What we can learn from Apple Podcasts star ratings

• Pacific Content’s Dan Misener analyses Apple Podcasts star ratings. Most podcasts have no ratings at all - but 87% of all ratings are 5-star ratings, he discovers. There’s a big difference in ratings between different categories. The average star rating is 4.6. Help us be average.

• SiriusXM has become “the exclusive advertising representative and end-to-end ad tech platform for a broad slate of NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC podcasts”, says a press release. The agreement includes Stitcher, AdsWizz and Simplecast, which the company owns.

• YouTube Music is launching audio ads, says Variety. The product replaced Google Play Music this month; while podcasts now live in Google Podcasts, monetisation for audio could be useful here, too.

• Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek, the former leader of Austria’s Green Party, could have inadvertently opened the floodgates to global censorship of the internet, in a ruling that could have profound effects for podcasting, too.

• ART19 has hired David Murray to be their CFO. Murray was the CFO of Midroll/Stitcher, which was purchased by SiriusXM in July.

• The science behind the power of a podcast ad - according to this writeup by Ranieri & Co, on average podcast ads experience greater “memory encoding” than social media. This is a good thing, they tell us.

• The SaaS Podcast Awards have been launched. They appear to be run by MicroConf, a community for SaaS vendors. There are four categories to enter.

  
  Aug 29 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Podcave is a new podcast management website, offering podcasters an all-in-one solution.

• Bryan Barletta from Sounds Profitable, our ad-tech newsletter, is talking at a free event about The Future of Podcast Advertising on Thurs Dec 3 (or perhaps Wednesday Dec 2 where you are).

Tips and tricks

• What is the first thirty seconds of your podcast like? Seth Resler and a worthy panel did a session at Podcast Movement Virtual, explaining how to get your listeners hooked.

• Podcast like a Pro! - there are plenty of articles about podcast recording setups, but few from trained sound engineers. Here’s an unlocked article from Sound on Sound magazine.

Podcast News - with Vurbl

On Vurbl Voices - get to know the co-founders of Vurbl with a behind the scenes launch episode. They talk about why they’re building the platform, developing the team, what they’re excited about most for Vurbl and what creators and listeners can expect from the platform. Listen on Vurbl

Greetings from Somewhere, from Zach Mack, is a new sound-immersive travel podcast that finds out what’s really going on with some of those places that you visit on a road trip but don’t really explore.

The Undone is new from Mamamia with a look at life from a 20s perspective, when everything seems a bit more complicated than it should.