Unplugged: the brand suitability tools that block Black content

• Some brand suitability tools are making it impossible to monetise podcasts from Black creators because they don’t understand the culture, new research says. Solutions just using a standard keyword blocklist claimed that 92% of Urban One’s podcast content was so potentially problematic it couldn’t be advertised on - but the tools didn’t understand that words like “bomb” mean “cool”, not an explosive device, or simply didn’t understand the accent and got the transcripts so incorrect they were then flagged as shows to avoid. Sounder’s AI-based tool, however, only flagged 10% as problematic: dramatically improving the monetisation for content from Black creators.

• Podcasts are coming to TikTok. Some podcasters are receiving messages with details of how to add podcast feeds to TikTok via RSS. “Viewers will be able to listen to your podcast episode from the linked videos”, the message says. The audio plays within the TikTok app on a bespoke player page (and only plays while that page is on screen). (Activity from TikTok had been seen by podcast hosts last October).

• Edison Research has published the US Top 50 Podcasts for Q2 2023 - the first time that Edison Podcast Metrics has produced a quarterly ranker. The Joe Rogan Experience is #1, Crime Junkie is at #2 and The Daily is at #3; the highest new entry was Bad Friends, a comedy podcast from Andrew Santino and Bobby Lee, at #34. The survey interviewed 5,352 weekly podcast consumers in the US, aged 13+.

• The number of episodes published (on open RSS) by Spotify for Podcasters, formerly Anchor, dipped to a new low last month says Livewire; but it still hosts one out of every five new episodes; and Spotify’s Megaphone also posted another record high. The biggest increases were seen by Omny Studio and its owner Triton Digital.

• It’s emerged that three former producers and one former audio engineer at Kast Media took the company to court for allegedly not paying their wages or correctly classifying their employment status. The action was filed a year ago but is still ongoing; the next hearing is on Aug 23.

  • Kast Media was also taken to court last year by a former strategic advisor; that case appears to have been settled.

• SiriusXM released its Q2/23 financials. Podcast ad revenue was higher, though not split out in the results; programming costs were higher too. Pandora fared less well, selling fewer ads, and reaching 3m fewer people per month. The word “Stitcher” doesn’t appear once in the results; the podcast app closes at the end of this month.

• People pay significant attention to audio advertising in podcasts, on radio and in streaming services, according to a new study by ad company Dentsu.

• Ruchira Sharma of The Guardian writes about why TV dramas treat podcasters as a joke.

• Hot Pod reports three layoffs in Marvel’s podcast division earlier this year; halving the team’s size.

• Podtrac is measuring more podcasts than ever: Livewire reports its tracking code was in 8.6% of all episodes released in July. Meanwhile, the use of trackers from Audacy’s Podcorn has almost halved in just two months.

• German podcast hosting company LetsCast.fm has partnered with Alby to offer Value4Value tools.

Tips and tricks - with Pod Predictor by Coleman Insights

• If you’re building a “well-oiled and efficient podcast team”, you’ll want to get the roles and responsibilities right from the start. Brianna Ansaldo from Bamby Media focuses on who to find, but also how to delegate the right tasks.

• How do you get more listeners to your podcast? We’ve compiled a list of good advice.

Moves and hires

• In the Podnews jobs board, the largest jobs board in the podcast industry, Wondery has just posted a full-time writer/producer position for a new weekly show. More jobs are below.

Podcast News - with Airwave

Part of the Airwave podcast network: In the Queens Podcast, Katy and Nathan pair cocktails with amazing women of history, like the ancient Egyptian scholar, philosopher, astronomer and mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, or the Japanese Lady Muraski, the world’s first novelist. Cheers!

TBTL: Too Beautiful To Live is now independent, having left APM last month, says Current. By the end of its first week as an indie show, it had received donations from 1,500 listeners. The article talks about difficulties with relying on ad revenue.

Journalista is new from iHeartPodcasts; the true story of Courtney “Cookie” Hood, former model and ex-wife of a Colombian drug cartel kingpin. She ran the CBS field office in Nicaragua during the civil war in the 1980’s; and almost took down the Reagan presidency by lifting the lid off the Iran-Contra scandal.