Evergreen Podcasts to double output in 2021

• Evergreen Podcasts produced more than 65 shows in 2020. The Lakewood OH, USA company wants to expand that to 120 this year, according to a company focus piece in a Cleveland-based website.

• The biggest podcast advertiser last week was BetterHelp, according to ThoughtLeaders; though the number of mentions went down significantly in the week. Their data will appear in Sounds Profitable, our ad-tech newsletter, every week, starting today. Subscribe to get the top 10.

  
  Aug 30 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Podpage has launched a new page designer, allowing you to customise your own podcast website. The founder Brenden Mulligan is on Podland later this week (and that’s the podcast’s Podpage).

• Parler, the 'free speech’ social network, appears to be auto-downloading all podcasts in full on their website, according to Podnews analysis. These downloads aren’t IAB compliant, and should be disregarded to comply with certification. (Podcast hosts can only spot these using a check on the referrer, which few actually do).

• Podots is a community driven podcast exploration platform. A website that lets you share your favourite podcast episodes, it looks like it follows the Hacker News/Slashdot model.

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• The Podcast Brunch Club (“like book club but for podcasts”) has unveiled its January playlist - all about friendship.

• Tom Webster is on Clubhouse, and reckons he’s hit on a tweak to make it suck less. (James Cridland, Podnews’s Editor, is there too.)

The Tech Stuff - with RSS․com

• In May 2018, Apple asked podcasters to switch to a secure RSS feed. “In the future, a secure feed will be required in order to access Podcast Analytics and submit podcasts”, they said in an email. 30 months later, according to a recent dump of the Apple Podcasts database Podnews has been analysing, 85% of podcast feeds are now using HTTPS. The main podcast hosts that haven’t switched: SoundCloud (38% of all HTTP feeds), and Feedburner (20%).
• Also from that data: just seven companies host 75% of all podcast feeds in Apple Podcasts: Anchor, Buzzsprout, Feedburner, Libsyn, Podbean, SoundCloud and Spreaker.
• Want a set of regex patterns to work out who’s the host from an RSS feed? This is quite an exhaustive list.
• The IAB is working on a best practices document for podcast app developers, we learn.
• We’ve reduced our RSS feed to list 100 episodes rather than 300, and only the last 5 episodes having our full show notes in them (they’re on our website in perpituity, linked through the new podcast:transcript tag and in the show notes). Last month, our RSS feed was requested 485,000 times and responsible for 238GB of bandwidth: we’d like to cut that down a bit!

Tips and tricks - with Buzzsprout

• The Blue Yeti is a perfectly good microphone - but you’re using it wrong, says Tanner Campbell.<!-- LINKCHECK|20230830|410|https://medium.com/tannerhelps/the-yeti-is-a-perfectly-good-mic-youre-just-using-it-poorly-let-s-fix-that-c6051af5630b?source=rss------podcasting-5|| -->

• In case you missed it: How I make… Podrunner and Groovelectric highlights how Steve Boyett produces his two music podcasts… in a library.

Podcast News

Congratulations to Answer Me This! - Helen Zaltzman and Olly Mann’s podcast which is 14 years old this month.

The Hollywood Reporter carry a story about John Roderick, one of the hosts of Omnibus, who’s told a long story about baked beans on Twitter that some have taken offence to.

These podcasts will help you start 2021 in a good way, claims Australia’s ABC. This Podcast Will Kill You is recommended by their health reporter Tegan Taylor.

The Best 2020 South African Podcasts are published by the Daily Maverick. Among the list is one of its own - Don’t Shoot The Messenger.

Revamped by Stabl for a new season, Normal Not Normal is hosted by Harry Potter Weasley twins James and Oliver Phelps. Expect behind-the-scenes Potter revelations; outrageous rants; and frank conversations about mental health.