Goodpods removes AI-generated descriptions

• Popular podcast app Goodpods added AI-generated additional descriptions to thousands of podcasts without telling creators, or getting their consent. Some of the descriptions were inaccurate and misleading; the company withdrew the feature, after Podnews asked the founders for a statement.

• In Australia, spending on podcast advertising in Q3/23 grew by 88% year-on-year, according to new data from Magellan AI and ARN’s iHeartPodcast Network Australia. The top 3 advertisers were Amazon, BetterHelp and "Takeaway.com", which is better known in Australia as Menulog (and in the US as Grubhub).

• Pocket Casts is adding a bookmarking feature, which is available in beta.

• Data: From Q2 this year: 5.8mn people (9%) in France listen to “native podcasts” at least once a week. (France likes differentiating between “radio replay” and “native” podcasts). Another study from the CSA Institute suggests 26% are monthly listeners to podcasts; and Spotify France also shares data from the French industry.

• Further reading: JAR Audio suggests that engagement, rather than conversions, should be your podcast’s North Star. (Fun fact: we can’t see the North Star from where Podnews is put together). … Shreya Sharma describes the importance of show notes in Podcast Marketing Magic.

🔮 Can you predict what 2024 will bring for podcasting?
For a special edition of Podnews and the Podnews Weekly Review, we’d like to hear from you! Please send us your short audio, with your name and company; your highlights from 2023; and your predictions for 2024. Keep the audio less than two minutes if you can. We’re especially looking for diverse voices, and from countries across the world.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS․com

• One of the new features in Podcasting 2.0 is the opportunity of live streaming to your audience - if you’re subscribed to a podcast, you can get an alert in your app when a show is being recorded live. RSS.com’s Alberto Betella writes about how the company achieved live podcast streaming at the company’s recent conference in Mexico City.

• YouTube Music is (whisper it) quite a good, if basic, podcast app. From your friends at Podnews, this website will help you - if you want - listen to any podcast in YouTube Music, via the power of RSS. Shh.

• Our New Podcast Trailers podcast feed - here’s the RSS - uses OP3 to measure total plays (and individual shows see these downloads in their stats, too). One thing we learnt: make sure your audio enclosure URLs end “.mp3”, even if they’re just, like ours, redirects. Apple needs an audio file extension in the URL, otherwise it won’t index the episode.

Podcast News - with Airwave

From Airwave: Each weekday, Pulse of the Planet Podcast with Jim Metzner provides its listeners with a two-minute sound portrait of Planet Earth, tracking the rhythms of nature, culture and science worldwide and blending interviews and extraordinary natural sound.

The latest guest on Dua Lipa: At Your Service is none other than Apple CEO, Tim Cook. “Tim Apple” very rarely does interviews; he was asked directly whether Apple uses cobalt mined by young children in the iPhone 15.

Very much our favourite podcast at the moment, we went round the supermarket today while listening to PJ Vogt’s Search Engine which asks why we don’t eat each other. Through three (and a half) stories, we learn that our aversion to cannibalism is not, quite, the simplest answer in the world: and we also learn what to tell an inquisitive six year-old who might be wondering.

Oprah’s Super Soul has a three-part special series in it from today - Build The Life You Want, featuring co-authors Oprah Winfrey and Arthur C. Brooks. It’s a companion podcast to their recent New York Times Bestseller Build The Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier.