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December 20, 2024:
December 13, 2024:
    NPR's comedy podcast How To Do Everything helps write the ending to a children's book today - using best-selling thriller authors Gillian Flynn and James Patterson. The book is all about an umbrella named Bella who hates the rain.
November 21, 2024:
    A number of companies have not recertified since 2021, although the IAB Tech Lab tells us that annual recertification remains a requirement. However, “a few companies” will be removed by the end of the year after choosing not to recertify, the company says, but wouldn’t confirm who.
November 19, 2024:
    How bad is “podfade”, the phenomenon where podcasters stop podcasting? Research by Podnews suggests that of the 24,464 podcasts started in January this year, 7,388 - 30.2% - haven’t posted a new episode since the end of February.
November 18, 2024:
    The Podnews Weekly Review reached episode 100 at the end of last week. Matt Campion from Spirit Studios joins us to talk about the company's IP 360 strategy; while James and Sam talk about Spotify's push to video.
October 28, 2024:
October 23, 2024:
October 17, 2024:
    Begin Again with Davina McCall is new today, from Steven Bartlett's Flight Studio. Davina McCall is a well-known UK television personality, and the show is dedicated to empowering people to embrace midlife: sharing stories of growth, rediscovery, and creating a sense of renewal. Davina wants everyone to know that midlife is not the start of the end, instead it's the perfect opportunity and time to Begin Again.
September 20, 2024:
    Want to find hidden gems in fiction podcasts? Apollo’s AJ Churchill recommends a set of resources, incluidng Evo Terra’s The End, databases, and even a subreddit.
September 19, 2024:
September 9, 2024:
    We were excited to see The News Quiz, part of the BBC’s Friday Night Comedy podcast, publishing immediately after transmission at the end of last week. The show had been subject to a 30-day windowing trial for the past 18 months, with the newest episodes only available on BBC Sounds. The bad news: that was a mistake, we’re told. The good news: the show now only has a 7-day window.
September 6, 2024:
    Auddia has added two new features to its radio and podcast player, faidr. It now has visualised chapters (“shows the user where segment breaks are in the episode within the progress bar of the player”), and another feature called Forward+ (“allows a user to skip forward to the end of the segment being played with a single touch”). These features are available in most podcast players, but requires creators to manually add these chapters when publishing. The app also has a paid ad-skipping function.
September 2, 2024:
August 16, 2024:
    Crooked Media Workers Union is celebrating ratifying a contract agreement, including wage increases and AI protection. They had walked out last week. Provisions include starting salaries of $80,000 and a minimum of 49 days of paid time off. “Crooked must include an acknowledgment that the staff is unionized with the Writers Guild of America East at the end of all podcasts.”
August 14, 2024:
    The Ultimate Sacrifice was the highest new entry in the Australian Podcast Ranker, at #66 - it's from Nine Podcasts. The podcast is about the Wieambilla shooting; the inquest started at the end of July, and has rarely left the headlines since.
August 8, 2024:
    Do postrolls - ads at the end of a podcast - deserve the hate they get from some parts of the industry? Nate Wells posts some data from a recent campaign - suggesting that post-rolls aren’t intrusive to the audience, and because they’re significantly cheaper, even though they perform only a little worse, they’re much better value for advertisers.
July 22, 2024:
    The Asia Podcast Awards are due to close by the end of this week - so if you’ve not yet entered, get to it! After they close, listeners will be able to vote for their favourites in the People’s Choice category.
July 10, 2024:
    Where Are You Going? is on the buses until the end of August - on the T15 Routemaster bus, to be accurate, which runs between Tower Hill and Trafalgar Square in London. The award-winning podcast asks one simple question to discover a wealth of stories.
June 25, 2024:
    TV Chef Fantasy League uses fantasy sports rules to argue about America’s favorite reality cooking competition shows. The hosts pick chefs, earn points based on how those chefs perform, and at the end of the season, a winner is crowned! It's a new name for the Top Chef Fantasy League, and a new home on the Maximum Fun network; and launches today.
June 24, 2024:
    Creators: now’s the time to check if you’re still linking to Google Podcasts from your website, and remove those links. You’ve until the end of July 30 to get your podcast stats from Google Podcasts Manager. That website will also help submit your RSS feeds to YouTube, if you’ve not done that yet.
June 3, 2024:
    Lord Lucan disappeared fifty years ago in 1974, after his child's nanny was murdered. His trial never took place - until now. The Trial of Lord Lucan uses exclusive, never-before-seen documents written by Det Chief Supt Roy Ranson, who headed the 1974 murder investigation, and will finally decide whether Lord Lucan was guilty or not guilty. And you are the jury - it's up for a public vote at the end of the week.
May 29, 2024:
    Spotify is to stop its “Car Thing” from working at the end of the year. The device, which offered easy access to music and podcasts in the car, went on general sale for $90 in Feb 2022. Users are predictably not happy that the device will stop working less than three years after purchase; Spotify won’t offer any refunds or credits, and won’t open source the device either.
