Research: podcasting significantly growing in US

Over half of US adults have listened to a podcast. Edison Research and Triton Digital have published Infinite Dial 2019, a set of research on US media consumption. One third of US adults (90 million people) listened to a podcast over the last month, the survey also reports. You can view the webinar here; or grab the slides. There is lots of data in the release, but - happily for us - the media have focused on podcasting’s growth.

Infinite Dial 2019 also reports on an increase for smart speaker owners. 23% of US adults (65 million people) claim to own a smart speaker, with Amazon Echo being the leading brand, and Apple Homepod doing very poorly. VentureBeat reports that Apple is hiring an analyst to explain Siri complaints to executives, which doesn’t sound like a good thing. (Editor’s note: careful when comparing products - like Google Home - with services - like Google Assistant, which is in many more devices).

More shows and a third room have been added to Podcast Live Politics, the live podcast event in London in April. New shows include titles from the BBC, Sky News, ITV News and The New European.

Serial co-creator Julie Snyder has been recruited by Signal Co. No1, a “music podcast label”. The company recently partnered with Pixies for its first original release, Past is Prologue.

DiscoverPods writes about EX-IQ, an app that makes learning from podcasts easier. (EX-IQ are a Podnews gold supporter).

Castro, the iOS podcast app, has announced a new update today. The company says it has upgraded the Discovery experience, dramatically improved Search, and simplified some of the language in the app. “From the start, we’ve designed Castro to be a powerful upgrade over the playback and management experiences offered by other podcast apps. These updates are designed to help make the power of Castro available to more people,” Padraig O’Cinneide told us.

RadioINK reports from RAIN’s Podcast Business Summit. Particularly: Jarl Mohn, President and CEO of National Public Radio predicted that, “in the next five years, the medium will be as big or larger than network radio.”

Wondery is in talks to adapt Over My Dead Body for television.

Podcast fans will reject a 'Netflix for podcasts’ , says FastCompany; Luminary wants to be a Netflix for podcasts says AVClub, and both Nick Quah and Wil Williams are getting a bit tired of the phrase 'Netflix for podcasts’. Us too.

AndroidPolice writes a withering review of Google Podcasts.