Serial’s creator on podcasting, ten years on

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• True-crime podcast Serial is almost ten years old, and Sarah Koenig is interviewed for The Guardian in the UK. She had never listened to a podcast before making it; she didn’t pay any attention to social media while making it; she also says that very few people noticed season four; and that the current podcast industry is in “a very worrisome cycle”.
• Subscription podcast company Podimo has acquired Tonny Media, a Dutch podcast production house. Podimo also own Netherlands company Dag en Nacht Media, and the company is now making profit in the country, according to today’s announcement.
• In the US, the FTC has announced that from October 21, it will be illegal to sell or purchase fake consumer reviews, and to sell or purchase fake “indicators of social media influence”. We’re not lawyers, but we’d think this would include dodgy podcast promoters who use techniques to increase reviews and chart positions, and would also include the creators that buy their services. (Our Editor interviewed a podcast promoter once, and now feels slightly sorry for Gary).

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• Podcast iOS player Overcast has brought back a few features. Smart Speed now displays its current speed again, so you can show off at how fast you can listen; and streaming playback, which was removed a month ago, has returned “by popular request”.
• Podcasts Used to Be Ad-Light Oases. Not Anymore. “Some hosts and industry executives worry ad creep will hurt the medium for both listeners and marketers,” says this article from The Wall Street Journal. Oxford Road’s Dan Granger is quoted: “This is not going in a direction that’s going to end well for any of us.”
• Omny Studio and Headliner have partnered to get customer podcasts onto the video platform.
• It’s important to disclose your sponsors, says media lawyer David Oxenford. “If you are paid or otherwise given something of value to promote a product or service, disclose it.”
• Independent podcast analytics tool OP3 has added a “Top African Regions” box for any podcasters with more than 3% traffic in the continent. Here’s an example show. It’s free to set up.
• Your podcast page, like ours, might be censored on Facebook in Canada. (Thanks, David). Guess you’ll need to look at our website directly, eh.
• Further reading: Joe Casabona’s Podcast Movement;

The Tech Stuff

• Above - what a request from the Apple Podcasts web player looks like, as seen by OP3. The user-agent looks like a browser; but the “referer” header makes it clear that this is coming from Apple Podcasts. Many podcast hosting companies (Ausha, Buzzsprout, Spreaker, Captivate and Transistor), and OP3, are using the referer to count these as Apple Podcasts downloads.
• We still don’t know how Apple Podcasts Connect sees plays on the Apple Podcasts web player. Spotify says that plays on their embedded player only count if a user is logged-in; and we would expect that to be the same in Apple Podcasts for the web. Would anyone like to test this theory?
• Programming podcast things in Rust? The v4v crate might help, with a splits calculation function and Alby API tools.
• A new symbol for the fediverse has been proposed. The symbol is ⁂ and we like it, so you’ll find that on our website we’ve switched out the impractical old multi-coloured logo thing, and/or the Mastodon logo, to this instead. You can follow us there, by the way: @updates@podnews.net
• Audiobookshelf is a self-hosted audiobook and podcast server.

Tips and tricks

• Master audience engagement by creating listener personas with Ausha’s guide.
• Learn Ausha’s key strategies to build a dedicated audience for your podcast.
• The Top 5 Podcasts Every Podcaster Should Listen To includes ours: it’s from the host of PodQuesting, Dwight J Randolph.

Podcast News

• New, with Airwave: Curated by Chance is a podcast where creativity meets serendipity. Each episode, filmmaker Neal E. Fischer and art curator Lauren Tagliaferro harness the power of a randomizing algorithm named Chance to generate unique prompts that drive their discussions, inviting listeners to ponder the influence of chance in the creative process.
  • Sunday Sports Club with Allison Kuch has joined the Dear Media podcast network, and is the network's first sports show. New episodes will air on Sundays. Allison has followed husband Isaac Rochell around the NFL for the past 7 years, and promises a behind the scenes perspective like no other.
• In the latest School of Podcasting, Dave Jackson interviews our Editor, James Cridland, about his PodProtect.email service. He interviewed me in a busy pub, but also explains how he used a plugin to clean up the audio. (But that's why we're both shouting at each other).
• Podcasting 2.0 this week featured our Editor, James Cridland. Adam, Dave and James talked about Podcast Movement and plenty of other slightly random things - James was in Reagan National airport in Washington DC.
• The Funny Comics Fan Club is from Dr Mark Hibbett and not-a-doctor John Dredge. The show looks at a different issue of a British kids comic, like Beano, Nutty, and, in the first edition released last week, a 1979 issue of Jackpot.

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