May 13, 2024:
    Choosing the Best Fiction Podcast App: A Guide for New Listeners has just been published by Evo Terra’s The End. Apple Podcasts is the best app for fiction podcast listening, he suggests.
May 10, 2024:
May 2, 2024:
    We have a date: Google Podcasts is to close, globally, on June 23 (according to an email sent to a UK user). July 29 is the end date for users to export subscriptions.
April 25, 2024:
    The IAB in the US recently posted $7.2bn for “internet audio” (we don’t yet have a podcast figure), which suggests that, adjusted for population, the UK market is seven times smaller - reflecting analysis by Will Page towards the end of last year.
April 24, 2024:
April 8, 2024:
April 5, 2024:
March 25, 2024:
March 18, 2024:
February 28, 2024:
February 21, 2024:
    In France, a charity event called Podcasthon is planned for next month. The idea is to make a special version of your show that highlights a cause or charity; and to co-ordinate its release at the end of March. Last year, 300 podcasts took part; this year, it has the support of Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and Spotify. 400 shows have already registered for this year - et vous? (Next year’s Podcasthon will be in English and other languages, too).
February 1, 2024:
January 29, 2024:
January 26, 2024:
January 25, 2024:
January 10, 2024:
    PSA: if your podcast uses the Voxalyze prefix (it looks like a.pdcst.to), you must remove it before the end of January, otherwise your podcast will stop working. Check for an email titled [Action required] Remove your Voxalyze Tracking Prefix for more information. The company has announced it is ceasing this service and has filed for insolvency.
January 8, 2024:
    Ten podcast companies are still not certified for the latest version of the IAB’s podcast measurement guidelines v2.1, in spite of being asked to do so by the end of 2022. More than a year later, the IAB’s list of compliant companies still shows AdsWizz, Anchor (now Spotify), Buzzsprout, Captivate, Chartable, Libsyn, Megaphone, Podbean, Podtrac and Simplecast as only compliant to v2.0 of the guidelines, something that means “they will lose current status”, according to the IAB Tech Lab.
January 5, 2024:
    First look: Evo Terra’s newsletter highlighting completed audio fiction, The End has posted its look back at 2023. Only five percent of submitted audio fiction shows did not have an RSS feed. Evo also recommends some of the best.
December 21, 2023:
    The effect of iOS 17’s changes in Apple Podcasts could be 30% fewer downloads for your show, according to Libsyn’s Rob Walch, speaking in The Feed. “If shows have over 300 episodes, they could and should expect to see their weekly downloads at the end of November be greater than a 25% drop below where their weekly numbers were in early September.” He adds: “Your audience size did not change. Those numbers? That was extra downloads (from) your back catalog (that) weren't being listened to. It's just right sizing your monthly and weekly downloads to what's more realistic and what's really happening.”
December 20, 2023:
    Have you spotted a theme in your favourite audio fiction shows? Audio fiction newsletter The End is thinking of a way to identify thematically similar audio shows, and is looking for your help in compiling a list.
December 12, 2023:
December 5, 2023:
    What’s the future for IAB Podcast Measurement? In November 2022, we reported that the IAB’s v2.0 certification would no longer be valid after Dec 31 2023. As of today, some of podcasting’s largest names are still only compliant to v2.0, and all will lose their claim to certification by the end of the year unless recertified: Adswizz, Buzzsprout, Captivate, Chartable, “EmpireStreaming” (now Soundstack), Libsyn, PodBean, Podtrac, Simplecast, and “Anchor” (now Spotify Creator Studio).
December 4, 2023:
    OP3 reports that by the end of November, more than two-thirds of all unique listeners using iOS were from iOS 17. For much of the month, though, it was just over 35%; so December may give us even clearer indications.
November 17, 2023:
    The Podnews Weekly Review this week features an interview with Alberto Betella from RSS.com, and with singer-songwriter Ainsley Costello. Our Editor also (right at the end) kind of launches a new tool if you're fed up with the amount of spam you get from the email address in your RSS feed.
November 16, 2023:
November 9, 2023:
November 8, 2023:
    Total listens dipped in the quarter (Jul/Aug/Sep) by 2.9%. Acast CEO Ross Adams blamed a decrease in listens on changes in download behaviour by Apple Podcasts in iOS 17. But, iOS 17 was only released on Sep 18, and only 16.7% of iPhones had installed it by the end of September, an adoption rate that Cult of Mac calls "a trickle". Too early to blame Cupertino?
October 16, 2023:
October 12, 2023:
    Evo Terra's The End website, which is a weekly newsletter for fans of complete audio fiction podcasts, has undertaken a full rebuild and redesign. New features are planned, including a full set of pages for creatives.
September 26, 2023:
September 21, 2023:
    KJZZ’s Kathy Ritchie likes to talk about things that make most people uncomfortable. KJZZ’s Period, The End is an educational series about menopause, a chapter of life that can be gut wrenching, exhausting and just plain confusing. It launched yesterday.
