writes "Here's what else youneedtoknwtdy".

It’s now day seven without any categories in Apple Podcasts apps while the company reworks them. Spreaker has supported them since last week; podcast app Player FM has completed integration, though points out that their own categories are more detailed. Podnews podcast pages, like this for The Thing About Cars, now display the Apple primary genre (in this case, 'comedy').

Podcast app Overcast was updated last week. You can now share up to 90 seconds of a podcast on social media, and it features a better recommendation engine (which no longer uses Twitter).

Player FM has integrated Podchaser ratings in its app

Podcast planning and workflow tool HelloCast has updated its pricing plans, including a free option for newer podcasters. They've also launched two, forever-free, browser extensions: HelloClips, a research clipping tool for podcasters, and HelloProfiles, a handy Twitter clipping tool.

We linked to a New York Times article a few days ago, which promised we'd "reached peak podcast". How did the article go down? Not well. Try this critique from Air-nandez for starters; and thank you Larry Gifford for adding: "It’s the podcast equivalent of the time I had a clever name for a restaurant and an Easy Bake Oven, and quit after 6 days because I didn’t earn a Michelin star."

The Cashflow Show, with tales of business success and failure, released episode #2 in November 2016 and released episode #3 this week. "Our first podcast in 2.5 years, so show us some love", they say on Twitter, also sharing their #podcoaster unique link. :loveemoji:

Obscura had over 663 one-star ratings by Sunday (without a review). A number of those ratings still appear in the US store at the time of going to press.

"Are you highly curious?" So starts a producer job advert from NPR for a new daily science podcast that "tells listeners something they probably didn’t know in under ten minutes". It's attracted the attention of Cody Gough, the presenter of Curiosity Daily, an award-winning daily science podcast that "helps you get smarter about the world around you" "in less than 10 minutes". Hmm.

A true-crime podcast is being targeted with one-star ratings. The creator of Obscura has tweeted about his experience. After they initially said they wouldn't remove them, Apple did eventually remove a hundred obviously fake ratings, but the harasser has responded with a further 150. On Reddit, commenters believe they know who is responsible: we have no evidence for the accusations, but have reached out for comment.

Tech people in Melbourne VIC, Australia: no need to be so glum about the weather. Crawl out from under the doona and get your umbrella, because Omny Studio is hiring.

Oddly, on iOS13 on the second home screen is... the iTunes Store. We thought it was going away. Anyway, it's nothing to do with podcasts.

Captivate, a growth-oriented podcast host currently in beta, has just announced Captivate Sites for a podcast website that "looks like it was designed this decade".

The 80's all over podcast is all over, the creators have announced.

Here's what else you need to know today: what everyone who works on The Daily looks like. (Those interested in gender balance: two-thirds female).

Castro's Padraig O'Cinneide is leaving the company after nine years of working on the well-reviewed iOS podcast app. His current role is being advertised, along with others.

84% of recently-released podcasts are MP3, says Castro; 16% of them were AAC. (Ours is AAC, by the way).

Thought: those people tweeting that their podcast is "on iTunes" might want to reconsider. You're on Apple Podcasts, no?

Spotifywatch: your Editor has now been given the new interface which gives parity for music and podcasts.

Spotify has launched a "Daily Podcast Playlist", spotted by Vox Media's Zack Kahn. Evo Terra notes that it "appears to contain ten new episodes of shows you are subscribed to (in Spotify), a short clip telling you to try something new, and nine episodes from popular shows." We're not seeing it; but the only podcast we subscribe to in Spotify is this one.

Daniel J Lewis has played with the new Apple Podcasts desktop app, and tried the transcription search. "Pretty cool!" he says.

As predicted, Apple will create a brand new Apple Podcasts app for macOS, which will come in v10.15 of the operating system, called Catalina. However, iTunes will continue as you know it on Windows machines. The new app, as we can see from a screenshot here, also clearly displays chapter points.

Wild speculation: Apple Podcasts went on the web in April this year, so you can now listen to this fine podcast via Apple Podcasts on an Android, Windows or Linux device. However, there's no front page for this experience yet: it just returns an unusual error. Is it moving to the web fully this week, with a proper front page and a method of subscribing (which there's room for)?

How important is podcast clip sharing? This Twitter search shows 20 different Overcast videos being shared during a period of two days earlier this week. In total, 19 different podcasts were shared to a total, in just two days, of 113,689 Twitter followers. Wow. So - who'll be first to enable this functionality from Android?

Libsyn are making an announcement at 8.30am Pittsburgh time today. Follow us on Twitter.

Samantha Henig, currently editorial director of audio at the New York Times, is leaving at the end of the month. She doesn't appear to have anything lined up, noting that she's "free for coffee/lunch/daytime drinking".

The BBC has switched its domestic news bulletin on smart speakers - which was mainly a version of the pacy news bulletin on BBC Radio 5 Live - to one being produced especially for smart speakers. (Tip: you'll find an update from LBC on your smart speaker as well.)

