50bn podcast downloads so far: stats from Apple Podcasts

Stats from Apple Podcasts: 525,000 active shows; 18.5m episodes; the service has just hit 50bn all-time downloads.

Would a simple addition to your RSS feed fix podcast measurement? Podcast Pingback is a method of adding minute-by-minute measurement across multiple podcast apps - and, with consent, some demographic detail. It uses a standard RSS element, pingback. The authors are looking for feedback.

Podcast stats from France. Every month, podcast listeners download an average of 16.9 podcasts, and listen to 13.7 podcasts - so 81% are listened to. “Radio Podcasts”, i.e. listen-again material, are listened-to by 8.5% - 4m - French adults every month.

Former UK radio CEO Phil Riley posts advice for podcast interviewers. Cabana also posts five secrets of great podcast hosts.

Audioboom is helping raise funds for the Starkey Hearing Foundation in a May fundraising drive, Better Hearing Month, leveraging its global ad network to help provide hearing aids and healthcare assistance to the deaf and hearing impaired in over 100 countries. Meanwhile, the company took a £1m loan last week for 'working capital’.

PRX has partnered with entertainment agency WME. “The agency will work to expand our business across all areas, including film, television and books.”

Podcast app Breaker blogs about its app redesign; while podcast search engine Listen Notes shares a postmortem on a short outage.

Stitcher is bringing back Unladylike for a second season, promising “what happens when women break the rules - those unwritten but all too real bullsh*t expectations of how we should live our lives.” The podcast also has a live show on May 16 in New York NY; and a book coming out in Q3 2018. Stitcher has also done a deal with Freakonomics Radio.

PodcastOne: CEO Jim Berk is out; Billy Freund joins as co-COO.

GimletFest tickets are now on sale.

Fashion store Barneys New York is launching a podcast, The Barneys Podcast, on May 2. It will “feature discussions with some of the today’s most dynamic creatives, speaking with in-house Barneys hosts who are authorities in the same area”. Other new podcasts released recently include ABC Classic Kids, a classical music podcast.