September 11, 2023:
    Auddia has released faidr v3.0, which promises "fully integrated podcasts" as well as a new user interface. The company is to acquire two new companies toward the end of the year.
September 8, 2023:
September 5, 2023:
August 23, 2023:
    YouTube will fully support ingestion of RSS feeds for podcasts by the end of the year, it was announced at Podcast Movement by the Product Lead Podcasting at Google, Steve McLendon, speaking to Ausha's Jennifer Han. He also made the first public acknowledgement of the ongoing beta testing that we reported on in May. (It ingests RSS audio feeds and turns them into YouTube-hosted video, like CNN One Thing which we understand is using it.)
August 2, 2023:
    SiriusXM released its Q2/23 financials. Podcast ad revenue was higher, though not split out in the results; programming costs were higher too. Pandora fared less well, selling fewer ads, and reaching 3m fewer people per month. The word "Stitcher" doesn't appear once in the results; the podcast app closes at the end of this month.
July 25, 2023:
    Free plugin, anyone? If you want your podcast to sound as if it's been recorded on a TASCAM cassette deck, today is your lucky day - and no requirement for a bit of sellotape over the recording hole. You've until the end of August to grab a free plugin from TASCAM and IK Multimedia, and add a bit of 1⅞ ips sound to your next show.
July 4, 2023:
June 8, 2023:
June 7, 2023:
    Lillian Xu is joining Vox Media as the Executive Director of the audio business. She joins from New York Public Radio. We're also told she plays pickleball, which we fondly imagined was a game played with actual pickles, probably in a bar at the end of a long night. It turns out not to be.
May 30, 2023:
    In The Dark London and Transmission Roundhouse are planning a listening event in London on Sep 4 - and they're looking for your audio work; planning to showcase new creators and new ideas. You have until the end of June to enter.
May 25, 2023:
May 22, 2023:
May 18, 2023:
    The Podnews Weekly Review will be live on stage at the end of the event. Come and join Sam Sethi, James Cridland and guests for the last word in podcasting news (The Amplify Theatre, May 25, 4.15pm)
May 3, 2023:
April 18, 2023:
April 11, 2023:
April 3, 2023:
March 27, 2023:
    A scripted vampire thriller from Echoverse, The Lesser Dead, is launched today on Wondery+. The supernatural audio series stars Academy Award nominee Minnie Driver (Good Will Hunting and The Riches), Jack Kilmer (The Nice Guys, Palo Alto), Danny Huston (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and Saul Rubinek (Hunters, Warehouse 13). It's an adaptation of Christopher Buehlman's book; it's released on open RSS at the end of May.
March 23, 2023:
    iOS 16.4, which fixes Apple Podcasts sometimes calling itself "AppleCoreMedia", was released in final form to developers yesterday, which suggests that it'll be rolled out to everyone next week. For podcast hosting companies that correctly split out Apple Podcasts and AppleCoreMedia, the end of April should see growth for Apple Podcasts of about 6%, we predict.
March 22, 2023:
March 13, 2023:
    Hernán López, the former CEO of Wondery, has been convicted of wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies while working for 21st Century Fox. Awaiting sentence, López faces up to 40 years in prison and millions of dollars in penalties. A lawyer for López said that they will appeal. López left Fox in 2016 before founding Wondery, which was sold to Amazon at the end of 2020. There's no suggestion that Fox, Wondery or Amazon were involved.
February 15, 2023:
    LiveOne, the owner of PodcastOne, released a quarterly financial report. Ad revenue grew by 3% to $26.1mn in the nine months ending Dec 31; PodcastOne is the bulk of this revenue. The company will spin out PodcastOne before the end of March.
February 9, 2023:
    Nick Hilton, who claimed that podcasting was dead at the end of last year, admits in a follow-up that the title was because he "wanted people to click on the article". After landing a guest spot on a BBC Radio 4 show to opine about podcasts (more than we've done), and being mentioned in a Bloomberg article (we've managed that at least), he admits that he "doesn’t really think that podcasts are dying", adding that he would quite like you to subscribe to his newsletter. We're taking notes at his clever customer acquisition scheme; but would also like to congratulate Maria who became our 26,000th subscriber yesterday in spite of boring article titles like "no, the number of new podcasts are not really plummeting".
February 8, 2023:
    Google tells us that Google Podcasts carousel links in Google Search (which the company said will go away at the end of this week) are being replaced with a new feature. A spokesperson told us: "We are always working to make it as easy as possible to find helpful information in Search, regardless of the form that content takes. Our existing podcast features will gradually be replaced with a new, single feature, What to Podcast (currently live on mobile for English users in the US.) This feature provides detailed information about podcasts, links to listen to shows on different platforms, and links to podcasters’ own websites, where available."
January 16, 2023:
    Last week's Code Switch was the first with the podcast's new co-host, Lori Lizarraga. She was announced at the end of September, and joined from television news in Denver CO and Bakersfield CA.