EXCLUSIVE: The British Podcast Awards, powered by DAX, will be live streaming this year's event on its Twitter profile @britpodawards. You can tune in tomorrow, Saturday 18th May from 8pm (or at least dual screen with Eurovision).

If you're using the Yoast SEO plugin for your Wordpress website, and you self-host, caution: it specifically stops Google Podcasts from working.

Google appears to have rolled-out podcast results in their main desktop search, complete with a link to the play buttons. Spotted by Bababam Audio's Pierre Orlac'h, we've been able to replicate this from Canadian, Australian and Swedish IP addresses. Steven Goldstein showed Podnews that it also works from iPhones (and plays the audio within Google's web player). The play buttons aren't appearing in searches from the UK, though - an attempt by Google to placate the BBC?

Speaking at Google I/O, the developer conference for Google, Google's CEO Sundar Pichai has announced that podcasts will appear in Google search across all platforms: and a new feature, "play later", will allow listeners to queue interesting podcasts for their phone or speaker. He was higlighting the slate of work for the next twelve months.

The Charlie Kirk Show - from "Twitter’s 5th most engaged personality" - debuts on PodcastOne with an in-depth interview with Donald Trump Jr and girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle. (Podcast One)

Watch our Twitter later: we have embargoed news.

Luminary have responded to our many stories about them on Friday, clearly stating they will continue to remove links from shownotes "due to important security concerns". As we replied on Twitter, show notes are left intact in the majority of podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts. Meanwhile, more podcast publishers have requested their shows be removed from Luminary: Stitcher podcasts have been removed, and Stitcher are asking those podcasts represented by Midroll to consider doing the same, PRX, including Radiotopia, are off, and we have a statement from Lantigua Williams & Co saying similar. We have no plans to remove our podcast.

It emerges that Luminary has, since launch on Apr 23, been running a proxy server for podcasts: breaking podcast analytics and making dynamic ad insertion difficult. Our site logs showed that they were using a service from Cloudflare. The company said in a statement yesterday that they have stopped doing this: we've confirmed the removal, on web, on Android, and it also looks to have been removed from iPhone. We explain what a proxy server is, and why it matters for podcasts.

When do people install new apps? Weekends, according to this graph from Radioplayer, a radio and on-demand app in many different countries.

Gimlet now has a formally recognised union.

Luminary, the self-styled "Netflix of podcasting", launches officially today. As The Verge points out, Luminary doesn't have The Daily from the New York Times in it - an in-app message grumpily recommends alternative podcasts. Podcasts from Spotify, Gimlet Media and Anchor are also unavailable. Perhaps surprisingly, it does contain BBC content. The Verge's Dieter Bohn calls this "the upcoming podcast wars".

A pop music critic for the Washington Post posts a clickbaity article entitled Are podcasts killing music or just wasting our time?. The article (which does contain some useful points) has been widely reviled on social media, probably doing exactly what the author wanted; Helen Zaltzman has an especially cogent take (and the comments seem to agree).

Play 99% Invisible in your Mazda or Nissan, and your radio might crash, according to a recent episode of Reply All. Both Podcast Addict and Pocket Casts have now been patched to stop this from happening; and on Reddit, the person who noticed it, a guy called Ben, pops up with more detail of the bug: and in the comments, a solution... it turns out that characters like %In (along with %jn and %hhn) cause the issue (it's an "uncontrolled format string", apparently).

Edison Research revealed their Podcast Consumer 2019 study yesterday in a webinar. They have posted the full slide deck and video on their website. On the Twitter hashtag, Midroll highlight that 70% of podcast consumers are doing "nothing else" when listening to podcasts; Mark Asquith highlights that 75% of non-listeners believe that podcasts are "just not for them", and sees this as a marketing opportunity; and Evo Terra highlights that podcast listeners overwhelmingly use their phones for just that.

Good news for CBC podcast fans who use Overcast: everything is working again.

The CBC's podcasts are no longer appearing in Overcast, a popular iOS app. Everyone claims it's a harmless mistake and that they'll be back soon.

The nominees will be announced for the British Podcast Awards today, Monday, at 6pm UK time (or your time). Hosted by the cast of No Such Thing As A Fish, the nominations will be announced live on their Twitter feed.

A rejig of part of NPR's podcast hosting has resulted in many users not being able to download their podcasts if they run ad-blockers. NPR's Stacey Goers says that the company recently transitioned ad vendors, and that NPR is planning to make changes in the coming days that should solve the problem.

Cautious data for those wanting to pull podcasts into a registration-only app: only 3 out of 5 people are cool with that and the figure is slowly decreasing. Meanwhile: "It's not a podcast if it's not platform agnostic", says Josh Kinal.

Is everyone happy that Google Podcasts is now transcribing podcasts? Some have doubts.

Chartable say that we've just hit a total of 700,000 available podcasts. The company monitors Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and other podcast apps. (Interesting fact: our average lifespan, in hours, is also 700,000).

