Podnews Weekly Review

NEWS: Spotify has launched clickable call-to-action cards, - described as ad banners for podcasts.  Currently limited to Spotify Originals and Exclusives, US only.Spotify’s new CTA cards aren’t new and aren’t open. The new JSON-based chapter specification from Podcast Index also allows graphical banners and clickthroughs which can be timed with audio.Spotify has added star ratings to its app for podcasts. Could you please rate us?Spotify added 1.2m new podcasts to Spotify’s catalogue in 2021. “Anchor continues to drive 80% of the new podcasts. Podcast Index added 466,000 shows in the past six months. It added 3.1m this yearThe Podcast Font for websites, containing icons and logos for popular podcast platforms, apps with just one line of code. It’s open and freeMore new podcast episodes were published last month on Anchor and Buzzsprout than anyone elseThe Podnews Ranker shows an unchanged top threeThe podcast:liveItem tag has been formalisedGot licensed commercial music on your podcast? Facebook will edit it out, muting your show insteadA content warning and privacy notice has been added to the Google Podcasts app - the notice links to Send James & Sam a messageSupport the showConnect With Us: Email: weekly@podnews.net Fediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.social Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support Get Podnews: podnews.net

James Cridland talks with Jonas Woost Director Of Strategy at Pacific Content about his podcast predictions for 2022. They talk about ...Who is Pacific Content?Is Podcasting still open in 2022?Paid Subscriptions?Legacy media buys into podcastingWhat does that mean for indies?The rise of fiction podcastingAre celebrity podcasts dead?It’s been another remarkable year for many in podcasting with some tremendous growth in our industry.  As 2021 nears its end, it’s time to ask, ‘What’s Next?’  For the seventh year in a row, Pacific Content has asked some of the smartest thinkers in podcasting this important question. We received plenty of predictions!Part One:https://blog.pacific-content.com/in-the-year-2022-320f4c175f6fPart Two https://blog.pacific-content.com/in-the-year-2022-part-two-92c22c1c44b0Send James & Sam a messageBuzzsproutStart 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.net Fediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.social Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support Get Podnews: podnews.net

GUEST: Larry Rosin, the co-founder and President of Edison Research Spotify buys Whooshkaa! Congratulations Rob  Loewenthal.  A great guy and a great team.  SiriusXM is being sued for failing to provide podcast transcripts for deaf users by the National Association for the Deaf and the Disability Rights Advocates.  As we researched in June 2020, transcripts can offer significant SEO benefits.  The podcast:transcript tag is an open standard, supported by a number of podcasts and offers both static transcripts (in HTML or text) or real-time captions (in the SRT format). Widely supported by many modern podcast hosts including Captivate, Transistor, Buzzsprout, Omny Studio and others, a number of podcast apps display these transcripts, including the popular Android app Podcast Addict. Amazon Music has a proprietary solution for transcripts.Spotify added the right to transcribe using their own proprietary solution in May 2020, and a limited beta in May 2021. There is no mechanism for publishers to supply their own transcripts.Google offers live captions within every Android app on Pixel phones; that live caption tool is also available on desktop Chrome .  The company doesn’t support the podcast:transcript tag.Apple surprisingly doesn’t offer any live captioning.  The company doesn’t support the podcast:transcript tag.With the exception of Podcast Addict,  no major podcast app supports transcripts. In terms of podcasts to test things on, Podland contains live captions and transcripts using the transcript tag. Also using that tag, the Podnews podcast contains a transcript only.Send James & Sam a messageSupport the showConnect With Us: Email: weekly@podnews.net Fediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.social Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support Get Podnews: podnews.net

 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”.Send James & Sam a messageSupport the showConnect With Us: Email: weekly@podnews.net Fediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.social Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support Get Podnews: podnews.net

 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 aSend James & Sam a messageBuzzsproutStart 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.net Fediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.social Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support Get Podnews: podnews.net

 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.Send James & Sam a messageBuzzsproutStart 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.net Fediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.social Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support Get Podnews: podnews.net

Listen 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.Send James & Sam a messageSupport the showConnect With Us: Email: weekly@podnews.net Fediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.social Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support Get Podnews: podnews.net

Listen 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. Send James & Sam a messageBuzzsproutStart 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.net Fediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.social Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support Get Podnews: podnews.net

Listen 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 Send James & Sam a messageBuzzsproutStart 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.net Fediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.social Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support Get Podnews: podnews.net

Listen 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 Send James & Sam a messageSupport the showConnect With Us: Email: weekly@podnews.net Fediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.social Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support Get Podnews: podnews.net