Song Exploder starts to remove shows

• Popular music podcast Song Exploder is to remove many of its shows because of music licensing costs. Creator Hrishikesh Hirway posted on Twitter that “I’ve always hoped they’d all be available forever, but the reality of music licensing makes that impossible”. In a plot twist, since we reached out for comment, those posts have been removed: could that mean that a music and podcast service with a full licensing deal might have reached out? Here’s hoping.

• In the US, Google Podcasts now comes with a personalised news feature in the “explore” tab in the app. Google says that the feature has been in Google Assistant for almost a year; much like NPR One, it plays a mix of individual news stories based on your interests, location, user history and preferences.

• Wildcast, a new platform for podcast networking and productivity, has launched. The service helps find guests and schedule ad trades, and is free in their startup period.

• Spotify-owned Parcast is unionizing, reports The Verge. Spotify has voluntarily recognised Gimlet, and is negotiating with The Ringer’s union.

• Podcast host Castos now offers private podcasts, for employees, members or family. The company has also added a way to invite individual listeners by email, and integration with the Wordpress plugin MemberSpace.

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• Audioburst has released Creators Premium, describing it as “a comprehensive audio marketing management platform dedicated to helping podcasts and radio shows grow their audiences”. It produces transcripts, social video clips, and audio search.

• Podcast host Omny Studio published a privacy policy for listeners in May, joining Acast, Buzzsprout and Captivate, we discover. No other podcast host has clear privacy policies to explain to listeners what happens to their identifying data when they listen. (Here’s ours). Writing personally, our Editor called for these in December 2019: if privacy is as important to some podcast hosts as they claim, we look forward to seeing their privacy policy for listeners, too.

  
  Aug 27 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Trust Wondery to produce great-sounding podcasts. Don’t trust them as a weather forecaster. (Seriously, we’d love to know the results of this A-B test, sent to two different email addresses of ours.)

Thank you to Benjamin Masse for becoming our latest personal supporter. Personal support from people like you allowed us to kick the SSL certificate generator that failed on us the other day. You can support us too.

Tips and tricks - with Spotify for Podcasters

• Untapped Podcast Ideas (Buzzsprout) - monkey tennis doesn’t appear to be in this list, but urban farming is.

• ICYMI: Eight Things I Learned Making a Podcast about How F*cked We Are (Rob Deitz).

Podcast News - with 70 Million

70 Million is back for Season 3 starting September 14th. Each week, the Peabody-nominated podcast from Lantigua Williams & Co brings localities taking action: from the school-to-prison pipeline, to racialized policing, to the spread of COVID-19 in jails. 70 Million is also an open-source podcast that provides syllabi and resources to the public. The trailer is out now. (ad)

How did Jordan Harbinger get into podcasting? In the latest episode of Oxford Road Presents: Divided States of Media we learn how he got into podcasting, plus his thoughts on self-censorship, and defending yourself against misinformation. Listen, or - exclusive to Podnews - read the transcript.

Owen Grover, formerly of Pocket Casts and iHeartRadio, appears as a guest on Kinsider. Discover what he’s doing now; and what he thinks of Joe Budden, indie podcasters, Apple, media, and more.

True-crime podcast Where the Bodies are Buried may have uncovered a crime scene in Peru IL, USA, according to local reports.

Former US presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg is to launch a podcast, says the Washington Post. The show, called The Deciding Decade, is with iHeartRadio.