Here's how to find the transcript within a Google Podcasts episode page, like this one - under "inspect > network" it's in a file request made by the page called /_/PodcastsUi/data/batchexecute and is a protected file. View the response in Chrome devtools, and you'll see a long, JSON-looking string, including the entire transcript. They're not transcribing our podcast, TWiT, or The Daily as far as we can see though. (Reminder - episode links are at the bottom of every podcast page here on Podnews).

As Podnews was sending yesterday, Spotify announced it will buy Parcast, a podcast production house. Spotify purchased Gimlet and Anchor earlier this year. Meanwhile, Gimlet management has "effectively refused to voluntarily recognise" their proposed union, according to the union's twitter feed.

Journalist and futurist Ben Hammersley, who coined the word "podcast", tweeted that "this seems to be insane". Dave Winer, who added the concept of enclosures to RSS feeds, and thus is held by many to have invented podcasting, also tweeted a link to our story, highlighting the BBC's requirement for a licence and user data. Juleyka Lantigua-Williams tweeted that the BBC are "setting a bad example and a dangerous precedent, especially for smaller producers like me. RSS feeds are the most democratic way to keep podcasts accessible and manageable." Francisco Izuzquiza likens it to shooting yourself in the foot before going for a walk, though he doesn't think it's bad news for the industry as a whole. And we liked Jonathan "JB" Webb's alternative headline: BBC says "Not OK, Google". Top marks.

What's the difference between radio and podcasting? Podnews's Editor, in his weekly Radio Tomorrow piece for an Australian radio industry website, points out that podcasters want to help each other. [Even podcasting's newsletter writers tolerate each other!].

Han and Matt Know It All give a second opinion on advice columns from across the internet, and their 111th episode features "Twitter genius" Brandy Jensen. Wil Williams likes it. Us too!

Sean Clements would like you to clear your throat.

London, UK: Rise and Shine run free podcast workshops every month (which are critically acclaimed by other podcasters we talk to). There's one today - but it's sold out; watch their twitter feed for next month's.

More deletions from Twitter: Luminary's tone-deaf tweet about "podcasts don't need ads", which we also reported on Monday, has finally been deleted. "Our tweet was in bad taste," the company admits, "We have taken it down and we apologize to anyone we offended."

The staff at Gimlet Media, bought by Spotify last month, are looking to launch a worker's union. With the Writer's Guild of America East, the Gimlet Union posted their reasons why on a tweet. Gimlet's management have acknowledged the request for union recognition, but otherwise have yet to respond. It would be a first for the podcast industry.

Twitter has launched a podcast. Character Count is, says TechCrunch, focused on its ad business. (Simplecast)

Wondery has parted ways with Mike Boudet's true crime podcast Sword and Scale, after Boudet had repeatedly posted comments many found offensive, and behaved aggressively online. Sword and Scale posted an emotional announcement from Boudet, who blames Aaron Mahnke and Rabia Chaudry, and says he has laid off his staff and closed his show. Chaudry congratulates Wondery for "finally doing the right thing"; Mahnke claims, in a long thread, that Boudet has been increasingly aggressive and that hundreds of people had complained to Wondery. A freelance journalist called Maggi sums up the story from her point of view.

Podcast fans will reject a 'Netflix for podcasts' , says FastCompany; Luminary wants to be a Netflix for podcasts says AVClub, and both Nick Quah and Wil Williams are getting a bit tired of the phrase 'Netflix for podcasts'. Us too.

At the RAIN Podcast Business Summit, Google's Zack Reneau-Wedeen announces that Google Podcasts will have search results for episodes by the end of the week. Episode results are supported in all languages, and for many languages works by analysing automatically generated transcripts. This feature was first spotted within the app's code in July last year.

Jon Wilkerson suspects he knows what's behind Apple Podcast's recent attempt to clean up metadata: the ADA (the Americans with Disabilities Act). He points out that Apple received a class action last year because its website was "inaccessible to visually impaired users". Others point out that episode number tagging would enable, for example, "Siri, listen to episode 125 of The Daily" which is currently difficult to achieve. Here's our FAQ: we'd still recommend doing the tags, even if Apple isn't threatening you.

In an apparent u-turn, Apple has sent a (partial) email to podcasters reassuring them that "Your Show Won’t Be Removed for Having Episode Numbers in Episode Titles", reverting the threat made yesterday. This is an embarrassing about-face for the company, compounded by the fact that their latest email looks suspiciously as if someone hit the "send" button before it was actually completed, and has made them the target of ridicule.

Marco Arment has accused NPR of being "empty and naive" about the aims of their RAD podcast analytics program; and claims it's all about ad tracking.

Congratulations to Cadence13, who have been recognised by Fast Company as one of the world's most innovative companies. They share the accolade with Twitch, Domino's, and Mozilla.