January 6, 2023:
December 22, 2022:
    Christmas comes early part 1: In October, RØDE launched a games division, including streaming software Unify. Costing $69 a year, it was given away for $1 at the end of November, but in an email sent to customers and seen by Podnews, the software is now free. It will only work with RØDE microphones from now on; but the company is to send a free XCM-50 microphone to every former subscriber. /ht Neal Veglio
December 21, 2022:
    Variety interviews Spotify's Dawn Ostroff. She talks about Joe Rogan, though doesn't say whether he's going to sign again at the end of 2023 - or Meghan Markle, come to that. She promises to cancel shows on a regular basis, as they do in TV, she says.
December 6, 2022:
November 21, 2022:
    Mastodon fun facts: if you add .rss to the end of someone's account page - like this - then you get an RSS feed. Audio files attached to posts are given a proper enclosure tag (there's an example in this feed), so theoretically every Mastodon user is already a podcaster. However, a) Apple Podcasts doesn't like these RSS feeds, though other apps are fine with them; and b) it'll add significant extra cost to your server instance's bandwidth bills so best not.
November 3, 2022:
October 13, 2022:

Can you help us grow? So far in October, we've welcomed 293 new subscribers from companies like Spotify, NPR, Pandora, Nova Entertainment, the Washington Post, TED, the BBC and Veritone. At the time of writing, we're on 24,963 subscribers. We'd quite like to be 25,000 by the end of this week, because that's a nicer number. Can you help by mentioning us on your favourite social networking platform, or telling your colleagues? We'll be your friend for life.%%promo-end%%

October 11, 2022:
October 6, 2022:
    Some of those made redundant in Acast's job cuts are leaving at the end of the week. We wish them all the best: our Podjobs board is full of opportunities. Shout if we can help.
October 3, 2022:
September 19, 2022:
August 26, 2022:
August 8, 2022:
August 1, 2022:
July 18, 2022:
July 15, 2022:
    Some podcasts really are artificially-hosted, artificially-written, and artificially produced. We covered Deep Dreams at the end of last year, which is entirely AI-authored.
June 28, 2022:
    Which Formula 1 driver received death threats and hired a bodyguard at the end of last season all because he crashed into a wall? Choosing Sides: F1 unveils the excitement and thrills of Formula 1 racing in a new podcast from iHeartMedia and Sports Illustrated Studios today.
June 15, 2022:
June 13, 2022:
June 9, 2022:
May 11, 2022:
May 3, 2022:
    Michael Mignano is to leave Spotify. He's said to have given his resignation last week, and leaves at the end of June. He was co-founder of Anchor and is currently Head of Talk (Podcasts, Live, and Video) at Spotify. In January he was “Global Head of Talk Verticals” Spotify; he had been “Head of Podcaster Mission” for a while, and has also variously been called “Head of Podcasts, Live and Video”, and “Head of Creation Platform”. He joins Courtney Holt and Lydia Polgreen in departing the company.
May 2, 2022:
April 28, 2022:
April 20, 2022:
March 14, 2022:
March 10, 2022:
February 4, 2022:
    Supernatural Then and Now is a rewatch podcast for TV's longest-running fantasy series, Supernatural. It launched at the end of last month, and is hosted by Richard Speight, Jr., and Rob Benedict - it's being produced by Story Mill Media.
January 28, 2022:
    Acast says: (our emphasis) "Acast+ will work on all podcast listening platforms that give their users the ability to add any RSS feed of their choice. This means that a few podcast players - like Spotify - are currently excluded because they work differently. However, we are part of their OAP programme and we are continuing to work with them on their approach to how they manage subscriptions to ensure that the end product meets what's best for Acast creators and the open ecosystem - which is for podcasters to have direct relationships with their listeners. Acast+ works on the majority of podcast apps and players including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, and Castbox and is available to access for 80% of our listeners."
December 30, 2021:
    Shared on Twitter by David Eagle himself, The David Eagle Podcast featured, back in April, a "big highlight that's too good to edit down for the end-of-year episode: my chat with the wonderful Boff Whalley from Chumbawamba."
December 15, 2021:
    The Final Word Ashes Daily is a new podcast with The Guardian and The Final Word, claimed to be the best cricket podcast in the world. Australia leads England 1-0; tomorrow, the second test starts in Adelaide SA. The show is updated at the end of each day's play. - read more
December 6, 2021:
November 23, 2021:
November 12, 2021:
    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.
October 18, 2021:
    Cloudflare post an interesting piece about multi-user IP address detection. The current IAB specification discusses a method of marking some IP addresses (a big corporation, for example) as safe to assume it has multiple users on the end: but this technology looks as if it might automate that work.
October 15, 2021:
September 16, 2021:
    Samsung Free Listen, the mobile phone company's podcast app, is to expand from the US to launch in Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Austria and Switzerland from the end of October. If you're on the platform, sign in here to accept the new terms (and you can use that link to add your podcast, too).
