Podnews Weekly Review

Send James and Sam a message or voicemail HOSTS:Listen to James Cridland and Sam Sethi   GUEST: Jeff Price CEO - Word CollectionsSpotify has pulled a number of comedy albums from its service, after claims they weren’t licensed correctly.  Jeff Price has announced a $3.5m investment round for his Word Collections company, which “focuses on getting comedians and other spoken-word performers paid for the use of their works for the first time”.NEWS:The Infinite Dial 2021 for the UK was released last week. The headline was 41% of the UK population (16+) listens to podcasts every month - around 23m people. The data is directly comparable to the US (41%), Canada (38%) and Australia (36%). The data was paid-for by Bauer Media and Spotify. Links: Adam Bowie looks at the data.We interview Larry Rosin President at Edison Research next week.Exclusive: Spotify has made a number of exciting press releases about new podcast partnerships in the past two years: but many of those Spotify announcements have yet to result in a single new podcast, according to our research. Where are they? And what’s going on?A Sky News investigation in the UK has discovered antisemitism, racism and white supremacist material in podcasts on Spotify.  Spotify has removed 150 hours of content after the news channel’s report. “In some cases, explicit slurs could be found in episode titles and descriptions while album artwork displayed imagery adopted by white supremacists,” the story says. The podcasts are still available on Google Podcasts.Alex Paterson has listened to more than 350 hours of The Joe Rogan Experience.  He says he: “compiled some of the worst examples of Rogan’s sexist, racist, and harmful commentary over the past year -- all paid for by Spotify”.Support the showConnect With Us: Email: weekly@podnews.netFediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.socialSupport us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/supportGet Podnews: podnews.net

Send James and Sam a message or voicemail HOSTS:Listen to James Cridland and Sam Sethi   GUEST: Winslow Bright - Executive Producer at Premier Music GroupNEWS: Apple Podcasts announced its Best of 2021. A Slight Change of Plans with Maya Shankar from Pushkin Industries was chosen as Best Show of the Year.The chart also gives us some understanding of the performance of Apple Podcasts Paid Subscriptions - Bad Blood: The Final Chapter is #1 in the list, and said in September that they had 6,000 subscribers. (That was $16,000 a month in revenue after Apple’s cut).The Australian Podcast Awards winners will be announced on Thursday 2nd December at a live ceremony in Sydney. In Australia, the winners of the Australian Commercial Radio Awards were announced. Best Original Podcast went to Zero Waste Baby with Veronica Milsom, produced by SCA’s LiSTNR.In the UK, the 2021 Audio Production Awards took place. The Production Company of the Year was won by Listen Entertainment.In the UK, The Rachel Bland new podcast award from BBC Radio 5 Live has been awarded this year to You’re Not My Mum: The Stepmum’s Side.  Edison Research’s Infinite Dial is coming to the UK. The UK has been without a direct comparison to the US, Canada and Australia in terms of podcast consumption.The latest Share of Ear study from Edison Research suggests that more than a quarter of all Americans aged 18-34 are liBuzzsproutStart podcasting - keep podcasting!Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the showConnect With Us: Email: weekly@podnews.netFediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.socialSupport us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/supportGet Podnews: podnews.net

Send James and Sam a message or voicemail Listen to James Cridland and Sam Sethi   GUEST:Lisa Laporte - CEO -  TWiT.tvFranco Solerio - Founder & Developer -  CastamaticNEWS: Copenhagen-based podcast production company Podimo has secured $78m of funding. The subscription company hosts more than 950 original shows and plans to move into new markets.$78m? Hold my beer - Verbit, a voice AI platform focusing on transcriptions, has raised $250m in fundingSpotify CFO Paul Vogel says the company has $3.5bn in cash for acquisitions. Speaking at a conference in Boston MA, USA, he said: “Podcasting was this business that for 20 years didn’t change — it was a simple RSS feed — no way to do anything different”. (Paul - podcasts are 18 years old).Matt Deegan writes about making your audio business acquirable, looking into more detail into Spotify CFO Paul Vogel’s announcements.Netflix and Spotify have “come together” to launch a Netflix Hub on Spotify. It includes playlists for Netflix shows and additional audio.Podcasts in Samsung Free’s Listen Tab have launched in Europe. The podcast app is available exclusively to Samsung Galaxy owners, in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, France and Italy. You can add your podcast here.BuzzsproutStart podcasting - keep podcasting!Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the showConnect With Us: Email: weekly@podnews.netFediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.socialSupport us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/supportGet Podnews: podnews.net