Wavve, a service that lets you share podcasts on social media "in style", now supports automatic transcription and captions, the company has announced. Here's what one looks like.

Emmanuel Dzotsi, the co-host of Serial's last season, is joining Gimlet to work on ReplyAll. Aloof British accents for the win! (Tip of the hat to Inside Podcasting for spotting this one, and linking to us this week.)

Rob Greenlee has spotted a podcast called You can't make this up, The Human Algorithm, and a corporate podcast from the only company that truly can call itself "the Netflix of podcasting".

Marco Arment writes that listeners are spooked out by location-specific ads in podcasts and that if they continue, "we'll all lose".

Our Apple Podcast Analytics are perplexing.

Spotify+Gimlet: Paul Colligan thinks that Gimlet will contain ads for Spotify, and that this is a valuable part of a purchase (if it comes). HotPod today contains lots more about the deal, and the promise/threat that "we’re going to [be] talking about every implication of this for a long time". Spotify has an investor's call today, so we've not heard the end of this story yet.

Spotify and Gimlet - Kevin Goldberg shares his thoughts, pointing out "Apple has been mostly complacent on their podcast strategy, only minimally innovating their app, slow rolling their hyped analytics, and overall squandering their massive head start." Eric and Ely from the Bello Collective have a conversation about whether it's a good thing or not. And radio executive Stephen Martin makes an interesting point... "Does this mean that Gimlet podcasts could contain commercial music, at least within Spotify's castle walls? It could mean the advent of a new class of podcast; one that benefits music owners."

Event: Indiepodfest, Melbourne VIC, Australia, in July. If you're interested in attending, there's a short survey for you over here.

Advice: Podcast Websites on how to showcase your guests better; Transistor has tips for getting more Twitter followers for your podcast; Jon Moore wants to get the intro to your podcast right; and Spreaker covers how to promote your podcast with Instagram

Eric Wahlforss, the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of SoundCloud - a service many podcasters use as a host - is stepping down. "This was not an easy decision to make". The company lost Alex Ljung, the other co-founder, as CEO back in July 2017.

Spotify appears to be testing an import function that will allow you to "add podcasts from another app" on iOS. It appears to look inside your media library. Podcasts do need to be on Spotify, of course. (Is your podcast not on Spotify? Add it here).

The folks from Hello from the Magic Tavern have either formed a new supergroup of podcasters, or had too much beer in a London pub. We want the former; but we think it's the latter.

The iHeartRadio Podcast Awards took place on Friday night. The winners are posted on the official website, and video clips available on Twitter. Podcast of the year went to Slow Burn (Slate/Megaphone) - see the speech. We reported in November that host Leon Neyfakh, and some of his team, have now left Slate; he did not collect the award.

Spotify has added podcast recommendations - "you might also like" - to their podcast pages for some users. This was discovered by James of MySpotifyIdeas, a man who Spotify should be employing.

Spotify now has 200m global active users, up by 10% over the past six months. 87m of those are paying customers. Morgan Stanley says users listen for 4.4 hours a week - Apple Music is 3.7m. However, 50% of Spotify users say that all the podcasts they want aren't on the service. Notwithstanding this, it's the #2 most popular podcast app. (Search for a podcast, and we'll show you a Spotify link if it's there.)

Job: Social Media Manager for Apple Podcasts and Apple Books, in Culver City CA, USA. (Apple Podcasts isn't important enough to have its own?)

There's widespread anger at an announcement that a popular BBC podcast, Fortunately, is going to be made exclusive to BBC Sounds, the broadcaster's new audio app. It means that the podcast, which isn't aired on radio, will no longer be available on other services like Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts. There's concern that because the BBC Sounds app is unavailable outside the UK, overseas listeners may be unable to listen.

Job: Earwolf/Stitcher/Midroll is looking for a Senior Production Manager, in Los Angeles CA, USA.

The Australian Podcast Awards will open their Popular Vote Category tomorrow. You're advised to watch their Twitter or Facebook pages.

Google Podcasts now supports formatting and links in podcast show notes. They still don't look great, but it's a good step in the right direction. We've also spotted that Google Podcasts is now fully supported in Android Auto. In the works (finally) are automatic podcast downloads, and a way of seeing which version of the player you're running.

Kanye West has said that he's "spoken with Joe Rogan and a podcast is coming soon". The musician had been complaining that the media didn't want a serious interview about mental health issues. While The Joe Rogan Experience is arguably already big enough, this event has the capability to get this podcast, and podcasting, into showbiz news reporting across the world.

Apple Insider reports that Apple "offered their feedback" on NPR's RAD analytics system. Meanwhile, Overcast's Marco Arment, responding to our article on what RAD means for privacy, claims that "each downloaded MP3 could have unique RAD URLs, therefore tracking a user between all IPs they happen to be connected through while listening to a single podcast episode, and building cross-IP profiles of individuals."

Aaron Mahnke (Lore) has posted his "advice to anyone aiming for podcast success in 2019". Our favourite: "No 10-minute random small-talk mess before the real topic begins."