August 24, 2021:
    The implementation adds ?t=(seconds) at the end of the URL. YouTube and Spotify use this too, as does Pocket Casts and Podfriend, and it works on Overcast. Google Podcasts works differently; Apple Podcasts doesn't let you do this at all.
August 17, 2021:
    The virtual event Share Your Pod happened at the end of July; with more than sixty speakers, their website contains full videos of both days.
August 10, 2021:
    Podtrac has highlighted how the Apple Podcasts bug affected US podcast traffic in July - reporting a 31% drop in downloads from the app. The company suggests that traffic during much of August will still be affected. Podtrac also report a significant drop in news podcast downloads since the end of the US election cycle in February 2020.
August 5, 2021:
July 27, 2021:
    The Sports Podcast Awards will be announced later today, we understand. With 27 categories for sports podcasts, they were initially announced in April. Emails sent to podcasters say the categories are open from now until the end of September; the winners will be announced in a live-streamed event in February.
July 16, 2021:
    Radio is making way for podcasts - in Cleveland, quite literally. Evergreen Podcasts has purchased the former radio station complex of WDOK-FM. The building is six times larger than Evergreen's current offices; the company will employ 25 people by the end of the year. The building is in "Radio Lane", but that name's unlikely to change for now. WDOK-FM, better known as Cleveland's Star 102, moved in to the Halle Building with other Audacy stations in 2012.
April 29, 2021:
April 26, 2021:
    Emsolation from Australian broadcaster Em Rusciano has become a Spotify exclusive. She'd moved it away from SCA's Podcast One, as it was then, at the end of last year.
April 12, 2021:
    Launched at the end of last month, Blood on Gold Mountain focuses on the problem of anti-Asian-American violence by telling the story of the 1871 Los Angeles Chinatown Massacre.
March 10, 2021:
    Jamie Perkins writes: "Tom Webster is misinformed. As a regular consumer of YouTube, I hear 'hit that subscribe button' at the end of nearly every video. Everyone knows it doesn't mean you have to pay anything. Perhaps the subscribe 'confusion' only arises in an older generation? (Read: boomers)"
February 22, 2021:
February 16, 2021:
    Seems someone agrees: The Joe Rogan Experience has started posting clips of shows on its old, open RSS feed. Currently, a clip from a recent Elon Musk interview ends with a 40 second promotion for Spotify at the end, voiced by Rogan. The show went exclusive on Spotify on Dec 1.
February 8, 2021:
    Now we're at the end of phase 2, person, location, season and episode have been formally adopted into the new Podcast namespace. Full implementation details are in this file, along with five tags from phase 1.
January 20, 2021:
    As today marks the end of Donald J Trump's presidency, so it marks the end of the WNYC/ProPublica podcast Trump, Inc, which has just posted its final episode.
January 12, 2021:
January 6, 2021:
December 28, 2020:
    Fable and Folly presents The End of Time and Other Bothers. A cafeteria worker, a demonic filing clerk and a fairy PR exec are thrown back into the ancient past to save the universe.
December 24, 2020:
December 15, 2020:
December 1, 2020:
November 30, 2020:
    Buzzsprout is now the world's largest paid-for podcast host. The company overtook Libsyn (including LibsynPro) according to data from ListenNotes over the past few days, which measures RSS hosting domains. Buzzsprout itself claimed it has 82,574 shows at the end of October; Libsyn claims just 62,000 podcasts on their main website but over 75,000 in their latest press release; Libsyn haven't responded to recent requests for comment. While both companies also offer custom RSS domains, Buzzsprout has a limited free plan.
November 11, 2020:
November 2, 2020:
    PowerPress 8.4.1 was released at the end of last week. It includes a submission tool to The Podcast Index and to Amazon Music.
October 13, 2020:
    Sutterfaction was launched at the end of last month. From Evan Sutter, the podcast contains short 6 to 20 minute talks about life satisfaction, well-being, happiness, the absurdity of life, suffering, playfulness, travel, relationships and joy.
October 5, 2020:
September 16, 2020:
    SiriusXM announces a new CEO and CFO. James E Meyer will retire at the end of this year to be replaced by Jennifer C Witz, who is currently the President of Sales, Marketing and Operations. Sean S Sullivan is appointed the new CFO; David J Frear is "pursuing other opportunities, effective immediately". The company owns Pandora, Simplecast and Stitcher.
September 9, 2020:
August 20, 2020:
August 19, 2020:
    Podcast maker Alitu is to release Call Recording as a limited beta this week. For use with remote interviews, at the end of the call each guest's audio is polished up through Alitu's standard audio cleanup process - including levelling and noise reduction - before being joined together into one single interview recording for you to edit and package further. It'll be in limited testing until late September.
August 7, 2020:
    An SEC filing states that Libsyn's former CEO Christopher Spencer, who resigned on July 31, will continue to be paid until the end of this year (he earns $400,000); will get a bonus of $177,776 in early January; and will then earn $215,000 a year for his role as Senior Advisor until the end of February 2023, for which he'll have to work a maximum of eight hours a month. Libsyn will also pay Spencer $4,061,385 to buy back shares he holds.
