ABC Audio Studios podcast fund goes to second round

As we reported a few days ago, ABC Audio Studios has a shortlist of podcasts vying for their Australian podcast fund. Kellie Riordan, Manager of ABC Audio Studios, tells podnews:

• “We had approximately 1,200 pitches in total. We had more than 60 judges from across the ABC - from various areas of the organisation - help us complete the first round of judging. There were a number of themes that emerged in terms of similar pitches which I think is interesting: many pitches about death and dying, dementia, IVF and conception, well-being and lifestyle, and interview shows. Those individuals / teams which have been shortlisted for the next round now receive a mentoring session from an executive producer at ABC Audio Studios to help them refine and flesh out their pitch. They then re-submit a more detailed pitch and plan for the next round of judging.”

The effect of Patreon’s changes are discusssed in this gamer’s blog. Patreon have spent some time adding an update to their blog post. “This was never (and still isn’t) about making more money for Patreon as a company. This is a strategic move to make our platform even better for creators and patrons in the future.” Meanwhile, The Outline covers Patreon’s revenue, claiming that “no one makes a living” using it.

How loud should my podcast be? - an interesting YouTube video from Andy Maher, which mentions the free Orban loudness meter, and discusses the loudness unit LUFS.

While podcasting thumbnails are fixed per episode, Netflix is producing different artwork for programs, depending on your interests. If you like romantic movies, the artwork might be different than if you like comedies.

Digiday claims podcast ads remain stubbornly old-fashioned: the old-fashioned bit being host-read commercial messages rather than dynamically inserted ads. One quote we can all agree with: “I would caution against taking spots that ran in a traditional platform like terrestrial radio and just running them in a medium like podcasts.”

The New York Times’s The Daily wins the 2018 Dupont Award. Data: “last month [it] reached 4.5 million unique listeners”. The 2018 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, to give them their full name, are made to “uphold the highest standards in journalism”.

A piece about acast’s Australian plans in Media Week. The company is partnered with NOVA Entertainment, a commercial radio broadcaster. Data point: “Acast currently gets about 3.6 million listens coming from Australia per month.”

Language-learning product Duolingo launches a season of real-life story podcasts in Spanish. It’s called Mi héroe, mi amigo and is on general release. (The web-page also contains the episode with text subtitles/close-captions).

Germany: a piece from the Stuttgart-based commercial broadcaster bigFM, highlighting top German podcast Fest und Flauschig.

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.