Fan podcast sells out live season finale

• Eyes on Gilead, a companion podcast to TV show Handmaid’s Tale, had a live season finale in Sydney NSW, Australia. “We booked out the 500-seat venue within 3 days, and had several hundred fans of the podcast and fellow Handmaid’s Tale obsessives attend for a season recap. There were amazing audience questions, and a few people dressed up in character.” Of note, listener feedback appears to indicate more TV viewing as a result of the podcast.

• Alan Cross, a music journalist in Canada, writes about the upcoming music licensing for podcasts. There’s good news and bad news, he writes. (We updated how to use commercial music in podcasts, and also have our own overview on the licensing deal.)

• A new service called Podcorn has launched: it says it’s a podcast marketplace for sponsorships, helping podcasts earn money. The company launches with $2.2m of seed funding.

• Podcast host Messy gets a profile on the LIFT Labs website: Molly Beck’s Bold Plan to Take Podcasting Mainstream.

• You can advertise your podcast in Overcast - The Podcast Host explains how it works.

• Jake Shapiro writes about PodPass for NiemenLab. We covered it at launch; it enables “an identity layer” allowing premium and bonus podcasts on whatever app you want to use.

• No word on Apple’s apparent exclusive podcasts yet. But we note they have a budget of $6bn for their upcoming Apple TV+ video streaming service.

• Event: Podcamp Mastermind, Orlando FL, Sep 30-Oct 1

Opinion

• Is there a “guest conveyor belt” with podcast interviews? Stephanie Fuccio thinks there might be.

• Starting a company podcast? Think first, says Inc Magazine.

• Writing in dutch in de Volkskrant, columnist Peter Buwalda has changed his mind about podcasts - he previously derided them as “lazy entertainment”, but he’s now discovered that they’re good accompaniment to a morning walk.

Podcasts

Spreaker Prime: Mean Book Club is like book club, but mean - making fun of NYT bestselling books with little literary merit. They use Spreaker Prime to earn money and save on their hosting costs.
ESPN has launched a new flagship college football podcast. It’s called, unsurprisingly, The College Football Podcast, and there’ll be three episodes per week.
Aug 16 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

Naxos, the classical music record company, are producing music podcasts. The Naxos Classical Spotlight is produced by Naxos of America every fortnight. (Libsyn)

…and related to the above, Naxos: Esto es música clásica is a Spanish-language podcast with news, recordings and interviews. (Libsyn)