August 3, 2020:
July 29, 2020:
    Brooklyn's Gilded Audio, with UnionDocs, has announced 2020's Signal to Noise award, which offers a production grant. The award "celebrates creative work that synthesizes audio documentary and experimental sound design". You've until the end of August to apply.
July 17, 2020:
June 22, 2020:
June 17, 2020:
June 5, 2020:
    The annual Podcast Awards are open for registration. Podnews is a supporter for the third year. You have until the end of June to register: it'll cost $25.
May 20, 2020:
    In one of podcasting's biggest deals, The Joe Rogan Experience, generally held to be the biggest podcast in the world, is to move to Spotify in a licensing deal. It will remain free, but will become an exclusive-to-Spotify show by the end of this year. The show is currently hosted on Libsyn.
May 11, 2020:
    Manoush Zomorodi and Jen Poyant have released a new episode of ZigZag, announcing the end of the partnership. Parenting time pressures and the uncertainty of the coronavirus were to blame.
April 29, 2020:
    SiriusXM, the owner of Pandora, has admitted in an earnings call that Pandora has "definitely seen a downturn in listening" but that it "has come back recently". "You can track the change and listening trend directly to commute [times]", said CFO David Frear. The company didn't mention Pandora's podcasting aspirations at all; Pandora itself has lost 8% of its monthly active users over the past year. Meanwhile, the company's star Howard Stern is open to ideas about what happens at the end of the year once his contract expires.
April 23, 2020:
    Voxnest have released an update on COVID-19 podcast listening across their network. The main claim is that global podcast listens are "up by 42%", a comparison to listening in the first week of January, a time when many people, especially in Europe, were on holiday. The graphs appear to show that all territories have increased since the end of March; and that categories around peoples' "hobbies and passions" are doing well; the company does note that, as a whole, US podcast listens are down by over 20%, however.
April 17, 2020:
    For every review, Podchaser is paying 25 cents to Meals on Wheels America. It's extended its reviews4good program until the end of April. Libsyn and Captivate are also matching all donations for podcasts on their platform, and if a podcast replies to the review, that doubles the money. (Our Editor is on Captivate's advisory board. Disclosures)
March 19, 2020:
    Podcast Movement is five months away; and currently is still planned to happen at the end of August. Happily, the event is scheduled to be in Dallas TX this year, which is where Podcast Movement's main headquarters is based, so they know what it's like. The company has also posted details of a "contingency registration", and ways that it offers to remain part of the podcasting community.
March 17, 2020:
    Audio editor Reaper is offering a temporary license, valid until the end of June 2020, to help those working from home.
March 2, 2020:
    If you bought a RØDEcaster Pro between Nov 1 and 29 Feb, you can claim a free accessory pack from the company. There's a US$20 shipping/handling fee, but it includes a set of cables and a power pack so you can use it without access to a mains plug. Terms apply; you've got until the end of this month to claim.
February 28, 2020:
February 27, 2020:
    Radiodays Europe, a large conference for radio and podcasting in Lisbon, Portugal, is going ahead at the end of March. It has announced a number of keynote speakers, including Entale's Wil Harris; and has covid-19 information on its website.
February 25, 2020:
February 20, 2020:
    New York Media merged with Vox Media at the end of last year; and Vulture's Good One podcast, a podcast about jokes and the people that tell them, is relaunching as a weekly Vox Media podcast. It's the first to officially enter the Vox Media fold. (Megaphone)
February 18, 2020:
January 7, 2020:
    The subject of an IndieGoGo campaign that we reported on at the end of August, serial fiction podcast VALENCE is released this Saturday. The podcast, according to its press release, features veteran sound designer Julia Schifini and a cast of both veteran and newcomer actors in the audio fiction space; it's written by Wil Williams and Katie Youmans. (Pinecast)
November 27, 2019:
November 4, 2019:
October 3, 2019:
September 26, 2019:
    Paradiso, a new international podcast studio, has launched. The company, made from executives from French pay-TV operator Canal Plus, entertainment company Konbini and ad company Havas, aims to produce twelve series by the end of next year for platforms like Spotify, Audible, Majelan and Sybel, in a variety of languages. They're already producing shows for Spotify and Sybel.
September 4, 2019:
    The Journal, the Wall Street Journal podcast which quietly appeared at the end of June, has been formally launched with "Skybox" placement on the newspaper itself. Circulation of the print newspaper is 1,011,200; a full page in the newspaper costs over $354,000.
September 3, 2019:
August 27, 2019:
    From today, Spotify is rolling out user-generated Podcast Playlists. The feature is designed to help discoverability of podcasts. Users will be able to make their own podcast playlists, and also mix podcasts and music; and share those lists with others. Spotify will also continue to work on their own curated Podcast Playlists. The rollout will be complete by the end of next week.
