Podcast producer WYN Studio in India gets funding round

Thank you to more than 600 new subscribers so far in July, helping us reach 14,500 subscribers just before we published on Friday. Welcome to new faces from Veritone, Lawson Media, Pocket Casts, Oxford Road, Seeking Alpha, Spotify, Podimo, Nielsen, Tagesschau, the BBC, Wondery and Pandora. (Tell a friend!)

• In India, WYN Studio has received initial funding from investors. The money will help the podcast studio grow; the company’s Can Inspire was a #1 show on Apple Podcasts.

• Podswipe, a service to connect podcasters to advertisers and guests, has launched.

• Australian daily news show The Squiz has moved to Acast. They were previously with Whooshkaa.

• Kellie Riordan, the manager of ABC Audio Studios in Australia, is to leave the corporation. She has worked for the ABC for eighteen years. “I’m off to explore new projects and opportunities in podlandia”, she writes.

• Pandora is launching interactive voice ads, which allow listeners to say “yes” if they want to learn more about a product or brand’s service. This follows a trial we reported on in April 2019; Spotify also tested this in May 2019.

• Spotify are hiring for engineers to work on “podcast monetization” on their iOS and Android apps.

• Politico highlight a new-wave of Chinese-language podcasts from outside China.

• As Joe Rogan moves to Spotify, he’ll be moving too - from Los Angeles to Texas.

• Bravery Studios, a North New Jersey podcast recording studio in the US, has re-opened after a small period of pandemic-related closure. Meanwhile, Rove Hotels in downtown Dubai, UAE, has opened a podcast studio with free rental during August.

Opinion

• In his latest newsletter, Edison Research’s Tom Webster highlights what he calls The Most Shocking Audio Stat of the Year and What it Means, including a consideration of “Me Time” and a shout-out to long-time readers of Podnews at Curiosity Daily.

• A lack of metrics is a benefit to podcaster Dylan Marron, who doesn’t look at them. “The most radical and subversive thing I can do is to continue doing work without looking at the numbers,” he says to Timber Media.

• Erika A Aguilar, the Director of Podcasts at San Francisco CA, USA’s KQED is interviewed by Zocalo. She really, really likes Pop Tarts.

Tips and tricks

• How to develop a successful podcast cross-promotion strategy (Andrew Davies)
• The Director of Audience Development and Marketing at PRX, Charlotte Cooper, writes The Who, Why and How of Podcast Marketing.
• The podcaster’s guide to being okay right now is a nice piece from Suzy Chase, reminding us to take care of ourselves - and each other. (Though she doesn’t quote Jerry Springer like we just did.)
• How an Episode Debrief Will Drastically Improve Your Podcast (Jeremy Enns)
• How do you find out where a podcast is hosted? Just search for it on Podnews; it’s in the “information for podcasters” section.

Podcast News - with The John Bartolo Show

In The John Bartolo Show Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. John is joined by Tom DeBlass, who’s a BJJ coach and Black Belt. Tom has tremendous insight into the BJJ world and has coached many tremendous competitors. Listen now

This Podcast Does Not Exist is entirely, and randomly, produced by GPT-3, a language-generating artificial intelligence service. The text is then fed into Google’s text-to-speech API. No humans are used, says its owner, James Potter from Rate This Podcast, other than checking it before publishing. We’re all going to be replaced by computers!

CrossBread - a comedy musical is a mockumentary about a fake Christian hip hop group. It’s currently on the front page of iTunes Australia and US, is reviewed as clever, impressive, a joy, and even, to their surprise, Christian websites like it.

Just to remind us that there really is a podcast for everyone, the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association has launched its own podcast. Called Concrete Credentials, it features experts from the design, development, construction, and other sectors in an “effort to educate listeners on the benefits of utilising concrete”.

The last season of The Bellingcat Podcast won two ARIAS, a British Podcast Award, and was awarded Political Podcast of the Year. It also achieved 4.8/5 after almost 650 reviews. Made by Novel, it’s back for a second season, telling the story of a gruesome video that captured the world’s attention in 2018.