October 2, 2018
Spotify, the second-largest podcast platform in the world, has today released a dedicated podcasters portal. The website now lets you instantly add your podcast, even if you're not with a partner host; and promises audience consumption data including gender, age and location. Unlike Apple Podcasts, there is no editorial approval process.
Apple Podcasts last week suggested that podcasters use AAC rather than MP3. The makers of the Castro podcast app crunched the numbers: only 11.8% of all episodes released in the past ten days are AAC; 86.5% were MP3. (We would recommend sticking with MP3.)
Edison Research unveiled some data about in-car audio. Podcasting appeared not to be in the list, so we checked - it's part of the "other" category, at less than 4% of all audio listened-to in the car . Larry Rosin, who presented the data, told us:
"While podcast listening is clearly growing, for most people, listening to a podcast in the car is just more trouble than it’s worth. The radio that is baked into the car is easy to use, comes with a life time of habituation, and provides great (or good enough) content for the overwhelming majority of people. Blend that with the fact that most individual rides are not that long, and bothering with a podcast (or audiobook) is just not worth it for most people."
Ofcom, the UK media regulator, released data showing UK podcast listening is "booming". "The number of weekly podcast listeners has almost doubled in five years – from 3.2 million in 2013 to 5.9m in 2018" - 11% of UK adults are listening to podcasts. While not entirely comparable, Edison Research data claims that figure is 17% in the US.
Data from the Indian podcast market - Aman Goklani from Audioboom shared consumption data, including that 77 per cent of the listeners in India are consuming podcasts on mobile phones. You can watch his full speech here.
Gimlet Media have unveiled their Q3 2018 lineup. It includes a horror show, and Alex Blumberg has a new interview show.
The Australian ABC is announcing tomorrow the outcome of their AU$1m podcast fund, which was announced last year.
The Podcast Brunch Club's playlist for October is all about the sharing economy.
Adam Curry doesn't like CJR's assertion that the podcast bubble has burst.
PANIC: Amazon has started making its own mattresses.
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