Comprehensive coverage of the podcasting industry and its business ecosystem.
Today brings an announcement from iHeartRadio that it has hired ex-TheBlaze, ex-TuneIn exec Chris Peterson as Senior Vice President of Podcasting. the announcement was made via an internal company memo. Peterson will oversee iHeartRadio’s overall podcast strategy and grow its profile in the podcast community. Continue Reading
NPR has hired a new general manager of podcasting. Neal Carruth is stepping into the role, shifting to the new position after service as the supervising senior editor for NPR’s business desk. Carruth has spent 17 years with the broadcaster, and will start the new job after Thanksgiving. Continue Reading
Spreaker’s CMS (content management system) has exited its beta stage and is now available for all the company’s podcast hosts. The features in this new tool include embedded player customization and multiple file management. Continue Reading
In an interesting development, Australian company Omny Studio has launched the Omny Discovery Feed, a personalized stream of podcast content that the company is comparing to Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist. Continue Reading
Podxref, a podcast search platform, announced that it has developed a new dimension to its service called Watchlist Notifications. Users can bookmark favorite shows, personalities, and locations, and then be notified when matching programs are available. Continue Reading
PRX-owned Radiotopia is adding two programs to its curated portfolio of podcasts. The Bugle is a satirical comedy show founded by John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman. The West Wing Weekly is a throwback fancast which offers a week-by-week discussion of the TV drama The West Wing Continue Reading
Podcast measurement company Podtrac today released its Top Podcasts report for September. It is the second monthly edition of that report, which started in August. In May of this year, Podtrac launched its Podcast Industry Ranking, which lists the top 10 podcast publishers. Continue Reading
With over 300,000 podcasts in the market, most of which are jammed into the narrow funnel of Apple’s Podcasts app, it’s no wonder that program discovery is a prominent pain point for consumers. Discovery is emerging as an issue for distributors, too — networks who are beating the bushes for talent to create new programs. Continue Reading
Bumpers is the newest mobile app exploring the podcast space. It allows people to record their own podcasts directly on their phone. The company secured $1 million in seed funding and its app is currently available on iOS. Spark Capital led the round, and Twitter co-founder and Medium CEO Evan Williams is involved as a strategic angel investor. Continue Reading
Australian podcast host Omny Studio released a new tool for sharing audio on Facebook. The company now offers automatically generated waveform videos called Visualised Audio. These customizable clips are intended to help podcasters get their shows ranked higher by the algorithms used by the social network. Continue Reading
At RAIN Summit Nashville in September, Steve Goldstein (Founder & CEO, Amplifi Media) moderated a panel called Podcast Forecast: What’s Next? The conversation went into fascinating detail about the present and future of on-demand audio. Click for full video. Continue Reading
Podtrac released its monthly podcast publisher rankings. The list shows the top Podtrac clients by unique monthly audience in the U.S., although it also shares the global unique streams and downloads for each publisher. After several months of little change to the order, September has a slight shake-up. Continue Reading