Podcast listeners are listening longer

Podcasting is brilliantly different. Unlike its digital predecessor, there’s unparalleled collaboration. The Open Podcast Analytics Workgroup (OPAWG) shows that our space can come together to better document and improve an area that takes considerable effort to manage: user agents. — in today’s Sounds Profitable, our new adtech newsletter, with Podsights

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• Podcast listeners are listening longer, says Cumulus’s Westwood One - who has published its Podcast Download Fall 2020 Report. It’s their fourth annual study. Among the findings, Spotify is closing the gap with Apple Podcasts - by total listeners, it’s close (22% say they use Apple the most; 20% Spotify). (Also see this data). However, 16% of podcast listeners use the site or app of the podcast itself to listen; and weekly podcast listeners are using more podcast platforms than ever.

• Do podcasts compete with music listening? Spotify has an R&D division, we discover; it released this data in April saying “as people pick up podcast listening, they tend to add it to their previous habits”. Music listening remains almost the same once people discover podcasts. The research also shows differences in music vs podcasts during different days of the week, and different times of day.

• Podcast analytics and attribution company Chartable has raised $2.25m in seed funding. The company is tracking 1bn downloads a month (Podtrac tracks 1.5bn). Podnews uses it.

• JaackMaate’s Happy Hour from Stakhanov has become a Spotify exclusive. “Spotify has offered me a life-changing amount of money. This is a game-changer for us.” Jack announces in a YouTube video. “I have never had any communication with YouTube,” he adds, saying that the negotiations took over six months. The comments from YouTube viewers are all positive.

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• Former NBC and Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly is to launch her own podcast network “without the constraints or political agendas of other media outlets” - Devil May Care Media’s first release will be The Megyn Kelly Show,

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

• Recordia for MacOS is a simple audio recorder that sits in your menu bar. It will record lossless, and could be good for safety copies.

• Congratulations to podcast host Blubrry, who celebrates 15 years in business tomorrow. Enjoy a free virtual event with trivia and prize giveaways.

• AdLarge Media has a new logo. A “bold new look from the same great company”, it looks like… this:

• Redditor u/msmialko is building a Mac-based audio editor for podcasts, and wants your help to learn more about your production process.

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The Tech Stuff - with RSS․com

• The Podcast Index has added a language field (taken from the podcast’s RSS), and plans to add a “detected language” field in future (to catch podcasters who’ve not correctly set it). Joe Moraca produced SVG versions of the logo (which we now show in search). The website’s development documentation has moved to pages on Github.
• Hypercatcher is now using The Podcast Index, according to Adam Curry.
• Is podcasting ready for IPv6? asks Thomas Barrasso. He notes that some of the largest podcast hosts still don’t support IPv6; and that some phones in India are now IPv6-only, at least for media files. “If you do not support IPv6, you’re losing listeners, especially in emerging markets,” he concludes.
• Alessandro Diaferia used Google Cloud Platform to produce transcripts for his podcast (in Italian).
• Marco Arment writes a tongue-in-cheek clarification of Apple’s in-app purchase rules.
• After we reported a bug, Chartable are now correctly setting an RSS useragent. More details, and best practice, is over here.

This is a new section in Podnews every Monday, aimed at developers and technologists working within podcasting. We’d love your feedback.

Podcast News - with 70 Million

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Spotify’s Parcast launches Incredible Feats today - a daily show profiling amazing achievements made by people from all over the world; hosted by Dan Cummins. A Spotify Original, it’s available everywhere.

Returning last week, Meddling Adults is a podcast game show for charity, with two guests solving children’s mysteries from classic series like Scooby Doo, and earning a prize pool from the show’s Patreon account. Here’s how they made it.