You're on Twitter? Oh, good, us too. Find and follow us @podnews - we follow back.

The BBC have published research undertaken about audio drama podcasts in the US and UK by consultant Ella Watts. The 36-page report includes a detailed list of the top 10 audio podcast dramas.

Is Marco Arment correct to claim that NPR's RAD podcast analytics is "a privacy violation and a GDPR liability"? In a special article, we looked into podcast apps, privacy and GDPR. In short: no. There's nothing to suggest that RAD is more of a privacy violation and GDPR liability than using a podcast app already is.

Adam Curry has railed against NPR's RAD podcast analytics (Dec 12) in his No Agenda podcast, calling it "completely stupid". Meanwhile, surprisingly to many, Pocket Casts have confirmed that they have no plans to include RAD in their roadmap - the podcast app is part-owned by NPR.

There's been another comedy sketch about podcasting on US television - this time on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. It features none other than Sarah Koenig - for real, this time.

Meanwhile, Marco Arment, the creator of Overcast, has confirmed in a set of tweets that he won't be supporting the RAD analytics standard. "I won’t be supporting any listener-behavior tracking specs in Overcast. Podcasters get enough data from your IP address when you download episodes."

After Steven Goldstein's post yesterday about the apparent failure of Google Podcasts to make any headway, Seth Resler points out that they're the only podcast app without a Twitter handle, which speaks volumes.

In a tweet, Michael Barbaro notes that The Daily appears to be the most downloaded show of 2018 (in the US), according to Apple. Pod Save America's John Lovett responds "It's cheating to do a show every day", which is a point worth making. The full US list is on Apple's website; there's a different list for every country, of course. Here's reporting on Australia's.

A new microphone might be on the way from RØDE - the PodMic appears in the company's video for their Rødecaster Pro.

Leon Neyfakh from Slate's Slow Burn podcast, and some of his team, are leaving the company, he's announced on Twitter.

A co-host and co-producer of Ear Hustle, Earlonne Woods has had his sentence commuted, and he'll soon be released on parole. One reason given? The podcast he works on. "Through his podcast [he] has shared meaningful stories from those in prison." He'll continue working on the podcast on the outside.

Doing a presentation about podcasting any time soon? Here, have eighteen quotes about podcasting for it. Oh, and here's one more, about the ideal length of a podcast.

We spotted an amazing thing in the producer of Reasons to be Cheerful's setup - a backlit editor's keyboard with all the shortkeys printed on. Here's an Adobe Audition keyboard and a Hindenburg keyboard.

Play podcast bingo with this helpful card from podcast producer Alex Laughlin.

If you've an iPhone... you know the icon for the Voice Memo app? Here's what it means.

Meanwhile Leo Hornak, who was billed as the Executive Producer for Today In Focus, curiously removed any mention of The Guardian from his Twitter biography just a few days ago. He's credited as show developer, but not as an Exec Producer, in the latest episode.

The Cossío Awards, a journalism prize in Spain, is now recognising podcasts as a valid entry format.

More Apple Podcast Chart manipulation: John Perotti, manager of podcast production for WBUR's iLab, has a "barely listened-to podcast" - WAVes Podcast. Approached by an Apple Podcast "promoter", he decides to give it a try, not believing it'll work; spending $5, he discovers his podcast is #7 in the Arts chart shortly after. He posts that it definitely works, and is rightly concerned about what that means.

In a perplexing move, Ellen Degeneres excitedly tweeted that she'd been a guest on a podcast. Hers.

PodFinder is a new podcast discovery service, in early test.

OzPod returns tomorrow in Melbourne VIC, Australia. All sessions are being recorded for release later. Speakers include Zack Reneau-Wedeen from Google, and Podnews's Editor, James Cridland. Watch #ozpod2018 for live updates.

Google wants to make Google Podcasts easier. The company is working on "simplifying the process" for being listed in Google Podcasts, says Zack Reneau-Wedeen. Meanwhile, Google Podcasts has quietly added a "trim silences" feature: you'll find it under the playback speed settings.

The Apple Podcast Chart is screwed. How should we replace it? is an editorial from Podnews's Editor, James Cridland; highlighting some recent activity around manipulation of the chart, including this Twitter thread from Kevin Goldberg.

El Espectador reports that mentions of "podcast" on Twitter have exceeded 24 million so far this year: already 40% more than the whole of 2017.

Apple Podcasts last week suggested that podcasters use AAC rather than MP3. The makers of the Castro podcast app crunched the numbers: only 11.8% of all episodes released in the past ten days are AAC; 86.5% were MP3. (We would recommend sticking with MP3.)

A tweet from Rob Manuel.

Dr Death, Wondery's hit podcast, "leads the chart of total 5-star ratings for any serialized podcast, having surpassed prior leaders Up And Vanished and Serial", according to the company. It has over 23,500 ratings in total. You can join Laura Beil for a Reddit AMA tomorrow.

