Audioboom adds new NYC studios

Welcome to 250 new subscribers so far this month, including folk from Kaya FM and Submedia in South Africa, Nova Entertainment and the ABC in Australia, Wise Buddah and Folded Wing in the UK, Megaphone and Stitcher in the US, and Belgium’s VRT.

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• Audioboom have added two new podcast studios in New York NY, USA. “Our new studios will give us the ability to produce more than 40 shows out of our New York office alone,” says COO Stuart Last.

• Dan Misener cautions us: Don’t forget about your podcast’s back catalog, highlighting one of Pacific Content’s clients who “were smart about producing a show with a long shelf life, so the episodes didn’t go stale.” As a result, their downloads have doubled in the six months since the podcast finished being released.

• Podmosphere, a Swedish advertising platform for podcasting, is closing down. “We didn’t reach the goals we needed to reach to keep the business going. We had high ambitions and wanted to change an industry, but fell short,” says an email sent to podcasters.

• 60% of UK children are interested in podcasts: but only 10% are listening to them, according to new data from Hook Research. It was outlined at a panel at the recent Children’s Media Conference 2019.

• “Are you highly curious?” So starts a producer job advert from NPR for a new daily science podcast that “tells listeners something they probably didn’t know in under ten minutes”. It’s attracted the attention of Cody Gough, the presenter of Curiosity Daily, an award-winning daily science podcast that “helps you get smarter about the world around you” “in less than 10 minutes”. Hmm.

• An update from yesterday: over the last three days, Obscura, a true-crime podcast, has had 258 one-star ratings from bots. While Apple are not responding to emails about the issue, they do appear to have removed the fake ratings.

  • Sword & Scale’s Mike Boudet has been widely accused by others of being behind these paid-for one-star ratings. We’ve no evidence of that, but have reached out to him multiple times for comment. (His email address? He’s mailed us before.).
  • Ratings have no effect on the main Apple Podcast trending chart, which is purely produced from recent new subscriptions.

• While paid-for bots are one way of getting one-star reviews, some podcasters have encouraged their listeners to leave one-star ratings on competing podcasts that just launched, we’ve learnt. Other podcasters have been targeted too.

• Podcast hosting company Spreaker has made significant improvements to its web player, including customisation. Meanwhile Robert Kingett, a blind podcast listener, has noticed that RadioPublic’s embedded player has been made more accessible.

  
  Aug 15 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Music Business Worldwide looks at Spotify’s recent appearance in the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, and how the company is earning money from podcasting.

• Advice: podcasting with Patreon (Resonate Recordings)

Podcasts

Lisa, Sandra and Kristen Go to the Movies is a new podcast from CNN, in conversation with award-winning actors, directors, screenwriters, and costume designers; a companion podcast to The Movies which airs on CNN’s North American channel on Sundays 9pm ET/PT. (WarnerMedia Podcast Network / knit)
I mean… why not?! is a new podcast featuring “the Moms of the Hit Boy Band Why Don’t We?” YEA Networks promise in the press release that Keri, Kristin and Myla are very funny. (YEA Networks / Audioboom)

Smashed prawns in a milky basket is a podcast about the work of “comedy writer/ performer/ director/ all-round genius Julia Davis”, and was on BBC Radio’s Podcast Hour last week along with New & Noteworthy. (Podbean)

iHeartRadio has launched their first travel podcast. It’s called Everywhere, and is hosted by Daniel Scheffler, a New York Times and Conde Nast published travel writer. (iHeartRadio / Megaphone)

Turn Me On, a “provocative” podcast, has a live show next week in Toronto ON, Canada, “allowing the audience to be a part of the salacious conversation”. Tickets (eOne / Libsyn)