Newsletter service Substack is the latest free podcast host

!-- LINKCHECK|20230830|403|https://www.reddit.com/r/Earwolf/comments/k8yquh/hollywood_handbook_and_chef_kevin_announced/|| --> There’s a new, free, podcast host in town - newsletter service Substack is now allowing creators to host paid and free podcasts. There is no cost to host a free podcast. We’ve added Substack to our podcast hosts page, and this Github repo. Patreon and Acast announced a collaboration last month.

• Exclusive: A new audio app for children has removed podcasts from its paid service, after podcast creators complained they’d been added there without consent. We look into this in more detail, and ask: can you help yourself to free podcasts for your audio app?

• Caproni is a new podcast host from Puerto Rico. It’s part of the Parallel18 accelerator program.

• Happy 20th birthday, podcasting. Dave Winer describes the birth of podcasting - a meeting with Adam Curry in an unnamed hotel, twenty years ago this month, in midtown New York City.

• Podtrac has released their listing of top new US podcasts of 2020, based on average downloads per episode. Nice White Parents is the #1. 10 shows are from Wondery; 7 shows are from iHeartRadio.

  
  Aug 30 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Thursdays are the biggest day for podcast downloads, according to data released by the Australian Podcast Ranker; and the most popular podcast genre in Australia is repurposed radio shows. That’s according to the ranker, which is incomplete, but among the participating publishers are all six major Australian commercial radio companies.

• Are podcasts becoming the new medium of misinformation? An article from The Guardian claims that “while social networks are clamping down on dangerous content, podcasting is giving it a largely unmoderated platform”.

• As of last week, Apple has a new requirement for privacy information for all apps on the App Store. Podnews is curious to know how this is going to work for podcast apps, given apps don’t always know where listener data is going.

  
  Aug 30 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Apple Music is now available on Google Assistant speakers - another example of Apple being comfortable for its services to be consumed on non-Apple hardware. How’s that Android Apple Podcasts app coming along, Apple? It must be in the works, right?

• Spotify is to allow you to play your own music tracks on Android. It already supports this on desktop; and YouTube Music allows you to store your own tracks in the service.

• Tom Webster, in his weekly newsletter, asks us to respect our listeners’ ears.

• A new podcast network has launched in North Texas, focusing on esports.

The Tech Stuff - with the Podcast Index

• The new “podcast” namespace is now used in almost 100,000 feeds - 97,458 across 7 different hosting platforms, with two more hosting companies currently committin g developer time to implementing it. These stats were gathered from the Podcast Index database and cross-verified against the public hosting feed stats at ListenNotes.

• Wish your listeners would just slow down for a minute? There is a new proposal for the “podcast” namespace chapters format to include an optional “speed suggestion” within a chapter. This would be a way for podcast apps which allow faster playback speeds to slow down to normal speed during certain segments (like intro and outro music) so as not to distort them.

• AntennaPod now integrates with PodcastIndex as a search provider.

• The proposed “location” tag in the “podcast” namespace has undergone significant revision over the past two weeks, and now has broader consensus toward adoption.

• Benjamin Bellamy wrote an article about how to record a podcast with multiple remote guests using Linux.

Listen to the Podnews podcast in your favourite podcast app

Paid content

Tips and tricks - with Podpage

• Looking for a set of badges for your podcasting website? Podpage has a full set of matching badges. They’re nice.

• How long should your podcast be? (Rachel Corbett)

• Get inspiration for cover art with this new service that shows you some of the best.

Podcast News - with Fable & Folly

Facing Fate - An improvised anthology podcast exploring settings, genres, and different characters by way of a thrilling and hilarious collaborative storytelling experience. Ad Sales by Fable and Folly.

One of the hosts of Happy Face, Lauren Bright Pacheco, has been signed by Hollywood talent agency CAA.

Kevin Bartelt, Senior Producer at Earwolf, has announced that he’ll be leaving Earwolf in January. His podcast, Hollywood Handbook, was to leave the network, but a day later that the pro version will remain with Stitcher Premium. Yo, Is This Racist? is also to leave Earwolf.

Find more podcasts, and add your show