'Wow in the World' gets 100 million downloads

• Childrens’ podcast company Tinkercast is celebrating hitting 100 million downloads. Hosted by Guy Raz and Mindy Thomas, Wow in the World was launched on May 5 2017.

• SiriusXM is expected to say that their music and podcast streaming service Pandora is worth $1bn less, because of the impact of increasing music royalty costs: the company paid $3.5bn for it in February 2019. Pandora has also seen a decline in total users and ad revenue, while competitors like Spotify have grown considerably.

• The Podcast Academy has announced that Donald Albright from Tenderfoot TV will be their Chairperson for 2021 (replacing Rob Greenlee); Spoke Media’s Alia Tavakolian is Secretary (replacing Kerri Hoffman); Anya Grundmann from NPR is Treasurer, replacing Christy Mirabel from SonyMusic Entertainment who becomes Vice-Chairperson, Donald Albright’s former position. We reported on three new board members on Friday.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 31 2023
  • A date for The Ambies award ceremony has been announced: it’ll be on March 28. Our podcast events website has an 'add this to your calendar’ button so you won’t forget.

• Including trails for other podcasts works: and increases audiences by 46%, according to data published by the BBC.

• For Africa Podcast Day on 12 February, the organisers are inviting African podcasters to curate their own community events which they will stream throughout the day in the hours outside the Africa Podfest virtual gathering. Community event submissions can be made here.

  
  Aug 31 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Radiodays Asia, a large virtual radio and podcasting conference in March, currently has a “super earlybird” offer for tickets.

• Dave Dillon reviews both the Podtrak P8 and the Rødecaster Pro in a Youtube video.

• This week in 2006, UK radio station LBC started charging for podcasts for its talk shows. £12 (then US$21) got you six months of ad-free access: the service attracted 10,000 subscribers in its first year.

• The treatment by the New York Times of its audio producer Andy Mills has attracted scrutiny in the US press. Mills - the producer of the discredited Caliphate podcast - appears to have escaped without any public censure, unlike host Rukmini Callimachi; he has since hosted The Daily. The Radiolab team have posted a statement and apology about his alleged behaviour while at WNYC.

• YouTube has banned Steve Bannon’s “podcast” channel.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 31 2023

• Have you entered the Tribeca Film Festival’s podcast categories yet? You’ve got 'till Wednesday.

• Libsyn has posted confirmation of our stories over the last few days, describing our coverage about Rob Greenlee as accurate, adding additional detail; and clarifying that the company is not yet implementing the Podcasting 2.0 namespace. Rob Greenlee will talk to Rob Walch about both these stories on The Feed this week.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS․com

• We put together our own podcast stats which lists the most popular podcast apps used to play our podcast. But which of all the different podcast directories were responsible for each play on Friday? Can you just get away with listing your show on Apple Podcasts and nothing else? Here’s the top 6:
  • Apple Podcasts directory: 1,041 plays
  • Podcast Index: 31
  • Spotify: 22 (via their dashboard)
  • Stitcher: 21
  • Gaana: 16
  • Google Podcasts: 14
• Android app PodcastAddict's latest beta has “search by person”, using the Podcast Index data. After opting into the beta in the Play Store, do a search for a podcast, and click the new 'persons’ tab.

Aug 31 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.
• The podcast:location tag has undergone a small, breaking, revision before its adoption into phase 2 of the podcast namespace. For clarity, it now uses osm rather than osmid, has an optional link to the revision number within OpenStreetMap, and the humanly-readable description is now a node value rather than an attribute.

Tips and tricks - with Buzzsprout

• How to get live captions for every podcast you listen to - on whatever app - on almost all phones. Apart from one.

• How to add your podcast to every podcast directory - we’ve got a full list.

Podcast News

Martin Mouritzen, the developer for Podfriend, is on the Podcasting 2.0 podcast this week.

Power: The Maxwells looks not at Jeffrey Epstein’s friend Ghislaine Maxwell, but at her father: Robert Maxwell, the UK media tycoon, who fell off a yacht to his death. Ghislaine’s theory? He was murdered. New from Somethin’ Else, it launches today.

Centuries of Sound, a mixtape for every year, is slowly working forwards from 1860 to the present day, and is up to 1931. This month, however, producer James Errington has published a three-hour mixtape of 2019, “including 160 different samples of news, TV, film and a massive variety of music”. Enjoy a look back at a year without all of that 2020 stuff. Well, without some of it.

Feedback comes in saying: “You mentioned Stitch Please, so one day you’ll mention the Aussie sewing podcast Sew Organised Style created by one woman for 3 established sewing communities!” So we will.