Send James and Sam a message or voicemailListen to James Cridland and Sam Sethi   GUEST: Sean Li - Clever.FM NEWS: Spotify expands Podcast Subscriptions globally and now includes 20 price points from $0.50 to $150 and a way for creators to download subscribers' contact info  —  Just a few months after launching support for podcast subscriptions to U.S. creators, Spotify today is making the service available to creators in global markets.There are now more than 1,000 channels in Apple Podcasts. Podnews has discovered 293 paid subscription channels so far.Audiobooks are coming to Spotify - the company is to acquire Findaway, an audiobook distributor. Findaway will “enable Spotify to quickly scale its audiobook catalog”. It’s experimented with audiobooks before: adding classic books, and a bespoke category for spoken word. (There are already more than 3,900 audiobooks on Spotify).Medium is getting into audio, acquiring audio-based learning platform Knowable. Warren Shaeffer, co-founder of Knowable, will join Medium as the Vice President of Audio. (Evan Williams, Medium’s CEO, was co-founder of Odeo, an early podcast company.) Oprah Winfrey was on Clubhouse, but only 23,000 people listened. Meanwhile apps or logins are no longer required to listen on Spotify Greenroom. And - genuine question - has anyone heard from Mark Cuban's Fireside Chat recently? The New York Times says that 'misleading covid-19 talk goes unchallenged’ on podcasts (and on radio). The article criticises iHeart, Spotify and Apple.Support the showConnect With Us: Email: weekly@podnews.netFediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.socialSupport us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/supportGet Podnews: podnews.net

Send James and Sam a message or voicemailListen to James Cridland and Sam Sethi   "INTEROPERABILITY IS THE KEY" - says Dave JonesApple Podcasts has brought back the 'refresh feed’ button. While Apple seem confident that new episodes and other changes in your podcast feed are now seen within 'a few hours’  On Friday, the Apple Podcasts Connect system was checking Podnews’s RSS feed every eight minutes.Podping - decentralised push notifications for podcasting, means that new episodes can appear in podcast apps within just 45 seconds. Part of Podcasting 2.0Google Podcasts uses WebSub; but users of Podping can also get automatic backwards compatibility with WebSub, thanks to John Spurlock.Cross-app comments are now testing in some podcast apps. The podcast:social tag will allow listeners to leave comments on a variety of platforms, some of which may be directly visible within podcast apps. Here is the proposed specification for more. Castamatic 8 is the latest podcast app to include support for the Podcast Index and value4value. It features a “machine-learning auto-leveler”, a silent-skipper, and additional features.   In Podcasting 2.0 this week, Adam Curry and Dave Jones talk to Craig and Matt from Castos. This link in Podfriend will, after opening the player, show you transcripts and podcast chapters using the new podcast namespace (and value4value)Headliner has added auto-posting to YouTube, so you can add your shows there automatically. BuzzsproutStart podcasting - keep podcasting!Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the showConnect With Us: Email: weekly@podnews.netFediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.socialSupport us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/supportGet Podnews: podnews.net

Send James and Sam a message or voicemailListen to James Cridland and Sam Sethi    GUESTS: Dino Sofos - Founder and CEO, Persephonica. Recently departed Editor of BBC News Podcasts. Creator of the award-winning Brexitcast, Americast and the daily Newscast.NEWS: Spotify's proprietary video podcasts system is "a dumpster fire", says Drew Linsalata, the host of The Anxious Truth. Even though Anchor gave this podcaster early access, it took six days for his podcast's episode to be correctly available on Spotify, during which Anchor support didn't return his emails. The BBC has launched BBC Podcasts Premium exclusively on the proprietary Apple Podcasts subscription system, and only in the US and Canada. The service will include "exclusive shows" (which are also available free in the UK). The BBC Podcasts Channel is available everywhere; the Premium bit only shows up in the US and Canada. All BBC shows are commercial-free in the UK; the corporation still blocks its shows from Google Podcasts. Bradley Tirpak is the new CEO of Libsyn. A professional investor, he's been Chairman of Libsyn since August 2020, and a director since October 2019. The company had been without a CEO for over 14 months. Libsyn's AdvertiseCast has released average CPM rates for October, showing an average of $23.30. The data is up from September's $23.13, and up 92.3% year-on-year. Amazon Music has announced a "synchronised podcast transcripts" feature. It's only available in the Amazon Music app, only in the US, and only for recent episodes of Amazon Original and Wondery shows. It's going to be opened to other selected shows shortly; as far as we can tell, it's a proprietary solution with no link to the BuzzsproutStart podcasting - keep podcasting!Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the showConnect With Us: Email: weekly@podnews.netFediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.socialSupport us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/supportGet Podnews: podnews.net

