You can buy your HomePod speaker on Friday

Apple have finally launched their HomePod speaker. Online orders will start in the US, UK and Australia on Friday. It’s US$349 - competing products from Google and Amazon start at less than a third of that price. It’s assumed that Apple Podcast integration is built-in.

Tomorrow: how do your get your podcast onto Google Home and Google Assistant? We’ve done the hard work so you don’t have to.

On 11 Jan we reported the launch of the NPR and Edison Research Smart Audio Report and noted that it didn’t contain details about podcast use. We asked: and they’ve told us:

• 35% said “listening to podcasts” was a reason for wanting a Smart Speaker.

• 71% said they are listening to more audio since getting a Smart Speaker.

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• Of those who listen to audio more, 23% said they are listening to podcast more often.

• 25% requested podcasts on the Smart Speaker in the last week.

Triton Digital and Edison Research have announced the release date for the US Infinite Dial 2018. It’ll be on March 8th at 2.00pm EST. You can sign up to a Facebook Live broadcast.

Triton Digital have announced their Webcast Metrics Monthly Ranker of streaming audio: the figures are from November 2017. The figures show total weekday listening remains steady at 5.64m clients in the US.

HotPod 148 is out. Nick highlights a company called Subcast, which is trying to merge podcasting and radio on smart speakers.

Midroll published “our take on where marketing and content are headed this year.” CEO Erik Diehn: “I feel like we have reached a critical mass of cultural penetration in the U.S. and podcasting has become a mainstream media form.”

CNBC Africa covers the launch of a new technology podcast in Kenya. The podcast is called 24Bit and has five hosts, all technology bloggers.

More on loudness, since we know you LUFS reading about it - the audio producer’s guide to loudness, aimed at radio producers for US public radio (hence the recommendation for -24 LUFS). For podcasts, the BBC plumped for -18 LUFS, as we reported yesterday.

S-Town creator Brian Reed is interviewed by the SF Chronicle. The podcast was made available in March last year, and there’s still interest in it. Julie Snyder and Brian are speaking tomorrow night in The Curran in Geary Street: links in the article.

Interesting tool that gets the RSS feed from an iTunes or Soundcloud page.