Ripping old ads out to put new ads in

• Half of the shows listened-to on Audioboom are from their back catalogue of older shows: so they’ve launched AdRip, a tool that automatically rips out live ad-reads in old podcasts, replacing them with new ads, so creators can earn more revenue.

  • The company has also signed a multi-year ad-sales agreement with Zane & Heath’s Unfiltered. The hosts have signed with talent agency UTA.

• Clubhouse has added a new messaging system, called Backchannel. It allows speakers to get questions from the audience and chat with co-hosts without disrupting the room, and should be especially useful to podcasters.

• It’s been a year since ACPM in France started measuring podcasts in one of two rankers in the country. Le POD has some infographics showing how it’s grown, and the latest numbers - 225 podcasts were measured last month; three only achieved one download. Go and give La parole aux enfants ! a listen, and double their numbers.

• Bernstein, an investment company, released a report questioning Spotify’s podcast investments in what they term “a slowing market”. Spotify’s stock dropped 6% on the news.

  • Analysis: Bernstein quotes Podtrac figures as evidence of this 'slowing market’, saying that in June, listening sank 16.5% year-on-year. However, Podtrac don’t measure Spotify’s podcasts; and it’s notable that the top ten publishers in Triton Digital’s latest Podcast Report for the US (measuring May vs May) shows an 11.4% growth in downloads. However, a bug in Apple Podcasts may affect total downloads in June.

• Liam Geraghty has been appointed Audio Content Producer for Intercom. Liam was a freelance audio producer creating work for RTÉ Radio in Ireland as well as podcasts for clients like Intel and A&E Networks.

  
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Thank you to Transmitter Media, who became our latest supporter recently. Transmitter Media is a Peabody nominated creative podcast company specializing in highly edited and beautifully sound designed work that has reached millions of listeners worldwide. We’re grateful to them for their support, keeping us independent and focused. You can be like them and support us here.

Tips and tricks

• You can now submit your podcast to Samsung Podcasts - a player that exists on selected Samsung smartphones. We’ve added it to our big list of places to add your podcast.

• In case you missed it yesterday: research on what podcast apps index to help you find shows. Mark Steadman discovers that pushing lots of detail in your episode notes is almost entirely pointless for in-app SEO.

Podcast News

Congratulations to The Bugle, the audio newspaper for a visual world. A 14 year-old podcast, it launched in October 2007 and is shortly to hit 500 total episodes - this week reaching episode 200 without John Oliver, who got too famous and important to bother with it. Now totally independent, the show’s had 150 million global listens.

Written off is new today from Lemonada Media. Walter Thompson-Hernández speaks with formerly incarcerated young writers, and their work is read by creatives like John Legend.

Facilitating groups can be a minefield, and a joy. Facilitate This! was launched last month to help those who work with groups and collaborative leadership.

Psychoactive is a new show from Ethan Nadelmann, founder of the Drug Policy Alliance in the US. It promises to get to the bottom of the strange relationship with the US and drugs by talking with scientists, politicians, activists and celebrities.