Send James and Sam a message or voicemailListen to James Cridland and Sam Sethi    GUESTS: Bailey Drake - Back Stage by HeadlinerBenjamin Bellamy - CEO Ad AuresNEWS: Spotify released its Q3/21 results. It has 3.2m podcasts on its platform (subtext: beating Apple). Earnings were buoyed by growth in podcast advertisingSpotify is to add video podcasts, but probably not as you know them. You can only upload them via Anchor - there’s a waitlist to join - and you can only watch the videos on SpotifyFacebook’s Chelsea White and Irena Lam appeared on The New Media Show.  Now everyone can get their podcast into FacebookShadow is a new podcast app for iOS which includes SharePlay, so you can listen to a podcast with friends. Here are some promo codes for a free year of Shadow+LJP74J6NR6YJ3LHW3LKTHJ6XYKRWRFPNJTHE3K3M3JY4MXAXWFW34X34FJHRLINKS: Tom Webster has shared a video of his keynote at Podcast Movement; and focused on what Facebook might mean for podcasters Nick Hilton - wrote a blog called It’s Time to End Podcast Self-Promo on Twitter Matt Deegan wrote Getting to know your lisSupport the showConnect With Us: Email: weekly@podnews.netFediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.socialSupport us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/supportGet Podnews: podnews.net

Send James and Sam a message or voicemailJames is recording in a forest. Proof: https://twitter.com/JamesCridland/status/1451002189049040905Bryan Barletta runs https://soundsprofitable.com - go subscribe!Apple Podcasts explains how podcasts work: https://podnews.net/update/apple-podcast-downloads-explanationSpotify to hire hundreds of adsales staff: https://podnews.net/update/nms-facebook-podcasting#:~:text=Spotify%20is%20hiring%20hundreds%20of%20ad%20staffAdam Bowie: trends to watch for in podcasting. https://www.adambowie.com/blog/2021/10/top-10-podcast-trends-radiodays-europe-2021/John Spurlock's data about podcast CDN share: https://podnews.net/update/nms-facebook-podcasting#:~:text=John%20Spurlock%20has%20published%20podcast%20CDN%20shareAmit Shetty to leave the IAB: https://podnews.net/update/nms-facebook-podcasting#:~:text=has%20left%20the%20IAB%20TechLabAnd, of course, Boostagram CornerBuzzsproutStart podcasting - keep podcasting!Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the showConnect With Us: Email: weekly@podnews.netFediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.socialSupport us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/supportGet Podnews: podnews.net

Send James and Sam a message or voicemailListen to James Cridland and Sam Sethi they talk to   GUESTS:  Dr Brian of London about his work on Podping and Hive. Genevieve Hassan about her podcast Celebrity Catch Up: Life After That Thing I DidNEWS: Sounds Profitable en Español starts today, as Bryan Barletta explains in Sounds Profitable with Podsights. The podcast adtech newsletter will be translated and produced using technology from Veritone MARVEL․ai: and so will the Sounds Profitable en Español podcast, with Bryan sounding as if he speaks Spanish fluently… but he doesn’t.Using the same synthetic voice technology, you can hear James Cridland, speaking Spanish (he doesn’t speak it either) in our podcast today. It’s quite a thing.Exclusive: Spotify is closing in on Apple Podcasts and indie podcast apps are becoming less popular, according to new data released to Podnews by Podtrac today. Calculated from over a billion US podcast downloads in September, for monthly audience, Spotify is now less than three percentage points away from Apple. But, for monthly streams/downloads, Apple is more than seven times larger - and that number’s growing.Facebook has launched an “Audio” hub on their mobile apps, including podcasts and live audio rooms. You’ll find it in the “Watch” tab (obviously). It’s available only within the US.Spotify have released their first UK video podcast, which can be watched on the app itself. Internet Sensation is already a popular podcast series by ImAllexx, and it's becoming a Spotify exclusive - are Spotify attempting to take on YouTube? Watch now >>Spotify has launched two new shows about Spotify this month. BuzzsproutStart podcasting - keep podcasting!Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the showConnect With Us: Email: weekly@podnews.netFediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.socialSupport us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/supportGet Podnews: podnews.net

Send James and Sam a message or voicemailListen to James Cridland and Sam Sethi as they talk to Chris Messina about his work on OpenWeb Standards such as ActivityStreams that became ActivityPub.  He wrote this seminal post on Medium about ActivityStreams and ActivityPub in 2008GUEST: Chris Messina is the inventor of the hashtag as it is currently used on social media platforms.  In a 2007 tweet, Messina proposed vertical/associational grouping of messages, trends, and events on Twitter by the means of hashtags. NEWS: Spotify has made a series of announcements about podcast monetisation. First up, top Anchor podcasters in the US can now be part of the Spotify Audience Network.  These ads are called “Automated ads” since they’ll be automatically inserted: if you’re with Anchor, you can join the waitlist today.Anchor has also launched “Premium sponsorships”, where they sell host-read sponsor credits on your behalf: you’ll be contacted if you qualify.Anchor’s original Anchor Sponsorships is now rebranded “Ambassador ads”, where you spread the word about Anchor to your listeners.Spotify Ad Studio, Spotify’s self-serve ad buying service, will offer podcast ad buying “in our podcast network” (again, for the US only). Spotify has also announced it’s joined the Global Alliance of Responsible Media, added the ability to exclude sensitive topics, and improved their contextual targeting tools.Separately, Spotify has published a Support the showConnect With Us: Email: weekly@podnews.netFediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.socialSupport us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/supportGet Podnews: podnews.net