Who'll be at The Podcast Show

• The Podcast Show London has announced its first wave of content sessions for their two-day conference on May 25 and 26. It has also announced some of the live podcasts at The Podcast Show 2022 LIVE, as part of a week-long series of 20+ live events. (We’ll be there as a media partner: you can save 20% off a limited number of day passes with promo code PODNEWS).

• Acast published its annual report. The company saw net ad sales grow by 73%; while it says that operations in the UK and Sweden became profitable, the company overall lost SEK 300m (US $31m), almost double the loss of last year.

  • In the report, CEO Ross Adams claims “we are entering a new era in podcasting”, reaffirming the company’s support for the open nature of podcasting using RSS. Adams also describes that advertisers are “targeting conversations - not individual users”, highlighting a new, privacy-safe initiative from the company, dubbed Conversational Targeting.

• Substack is moving into podcasting - “but better”. The company released two blog posts, announcing that “The same way we made it simple to start a paid newsletter, we’re making it just as easy to produce a paid, subscription-based podcast on Substack”. They’ll play on any RSS-based podcast player. The platform also lets you podcast for free, their FAQ says. The company has, says Bloomberg, poached some podcasts from Patreon.

• iHeartRadio is still #1 for podcasting, according to Podtrac which has published March’s list of US podcast publishers. It has increased its lead from NPR at #2, and claimed 443m downloads in the month. The Daily is still #1 show. The list includes participating publishers only.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Sep 13 2023
  • By comparison, Triton Digital’s equivalent report for February says SXM Media is #1, with an equivalent 457m downloads over 31 days, we calculate. Triton Digital is owned by iHeart; but iHeartRadio doesn’t participate.

• The BBC is a new entry in Podtrac’s top 20, sneaking in at #20. The corporation has declined to share their global numbers, but claim a US unique monthly audience of 2.7m. It’s represented for ad sales in the US by Acast.

• PodOps has been launched - a mobile app that promises “the most advanced way for podcast show hosts and guests to connect and book interviews”. There’s more information on their website.

• Black culture publisher EBONY Media has launched EBONY Studios, which will be making podcasts (as well as movies and TV).

• Do you use Audacity to edit your podcast? A reminder that Audacity is ultimately owned by a company based in Russia, which gets limited usage data.

Thank you to Callin, a new social podcasting app, for becoming our latest gold supporter. Callin offers free tools to help you record, edit and distribute your content; and we’re grateful to them for their support of our newsletter. You can be like them.

Tips and tricks

• How to develop a visual identity for your podcast

Podcast News - with Acast

From Acast: Jackie the Ripper is a comedy-drama retelling of the infamous Whitechapel killings of the 19th century — but in this modern twist, men are the victims of the dark, grisly murders. Season two started this week.

NPR’s daily news podcast Up First celebrated its fifth birthday yesterday. It’s been in Podtrac’s top 20 podcasts for 60 consecutive months, and took home The Ambie for “best news podcast” this year. The show is produced by the Morning Edition team (and is built from the first ten minutes of the radio show).

Australia is just about to go into a federal election, and On The Trail: Election 2022 is the first of a number of podcasts we’d expect to launch about 'Scomo vs Albo’. On The Trail is from 9 News, and hosted by Charles Croucher; it’s a weekly show with some of Nine’s radio stars and 9 News’s Political Editor, Chris Uhlmann.

Also new from Nine Radio, Deb Knight’s Pollie Waffle is an in-depth long-form interview series, hosted by 2GB’s Deb Knight, interviewing pollies - over a plate of waffles. (Genuinely.)

Epi After Dark launches today. An educational and scientific podcast about the dark and mysterious world of the most fascinating pathogens, we’re told it’s a “whirlwind of powerful information - imagine going on a psychedelic adventure through hell where your tour guide is a mysterious entity who may be trying to sacrifice you, set to the backdrop of a dilapidated circus where the previous ringmaster was eaten by lions”.

Is the description “Deadhead” sometimes a bit too literal? From Tenderfoot and Double Elvis, Dead and Gone is returning for a new season. The show focuses on mysterious deaths of fans of the band Grateful Dead, and will look at three tragedies that have taken place over twenty years.