Is adblocking coming to podcasts?

• Adblock Podcast is a forthcoming service, promising to “detect and skip ads on all iTunes podcasts”. The project’s owner, Micah Engle-Eshleman from Portland OR, USA, plans to charge listeners for the service: the claim is that it will share revenue with podcast makers instead, though he admits “To be honest, I haven’t figured out this last part yet.”

  • You can remove ads in the Podnews Daily podcast by subscribing in Apple Podcasts.

• 'They’ve gone too far’: How Spotify dug a giant hole — and how it can dig itself out is a detailed look at Spotify’s business model from Yahoo Finance. The story quotes an analyst who questions whether Spotify can ever make money.

• Spotify’s Anchor has seen the first increase of market share for six months: the company was responsible for 22.3% of all new episodes in December. Buzzsprout’s market share dropped slightly, but the company remains a strong #2 at 8.6%. The number of total new episodes dropped by 7.8%.

• Podtrac remains the most popular third-party analytics service; Audacy’s Podcorn has slipped to fourth place.

• Spotify’s Chartable has updated its privacy policy (archived here for Oct 2021 and Jan 2023). Entirely rewritten, it is significantly clearer: new details include the company’s use of Nielsen.

• Indian platform JioSaavn has published a look at how its users consumed music and podcasts in 2022. Storytelling podcasts were the most popular among listeners in 2022, followed by genres like Religion & Spirituality, Culture & Arts and Music.

• Happy 2023. If your podcast host doesn’t do it for you, today it’s time to update your copyright date in your podcast’s RSS feed. Advice we’ve seen is that it should read something like © 2017-2023 YourName.

• Further reading: Courney Kocak writes about her first year on Substack … here’s a 1.5 hour podcast made by AI on the subject of AI, using Joe Rogan and Tim Ferris’s voice … The Washington Post looks at podcast producer Dear Media.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• More than $16,500 has been sent to podcasters, in over 6.7m transactions, using Fountain, the company says. The amount of monthly sats paid to podcasters has increased six times since January. The company has also produced a list of the most supported shows using Value 4 Value.

• podcast4j is an open source full implemented Java client for the Podcast Index.

• ICMYI, if you’re using OP3 for analytics, John Spurlock is testing a new show stats page. OP3 is now monitoring more than 300 feeds.

• Looking for free SRT transcript files for your podcast? u/omerxman posts in r/podcasting about how to use OpenAI’s Whisper.

  • As a direct result, the Podnews Daily now supports transcripts in SRT, VTT and TXT format. Here are the new podcast apps supporting them.

Podcast News - with editaudio

From editaudio: If you could write a letter to your future self, what would you say? In Hope This Finds Me Well, hear from those who received a letter about whether life turned out as expected.

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 latest episode of Podcasting 2.0 features our Editor, James Cridland, as a guest, alongside Adam Curry and Dave Jones. Discussions about how cross-app comments could work are covered, as well as meandering discussions about the radio in the early 1990s.

The thing that people hear in your podcast is your voice, so it’s worthwhile knowing how to use it. From script-reading to vocal health, as well as tips on getting a more resonant voice and sounding conversational, today is the start of the third year of Get A Better Broadcast, Podcast and Voice-Over Voice - a short daily podcast from Peter Stewart, who works with the BBC and other broadcasters.

From the archive - Splendid Chaps was a show about Doctor Who, the BBC/Disney+ scifi show. It posted its first episode nine years ago today, and its last in November 2019.