Two new studies from Edison Research

• Edison Research is to release two new podcast listener studies this quarter. Hit Play, Boomer: Podcasting’s 55+ Opportunity and The Gen Z Podcast Listening Report will focus on podcast habits, motivations and behaviours of these two groups, and will be the most detailed data about these listeners to be published.

• More podcasters are being hired by media companies, says The State of Podcasting 2022, published by Muck Rack. More podcasters are using paid subscriptions, and 34% of podcasts are being monetised.

• Google Podcasts is re-appearing on (some) Google search results. Its disappearance from search results earlier was “as intended”, according to a Google spokesperson we contacted two weeks ago; we’ve seen it in an incognito search, while a Canadian reader gets it when logged-in, too.

• Kradl is a new podcast episode discovery tool.

• Podcast website DiscoverPods has “new management and new ownership” - as of April last year. James Griffin catches us up with what he’s been doing since.

• The India Audio Summit & Awards were held in Mumbai. Our friend Mae Thomas won best show host in the music category for Maed In India.

• Got a good interview? Tip: get PR out about it. One of the producers of UK chart-topper The News Agents posts that comments made in a recent interview made it as a front page story in The Herald, The National and the Scottish Daily Express, and also was carried in The Times, the Daily Record, The Scotsman, and the Daily Mail.

• The BBC has removed its radio stations from Radioplayer, the cross-industry radio and podcasts app that it helped fund: listeners will now need to download BBC Sounds.

  • More than a year ago, it removed some podcasts from open RSS for an initial 30 days. Described as a “trial”, we’ve asked the BBC for an update.

• The Sonic Bloom Awards have been announced. “Only non-male persons can win”.

• In the Earbuds Podcast Collective this week, five podcasts in honour of Black History Month, chosen by Marceia Cork.

• Further reading:

  • The Times carries a long article behind the paywall: Party’s over at Spotify as celebrity podcast deals fall flat. Will Page, former chief economist at Spotify, is quoted as saying: “I think podcasts were a natural extension for an audio company to go into. What I think we’re struggling to understand is that podcasts are really a sea of niches. They are not like every other media model in the world where you’ve traditionally had a small handful of blockbusters that dominate demand.”
  • Corey Doctorow writes that podcasts are hearteningly enshittification resistant, saying “Podcasting is an open technology built out of open technologies.”

Moves and hires

• Available: Nathan Gathright, the founder of Podlink and a web designer/developer most recently at Spotify, has “time to figure out his next move”, but is happy to talk.

• Available: Until recently, Joel Callen was the lead writer/showrunner on Parcast’s Serial Killers and Female Criminals. “I’ve got over a decade’s experience as a writer, and am looking for a full-time writing/editing position.”

• Available: Jake Allegro most recently was Kevin Hart’s Producer for his podcast and channel for SiriusXM. He’s looking for a new role either in a remote setting or in London or the EU.

• Available: Rick Coste is a podcast producer and audio editor, who has worked with Marvel podcasts in the past.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• Code for a podcast images resizer has been published by Nathan Gathright. The code uses Cloudflare’s Image Resizing tool.

• Alby has released details about its partnership with Blubrry.

• Cross-app comments is coming to the Podcast Index website, if you’d like to help.

• How much does it cost to run the Podping message system? The answer’s a bit more complicated than you’d think.

• New episode notifications are compared between Podverse (which uses podping) and Apple Podcasts (which doesn’t). Apple was 16 minutes later than Podverse.

• The Partytime Podcast Parser now correctly deals with SRT caption files using multiple mimetypes.

• That Harley/ user-agent you might see in your logfiles? It’s from Amazon Music’s desktop app. It’s updated in OPAWG’s user-agents-v2.

• We’ve added links to GPodder, Bullhorn, Momento, Listen Notes, Podchaser, Podknife and Podverse to our podcast pages, using Nathan Gathright’s platform links.

Podcast News - with editaudio

From editaudio: Well…Adjusting Join award-winning actor, writer and funny lady Robin Hopkins as she helps guests manage stress, face their finances and laugh while figuring out life.

In the latest Future of Podcasting, Dave Jackson reminds us that new features in podcast apps are brilliant: as long as they are also great podcast apps.

Tenfold More Wicked returns for season 7, with a over 200-year-old case: a complicated family man with a troubled past who witnessed the aftermath left behind by a notorious serial killer. But did witnessing that crime scene lead him to kill in virtually the same way… twelve years later? Hosted by Kate Winkler Dawson, it’s from Exactly Right Media.

Shoot the Messenger was new last week from Exile Content Studio and PRX. A new investigative podcast series, season one examines NSO Group’s Pegasus, software that is planted on peoples’ phones to spy on them: like US-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The Global Discussion was launched today, featuring discussions with creatives, leaders and thinkers. Episode 3 is already available, featuring Sam Sethi from the Podnews Weekly Review.

Q with Tom Power, the popular CBC interview show, relaunches as a podcast-first show today. The show continues to feature acclaimed interviewer Tom Power sitting down to chat with the artists, writers, actors and musicians who define this cultural moment in time. The show was previously made in two lengths for broadcast radio, but now focuses on its interview content in a 60-minute daily show.

HER with Sophie Cachia is new from Mamamia, sharing the raw, unfiltered stories of women in same-sex relationships and how they explored their sexuality. It’s hosted by entrepreneur and author Sophie Cachia.

Deep Cover: Never Seen Again returns for a new season today, with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jake Halpern. It starts with the story of Brooke Henson, who disappeared from her home in South Carolina and is never seen again. Seven years later, detectives receive a tip that Brooke Henson is a Columbia University student living in New York City. However when the police come knocking, “Brooke Henson” disappears again.