RadioPublic is reminding podcasters to claim their podcast on the RadioPublic platform.

6 podcasts on the future of television

Finding Cleo, a podcast from Canada's CBC, has won a major award, the broadcaster says in a tweet, at the Third Coast Festival.

Jacob Weisberg, Chair and Editor-in-Chief of Panoply's owner, Slate Group, is also leaving the company. He's announced he's launching a new audio company with Malcolm Gladwell.

Nick Quah suggests Serial Season 3 is "the single biggest podcast sponsorship deal ever". ZipRecruiter have tweeted that the show will include "a show within a show".

Dave Keine want you to freshen up your podcast subscriptions - a campaign called #PodcastParedown asks you to unsusbcribe from podcasts you don't listen to any more, find new ones, and share them on Twitter using a hashtag.

Twitter has launched Periscope Audio - an audio-only version of Periscope, which allows you to stream to Twitter users anywhere in the world. The feature was dreamt up during a hackweek for the company.

In an astonishing video, Twitter user Lime Link posts a video that shows the extent of Apple Podcasts Chart manipulation: it shows a clever way of how to spot the podcasts gaming the system, and how to do it yourself (don't).

Scott Flashheart posts an expletive-laden set of tips to create a good podcast, and a lot of animated GIFs.

My Dad Wrote A..., says @matt, "shows the value in going big to 'launch' a new season. It's a good way of reminding old listeners but also attracting new ones. The (UK) Apple Podcast Top 200 episode chart currently has over 60 (of their 80) episodes listed."

Opinion: "I might not have access to any profound, wise truths about the industry, but I am capable of calling bullshit on the sort of claims you’ll hear." Nick Hilton looks at all the lies you've been told about podcasting; and Matthew Moore is irritated by people claiming that they like "raw, unproduced podcasts".

As of press time, Kim Kardashian had over 3,300 replies telling her some good podcasts to listen to, after the "television personality, socialite, actress, businesswoman, model" posted a tweet asking for some. We sure hope she has the iPhone with 256GB.

Is this the day podcasts go mainstream? Kim Kardashian has discovered podcasts, and she wants to know what to listen to.

AFP has posted a story, widely published, on podcasting's success. Advertisers take note as podcasters come of age is how it reads in the Singapore-based Straits Times. Nick Quah posted it published in Malaysia's The Star.

Marco Arment, the developer of iOS podcast app Overcast, has announced forthcoming support of a new "payment" link for podcasts - a big green payment button will appear in the next version of Overcast to clearly link to donation pages. It's a simple tag in your show notes, now explicitly supported by Omny Studio and Fireside, and Anchor have also said they'll support it. We already display it in our podcast pages (here's an example). Here's how to add one.

Spotify have made it possible to share podcasts from Spotify directly to Instagram stories, "deep links and all", according to @jacobschulman who works in Product Marketing. (Thanks, James from My Spotify Ideas)

Jay "podvader" Soderberg is no longer with BlogTalkRadio/Voxnest, he has tweeted.

On Friday we reported that Spotify have removed 'selected episodes' of the Alex Jones Podcast. Stitcher has removed the lot.

Google Podcasts appears to have added landing pages for non-Android devices that follow a Google Podcasts link.

Event: Indian Podcasters' Virtual Meetup, 5 Aug. Sign up here.

Wil Williams posted a ton of useful threads during Podcast Movement. Here are her threads in full (compiled by Erin M Speckley):

For reporting and comments from some of the creator talks at Podcast Movement, we'd recommend a read through Wil Williams's tweets; and a wider #PM18 search.

Google publishes the Google Podcasts 'podcaster toolkit' in the bag for the attendees at Podcast Movement. And, now, you.

Podcasters are converging on Philadelphia PA, USA, for Podcast Movement 2018. The conference starts tomorrow, but pre-conference events are taking part today; the Twitter hashtag for the event is #PM18. The Editor of Podnews is moderating a panel on Audience Acquisition tomorrow (Tues) at 11.00am.

Event: the Paris Podcast Festival, 19-21 October

Yesterday, we linked to a tweet saying Audioboom were up to date on payments; but after we published a link to it, it was deleted - along with the Twitter account it was from. (The author of the tweet says, on her LinkedIn page, that she left Audioboom in Aug 2015.) Stuart Last, the COO of Audioboom, tells us:

Audioboom claim that they've paid all outstanding money to podcasters. (?)

A live podcast on Twitch - Westwood One Podcast Network stars Eric Bischoff and Conrad Thompson of 83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff are doing an exclusive live broadcast of their podcast on Twitch while co-streaming episodes of Doctor Who. We're told "You won’t want to miss Eric and Conrad experiencing the show as only they could – through the eyes of wrestling guys."

Podcast app Castbox have posted some interesting data today about how their users listen to podcasts in different parts of the world.

If you use a Chromebook, we discover the Google Podcasts app works on that, too.

