iHeart to recognise podcast union

• iHeartRadio has given union recognition to the iHeart Podcast Union. “The company has engaged fairly and in good faith so far in the process”, the union says.

• While Alex Jones was banned from Spotify in 2018, that didn’t stop Alex Jones’s shows being uploaded to Spotify again this month. After MediaMatters spotted they had evaded the company’s content moderation, they were removed.

• HBO has announced HBO Docs Club, a deep dive into a wide variety of titles from HBO Documentary Films, past and present. Produced by Audacy’s Pineapple Street Studios and HBO Max, it’ll be hosted by Brittany Luse and Ronald Young Jr, and launches in March.

• Restream, a tool that livestreams to a number of different platforms, has relocated its Ukranian staff and made a donation of $100,000 to Red Cross Ukraine. They’ve also compiled a list of organisations that are assisting the affected, and encourage donations.

• Repod, a social podcast app, has launched Repod Communities, “an all-in-one platform for podcasters to engage, monetize, and turn their listeners into community”. It’s built to replace the functionality from things like Discord, Facebook, Patreon, Instagram and more, to put a similar service into just one place. You can get started here.

• On Friday, we mentioned Apollo, a podcast app just for fiction podcasts. Today, another example: Businesswise is an app from Austin TX “designed to upskill your team”, containing business-related podcasts. You’ll find Android and iOS apps in the app store.

• Disappointingly, Acast is now using user data acquired when it bought RadioPublic to spam podcasters to get them to switch to its hosting platform. There isn’t a way to close your account with RadioPublic (which the GDPR requires), and tellingly, RadioPublic’s privacy policy doesn’t exist.

It’s your last chance to fill in the Podnews Report Card. If you’ve anything you’d like to say about podcast platforms and apps, this is how you’ll get your views to the makers. Please fill it in by Mar 1, and share it with others. Thanks!

This is a shorter Podnews today, produced in advance during serious flooding in Queensland. Some of our audio services are unavailable today.

Moves and hires

• Ayesha Rascoe will co-host NPR’s Up First over weekends. She’s currently the White House Correspondent; and starts on Mar 27.

This link is no longer available, as at Sep 12 2023

Tips and tricks

• How to make the Blue Yeti sound better - including how to talk into it.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• What is Podcasting 2.0 - and why is it important? Mark Steadman turns the tech talk into a clear article to help anyone who is interested in how it works.

• Cross-app comments were demonstrated by The Podcast Index running in both Podverse and Podfriend. (Would comments be useful for Podnews? We’d be interested in trying to code comments for our web version.)

• Sounder has announced support for podcast transcripts, meaning the company’s recently-improved transcription tool will now be visible in a number of new podcast apps. They’ve also added support for number of other tags.

Podcast News - with Quill

Produced by Quill: Contributors features provoking conversations about how to take your organization one step further by prioritizing more than just the bottom line. Hosts Marnie Niemi Hood and Russell Evans from the CAAT Pension Plan sit down with leaders who are contributing to the well-being of the country and global stage by innovating industries and leading change.

Podland News contains an interview this week with John Spurlock, who has produced some of the more interesting reports for podcasts.