Podnews Weekly Review

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 message

Support the show

Connect With Us:

• Email: [email protected]
• Fediverse: @[email protected] and @[email protected]
• Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support
• Get Podnews: podnews.net

 Listen to James Cridland and Sam Sethi   

GUEST:

• Lisa Laporte - CEO -  TWiT.tv
• Franco Solerio - Founder & Developer -  Castamatic

NEWS: 

• 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 funding
  
  
• Spotify 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.
  
  
• Chartable has launched SmartFeeds, a new tool that mirrors your RSS feed and makes it easier to switch podcast hosts and enable Chartable analytics.
  
  
• Bryan Barletta notes that shows with Apple Podcasts Subscriptions get the most promotion within the Apple Podcasts app.

Arielle and Squadcast are running a scavenger hunt, and you can play.

Buzzsprout
Podcast hosting and a whole lot more

Sponsors

• Buzzsprout - last week, 3,210 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout
• Squadcast - Create high-quality audio and video content just using your browser and using Dolby Enhanced Audio Mastering, they’ll sound better than ever.

Special Guest

• Dave Jones - Pod Sage from Podcast Index talks about ...
  • Value 4 Value
  • Lightning Network
  • WebLN
  • Alby
  • Hive's Podping
  • Podcast Index new tags <podcast:liveItem> and <podcast:block>

Show Notes & Links

• One of podcasting’s largest hosting companies, Megaphone, was down for more than nine hours. All the Spotify-owned company’s audio and RSS feeds disappeared at 8pm Eastern on Monday after a certificate expired.
  
• Spotify is conducting research within its app on new features. The company appears to be testing the ability to pay to promote your show, as well as automatically place ads in shows to earn revenue.
  
• Descript now supports new workflows that will let you jump to editing in Descript with one click - when recording in @RiversidedotFM or @SquadCastFM, live streaming in @Restreamio, or hosting in @CaptivateAudio
  
• EditEddy was launched on Product Hunt. The service makes audio editing simple - upload your spoken-word audio, get a transcript, and then edit your audio by editing the text. Here’s a video demo.
  
• Podverse enables searchable transcripts.

#podcasting

Send James & Sam a message

Buzzsprout
Start 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 show

Connect With Us:

• Email: [email protected]
• Fediverse: @[email protected] and @[email protected]
• Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support
• Get Podnews: podnews.net

Special Guests

• Tom Webster- Sounds Profitable
• Zachariah Moreno & Rock Felder - Squadcast
• Sophie Hind & Jim Salveson - VoiceWorks

Show Notes

• Sounds Profitable released The Creators, a study of the people who create podcasts. Tom Webster revealed that US podcast creators are more diverse than the US population, but are significantly younger and more male. Most own both Android and iOS devices, though more than four in ten podcast creators have been listening to podcasts for under a year.
  
• You can download the full report here.
  
• Bloomberg Businessweek posts Spotify’s Billion-Dollar Bet on Podcasting Has Yet to Pay Off. The piece, originally titled “Spotify’s Joe Rogan-Powered Podcast Bet Hasn’t Paid Off”, suggests that the company’s investments haven’t yet yielded a major hit, and contains criticism of Dawn Ostroff’s growth strategy.
  
• Spotify and Anchor have debuted RADAR Podcasters, a podcast-creator version of the Spotify program designed to spotlight emerging voices worldwide. The companies start by highlighting more than 40 creators around the world.
  
• The number of open video podcasts are on the rise. In November last year, Podcast Index listed 39,194 video podcasts. As of June this year, Podnews can reveal the number had grown by over a quarter to 50,863. We measured these by looking for enclosure files with the extension mov, mp4 or m4v, the three filetypes Apple Podcasts supports. Apple has recently put video podcasts in the spotlight again; Spotify launched its own proprietary video podcasts tool in April (which we can’t measure).

Send James & Sam a message

Support the show

Connect With Us:

• Email: [email protected]
• Fediverse: @[email protected] and @[email protected]
• Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support
• Get Podnews: podnews.net

Join James Cridland and Sam Sethi

INTERVIEW:

• Bryan Barletta - Sounds Profitable

NEWS HEADLINES:

• “Nearly one in five weekly listeners say that YouTube is their primary service for podcasts. This is why I twitch a little every time I hear a podcast tell listeners to 'subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcasts.' Are you sure?” - in his latest newsletter, Tom Webster shares some data that might convince you to get your podcast onto YouTube.
  
• James has written how to auto-publish your podcast to YouTube
  
• After Podnews highlighted Fireside Chat’s terms of service following its public launch at Podcast Movement, the company released updated terms late last week. The new terms (differences here) seek to clarify the 'General Media Release’ section about ownership of content, and one clause has been removed. We have reviewed Fireside’s new terms and conditions.
  
• So what happens to podcasting when IP addresses go away? In Sounds Profitable this week with Chartable, Bryan Barletta highlights who wins - and who loses.
  
• It’s time to hang up the egos and move beyond IP addresses, says Dave Jones, writing on The Podcast Index’s blog. The post highlights a new way to get better podcast analytics, using a “ULID” URL parameter, and listen stats.
  
• A new podcast report was released in Germany on Thursday. Hitting the right tone: Germany’s podcast boom was released by the Otto B

Send James & Sam a message

Buzzsprout
Start 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 show

Connect With Us:

• Email: [email protected]
• Fediverse: @[email protected] and @[email protected]
• Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support
• Get Podnews: podnews.net