Branded podcasts are increasingly popular in Germany - this article in a German website gives a good overview of the market.

An interesting promotional concept: Kaitlin Prest (The Heart/Radiotopia) is working on a new CBC podcast for release in September. She's giving the audience a separate and stand-alone glimpse into the world of the story, via email, starting today. Podnews understands that her podcast is a love story, and these early dispatches will deepen and complicate your understanding of the protagonist.

In the iPhone's next version, iOS 12, Apple Podcasts supports chapter points in MP3 podcasts (it only supported them in AAC audio files before). You can also ask Siri to 'skip to the next chapter'. (In December we looked at chapter point support.) You can also customise skip duration, and change the behaviour of steering wheel controls.

Castro 3 was released last week. This week, the team blog about their decisions - why it has an optional paid subscription, particularly. Of note: they tweeted: "Castro 3 has been downloaded more times in 3 days than Castro 2 was in 2 years".

Nathan asked how Podnews built our podcast pages, so we wrote it up. There's not much there, but developers might like our use of AMP and our Cloudfront caching strategy.

Overcast developer Marco Arment tweets about Castro's new release (which includes silence detection), saying "I actually want and need Castro and other podcast players to succeed. My goal of keeping podcasting open requires diversity among player apps: so many apps, all built on open podcasting, that producers can’t ignore or control them all."

Podcast host Pippa was contacted by another company offering to sell them a slot in the Apple Podcast Charts over the weekend. They live tweeted it. A reminder that our story only covered one such company.

Audioboom is beginning to sort out its payments to publishers, according to this tweet from the host of Crime in Sports and Small Town Murder. (These podcasts are now hosted with Podcast One).

Nice tip from Transistor, a podcast host: how to automatically email your Mailchimp list when you release a new podcast.

Former UK radio CEO Phil Riley posts advice for podcast interviewers. Cabana also posts five secrets of great podcast hosts.

Twitter should make a podcast app, argues Alex Carter.

Spotted: a neat visualisation tool for podcasts in this tweet - the product is Toronto-based Audiogram: neatly, it even works with the sound turned down.

A service called Micro.blog, a cross between Twitter and an RSS reader, adds an iOS podcasting app called Wavelength for "microcasts". (On this service? Us too.)

In Las Vegas, the NAB Show is on; Perry Michael Simon writes a report of Tuesday, including a lot of podcast stuff. (Perry's awesomely sarcastic on Twitter, by the way, we're a fan).

He's on Twitter; his last tweet is a retweet of the BBC's announcement.

In New York, RAIN's Podcast Business Summit managed to survive a "blizzarding storm" and enjoyed a packed schedule of over 320 attendees and 22 speakers. RAIN covered the event with a full writeup, and RadioPublic's Ma'ayan Plaut did a fun job with a set of sketchnotes.

Pocket Casts has a web player in beta, and they posted their keyboard shortcuts for it the other day on Twitter.

Do me a favour: Podnews is growing fast, but it could grow even faster. Please forward this newsletter to a friend or colleague; or consider retweeting our summaries on Twitter. Help spread the word on Facebook. Thank you.

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.)

Simon Clancy, Deputy Editor of news and talkback station BBC Radio 5 Live, announces that he's leaving the Corporation to become Head of Audio for Joe.co.uk, "the voice of men in Britain".

ABC Audio Studios boss Kellie Riordan is writing a weekly podcast newsletter, Pod Squad, with her recommendations. Mentioned in the last edition were The Pineapple Project, The Side Hustle Show and Making Obama. Here's a subscribe link.

The City of Sydney tweets about their new podcast, talking about our animal neighbours. It's called Tails of Sydney, naturally. It's hosted by Whooshkaa.

The developer of Overcast says, in a tweet, that he's reworking the 'voice boost' feature. "I have a much better understanding of dynamics processing now, and am able to make a much more gentle and adaptive adjustment while retaining the usefulness of the feature".

Steve Wilson, who looks after marketing at Apple Podcasts, notes "friends don't let friends host their podcasts on SoundCloud" in a tweet, and recommends SimpleCast instead. He wants podcasters to use a podcast host that's designed to be a podcast host.

The team behind My Dad Wrote A Porno are to perform the world's largest podcast gig in London's Royal Albert Hall in June, reports the British Comedy Guide.

RadioPublic has a new version out for iOS, with a strangely fishy set of release notes.

As the Apple HomePod becomes available, Business Insider posts "7 reasons why you shouldn't buy Apple's HomePod right now" - one quite big one is that it doesn't actually work with Spotify, and won't work with any Android phone. And here's how it works (or doesn't) with your many and various music libraries.

(British) music journo Peter Robinson asks for recommendations for "a good podcast that isn’t about music or serial killers?" The answers include many suggestions, and some views on the state of podcasts too.