August 23, 2019:
    The New York Times, in an analyst's call earlier this month, revealed that digital advertising (including within its podcasts) grew by 14% year-on-year, and that they added a second ad into The Daily at the end of June. (We think this refers to an additional midroll position; there have been occasional post-roll ads for a while). Mark Thompson, the CEO, added that the company is "looking for ways ... of building out our podcasting capability".
August 20, 2019:
    Gimlet had a rebrand at the end of May. Here's more about that from a design website. "With its typography, it gives the company a feeling of authority, but its colours and use of imagery mean it still feels playful and approachable." The company responsible is GrandArmy.
August 16, 2019:
    A detailed study into Spanish-speaking podcast listeners has been released by Podcaster@s. Based from a self-selecting sample, it shows that Spotify is most popular, and that Apple is just as popular as YouTube for podcast listening. It also touches on ideal podcast length, attitude to advertisers, and more. (Go to the end for a summary).
August 14, 2019:
    Podcast Movement starts today, after a busy day of pre-meetings yesterday. The largest podcast gathering in the world is in Orlando FL, USA between now and the end of Friday. The main stage will be streaming live throughout. We're there too!
July 15, 2019:
    The open-source podcast directory gPodder is looking for a new maintainer before the end of the year. It's integrated into several podcast clients.
July 9, 2019:
    Podcast app Castbox has 3m daily users, says CEO Renee Wang in a TV interview on Bloomberg. The company, which has raised $30m to date, plans to launch premium content in the next two years. She says the company will be profitable by the end of the year. (The company has no Chinese users).
May 24, 2019:
    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".
May 22, 2019:
    At the end of last year we highlighted that Podtrac's figures were around 27% higher than Blubrry/RawVoice, who were awarded IAB Certification in early December.
May 15, 2019:
    Spotify has launched Soundtrap, a browser-based podcast editing suite. Offering editing, transcription, and some additional audio processing features, the software costs US$15/month and has been compared to "Google Docs for podcasting". Spotify purchased Soundtrap at the end of 2017. We've had a short play and it seems remarkably capable. (Of note - it should work on a Chromebook, opening podcasting up to a whole new set of people including education).
May 1, 2019:
    The O2Pod meetup in Bangalore, the biggest podcasting event in India, happened at the end of April. Some notes from the event.
April 23, 2019:
    Available in Canada, the UK, Australia and the US, Luminary is priced at US$7.99/month (but a third cheaper for Australians oddly). We tested the website with a Brazilian IP address, where Luminary is not supported: every page, even for free podcasts, forwards to a page explaining Luminary is unavailable. (Add ?country=US to the end of the URL).
April 22, 2019:
    Duolingo Spanish Podcast es un podcast bilingüe que tiene como objetivo enseñar español a auditores de habla inglesa. En cada episodio, dos narradores cuentan una historia real. El protagonista habla español (simplificado para el nivel intermedio) y la anfitriona habla en inglés. Adonde Media are looking for story pitches: you need to be a native Spanish speaker, and get your proposal to them by the end of April 28th.
April 9, 2019:
    Ahead of Luminary, French subscription podcast app Sybel launches today. It plans to be a subscription platform (€4.99 / US$5.60 a month). They raised €5m / US$5.6m at the end of last year. The service launches with an exclusive podcast, Gurus, focusing on true stories from powerful gurus around the world. Narrated by Mélanie Doutey, with an original music score composed by Nova Materia, it's produced by Engle.
March 25, 2019:
March 22, 2019:
    Podcast Movement has a new Head of Sales: Kristy Scott. She was formerly selling Tom Taylor NOW, the very excellent daily email for people in radio; Tom retired at the end of last year.
March 11, 2019:
    John Lee Dumas was the first keynote speaker at Podfest. Slides from his talk, The top 4 tactics for creating, launching, growing and monetising your podcast, are available online. "JLD", as he calls himself, was also the target of the humorous "roast" at the end of the event, which took place in Orlando FL, USA and attracted podcasters from across the US and Canada. Other speakers included Libsyn's Rob Walch, Evo Terra, and Chartable's Dave Zohrob. It was sponsored by Himalaya.
March 6, 2019:
    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.
February 6, 2019:
    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.
February 5, 2019:
    Patreon are having system difficulties, and podcasters (and others) have been waiting longer than usual for payouts. The site has been taken down for maintenance at times over the last few days. They're hoping to have sorted payment by the end of tomorrow (and if it helps, ours came in three hours ago).
January 24, 2019:
    We mentioned Radiodays Europe yesterday - lots of great speakers, including our own Editor; in Lausanne Switzerland at the end of March. Register now and use promo code PON19LA - you'll save €160 on your ticket. Shh, don't tell everyone.
January 23, 2019:
    Radiodays Europe has published its preliminary programme. This conference, in Lausanne Switzerland at the end of March, is the world's meeting point for the world of radio and audio. Tom Webster from Edison Research, and James Cridland, Podnews's Editor, are amongst the speakers.
January 21, 2019:
    How do you listen to a podcast? CBS Sunday, a US television show, show people (complete with an awkward joke at the end). Spotted by Steven Goldstein.
January 7, 2019:
    What Next, Slate's daily news podcast, launched today at a new time of 5am. It had a short pilot period at the end of last year, and undertook surveys of their audience to tweak the show. It's hosted by Mary Harris, formerly of WNYC. (Of the current US daily news podcasts from major publishers, is this the only one permanently hosted by a woman?)
December 26, 2018:
December 12, 2018:
    Podsights Research has been made free for everyone. The product continuously samples episodes from hundreds of podcasts, and offers insight into how brands use them to advertise. Their announcement notes that Apple advertised using podcasting briefly at the end of September.
November 16, 2018:
    American comic book writer Stan Lee passed away earlier this week; but he'd been fighting battles of his own at the end of his life, with charges of fraud, elder abuse, theft, and plenty more as his family fought for who would control his business - and his money. Scandal - Stan Lee's World covers the ugly inside story. (reVolver Podcasts / ART19)
November 15, 2018:
    Freemantle, the TV network, is reported to be releasing eight scripted drama podcasts by the end of Q2 2019. The company's podcast brand to watch for is Storyglass.
November 8, 2018:
    Imagined Life tells the life story of a notable celebrity, without actually telling you who that celebrity is until the end. Live their life from their point of view; then learn who “you” really are. (Wondery)
November 5, 2018:
    Event: the Vancouver Podcast Festival is at the end of this week (Nov 8-10). Here, for example, is just one of the sessions, including speakers from Podnews supporters Spreaker/Voxnest, Himalaya, and The Podcast Exchange.
October 5, 2018:
    Podcastfestival, the first podcast festival in the Netherlands, was held at the end of last week. All the sessions were recorded, and if you speak Dutch, you'll find them on the Podcastfestival 2018 podcast feed. Lekker!
September 12, 2018:
    The Guardian is to launch a daily flagship podcast by the end of the year. The host has been announced as Anushka Asthana, who is currently the newspaper's joint political editor; Leo Hornack is EP. Bose is due to be the launch sponsor, and Acast will represent the podcast.
September 11, 2018:
    At the end of the IAB Podcast Upfront was a chat with Bob Pittman, CEO and Chairman of iHeartMedia, and Jarl Mohn, CEO of National Public Radio. Here it is in print form. Question from the moderator: "How do you ensure that podcasts don't cannibalize terrestrial live radio?"
August 27, 2018:
    Ben Franklin's World is a podcast about early American history; host Liz Covart became a personal supporter of Podnews at the end of last week. Be like Liz. (Libsyn)
July 2, 2018:
June 15, 2018:
    Next Radio, the radio and podcasting conference ("no panels, no suits") in the UK, has announced its first set of speakers. Podcasting is well represented, with Guardian podcaster Kary Stewart, Griefcast's Cariad Lloyd, and Suchandrika Chakrabarti from Black Mirror Cracked. Tickets are at an early-bird rate until the end of June. James Cridland, Editor of Podnews, is one of the organisers of Next Radio.
June 8, 2018:
    Podcraft estimates that, by the end of 2018, there will be 700,000 podcasts available on Apple's platform.
May 28, 2018:
    Interesting idea: at the end of the season, 2298 - A Distopian Fantasy posts an additional version - all the episodes edited together as one piece of standalone audio. (Advantages include: no skipping past the intro every time).
May 24, 2018:
April 26, 2018:
    Author B J Mendelson has written a book Privacy: And How We Get It Back. He's releasing it as a free audiobook podcast, The End of Privacy.
April 19, 2018:
April 16, 2018:
March 30, 2018:
March 22, 2018:
    Lots of podcast chat in Radiocentre's See Radio Differently podcast this week from Radiodays Europe: Geoff Lloyd and Ed Miliband from their Reasons to be Cheerful podcast, BBC Radio boss Bob Shennan, and podnews editor James Cridland (but I'm at the end so don't worry)
March 8, 2018:
February 5, 2018:
January 30, 2018:
    Podcasts really are the holy grail - a piece from WIRED magazine, focusing on the drop-off rate that's now visible in Apple's podcast analytics. It's very good - 90% stick with a podcast to the end - which, naturally, advertisers are quite pleased about.
October 26, 2017:
October 18, 2017:
    Podible is a(nother) podcast player that offers personalised recommendations. "Discover your next favorite podcast". Doesn't appear to be an app; rather a web-app that works on everything. (Though we are at the end of a slower-than-128k data connection this week, so full evaluation is hard)
August 11, 2017:
    SoundCloud might not have very long to live: possibly less than six hours. There's a deadline of the end of today, Friday, for investors to agree with the latest rescue plan. If it's rejected, that's it: they lose the deal, and the company can't continue, says this piece.
June 1, 2017:
    Mike Francesca, New York sports radio personality, is leaving WFAN at the end of this year, and might be eyeing up a podcast of his own. What interests him about podcasting? “Right now, nothing. They’re doing it so wrong.”

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