Hernan Lopez, the founder and CEO of Wondery, asks Is Your Brand On Mute? - pointing out that it needs an audio identity as well as a visual one. "Sound is where the emotion comes from -- sound stimuli are the first to be perceived by the brain, at 0.146 seconds. Then touch at 0.149, then sight at 0.189."

We have a number of Spanish readers - one that even translated our long iHeartMedia article from yesterday into a Twitter thread - so here is Nuestros 10 Podcasts favoritos de 2017, the "nuestros" in this case being Cuonda, a US-based Spanish podcast platform.

A recommended podcast: Eat Sleep Work Repeat, a podcast about happiness and work culture, hosted by Bruce Daisley (who is also the European boss for Twitter).

Buzzfeed is to stop making Another Round - but has apparently given the podcast to its hosts, who plan to continue it into 2018. Read their Twitter update for more. via PodcasterNews

Embattled crowd-funding site Patreon contact everyone who cancelled last week as a result of their bungled fee changes, asking them to reconsider.

On the heels of Sonix and the BBC's Discourse tool, Descript: a(nother) "wordprocessor for audio". The man behind this, Andrew Mason, is formerly of GroupOn. Takeaway: raw editing of speech is no longer a skill.

The New Yorker discovers In Our Time in their podcast column. "It’s just four intelligent people in a studio, discussing complex topics that are, as a friend of mine once said of Bragg’s openers, aggressively uncommercial."

YouTube is planning to launch a paid music service in March, "according to people familiar with the matter". It already has one (YouTube Red); it had one (YouTube Music Key). Also, see Google's bewildering range of instant messaging services: Messenger, Duo, Allo, Hangouts, Google Chat, Google+ and Google Spaces.

Patreon makes a number of changes to their service fees - shifting much of those fees to your patrons. Patrons will now pay 2.9% plus US$0.35 (they were paying nothing), while creators will now only pay 5%. Here's a few examples based on $10. A search on Twitter for patreon appears to indicate that creators aren't happy.

The IAB in the UK announces acast and Triton Digital have also joined as members.

Vancouver's CKNW publishes a special podcast about BC's "flawed" family justice system.

Following BBC News's lead a few days ago, @mattjlew "gives thanks" for his favourite podcasts using emoticons. ¯\(ツ)/¯

On Twitter, BBC News has decided to promote its podcasts using emoticons. 😂 📻 📺

Pacific Content's Dan Misener posts that the new iOS 11 camera supports QR codes, and if you make an iTunes link, it'll open Apple Podcasts automatically. Makes sense to use this in any print advertising for your podcasts. Here's a QR code to try it out on.

Data (in dutch) from dutch broadcaster BNR Nieuwsradio about their podcast numbers, split between "iTunes and Spotify" and "BNR web and app". Excepting a spike when a podcast was featured by iTunes, their own web/app delivers twice as much audience. 600,000 downloads in September. The population of the Netherlands is 17m; all programming is in Dutch. Also - watch Sjors Fröhlich at Next Radio talk about how they use data to help their programming.

A German tweet asks: "any good German-language podcasts that you can listen-to while running?" If you speak the language, you might find the responses useful.

The Observer (UK) published a flow-chart helping you choose podcasts the other day. It pleased at least one podcaster.

Oooof! 160 characters of podcast critique.

Anti-Brexit podcast Remainiacs is doing well, they report - with half-a-million plays already. It's a good, sweary, listen.

The CEO of Twit.TV, Lisa Laporte, writes some super-useful tips about getting advertising for your podcast. "Our ad model consists of two host-read ads per advertiser because the unaided recall is 80% greater than a single ad read."

Not to be out-done, Sonos have released a new smart-speaker with Amazon's Alexa built-in. Alexa is also available to existing Sonos units as an upgrade. Initial feedback on Twitter isn't amazingly positive, though.

One radio professional gets frustrated at badly-edited podcasts about podcasting.

It was International Podcast Day on Saturday. Here's the Twitter hashtag containing coverage.

The Economist is running a survey about podcasting.

Podcast Movement starts in a day's time: probably the year's biggest podcasting event. You probably want to follow #PM17 on Twitter.

This podcaster in the UK might have found a loophole in the Apple Podcast Chart's algorithm, by the looks of things.

The Millennial Podcast bows out with their final show.

Even the best sometimes get it wrong: Radiolab removes its latest episode after complaints.

Another day, another service to make audio files into video files. This time, it's Anchor, the app that appears to either be rapidly expanding or has a damn good PR team.

Interesting way of promoting a new podcast: put a clip of it directly on Twitter. From Radiotopia, promoting Ways of hearing, a new podcast out Friday.

The West Wing Weekly, a fan podcast about The West Wing TV show, gets the Canadian Prime Minister as a guest.

Video (6m) from TWiT on how iOS 11 "supercharges podcasts".

Clammr, a Twitter-like product that allowed you to share 24-second clips of audio with your friends, closes.

Some screenshots from the new Apple Podcasts app. "They basically made it Apple Music for Podcasts. I love it," says a reply.