Apple Podcasts: most popular podcasts of 2024

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• Apple Podcasts shared the “most popular podcasts of 2024”. There’s more to the lists than just the US, though - we’ve compiled a list of the top shows in most English-speaking countries; plus, a way for you to view the top charts for 33 different places.
• Podcast host Ausha has launched two new tools as part of its Podcast Search Optimisation features. The PSO Checker gives recommendations to help optimise your titles, description and tags; and the PSO Live Search lets you compare your podcast with your competitors.
• “Spotify playlists and podcasts are being abused by spammers to link to pirate websites”, says Digital Music News, noting six-second podcasts that actually serve to link to websites. This isn’t entirely new - back in 2022, RSS.com’s Alberto Betella shared details of how that company deals with spam podcasts, mostly promoting Dubai sex workers.

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• Journalists in Europe are being invited to take part in the European Podcast Academy, a five-day educational event dedicated to advancing the art of podcasting. The event is in Milan, Italy, in mid-March.
• The Australian Podcast Ranker was released for October. Triton Digital is set to introduce a new ranker capability that will rank the podcast category by monthly listener, and integrate Triton Demos+ data.
• If you’re a registered owner of a Focusrite audio interface, you get to claim a free set of the iZotope Ozone 11 Elements mastering plugin.
• Libsyn Ads have announced an exclusive ad partnership with Envy Media’s Humble Brag with Crystal and Cynthia.
• Libsyn also released the company’s download statistics. Apple Podcasts improved its download share in October, up by 0.8%. (We know this isn’t a great number to measure, but it’s the only one we have).

Focus

Since 1996, The Webby Awards has been recognized as the preeminent international honor for Internet excellence. Last year’s Webby Awards received nearly 13,000 entries from around the world.

This year, The Webby Awards has expanded recognitions for independent creators with Best Indie Podcast and Best Indie Podcast - Limited Run in Features and is now honoring Best Creator or Influencer Series in Features and History in Individual Episode. Don’t forget, Podcast Company of the Year, a Special Achievement award recognizing the podcast company with the most accolades across the 29th Annual Webby Awards competition.

New judges for Podcasts this year include: Shannon Sharpe, NFL Hall of Famer & Host, Club Shay Shay & NightCapt, Michael Bosstick, Co-Founder, Dear Media, Ben Cave, Director, Apple Podcasts, Carrie Lieberman Chief Operating Officer, iHeartPodcasts, Bob Carrigan, CEO, Audible, and Sahar Elhabashi, Head of Podcast Business, Spotify.

Learn more, and enter the 29th Annual Webby Awards by the Final Entry Deadline on December 20th, 2024.

Moves and Hires

• Jim Ballas has been promoted to General Manager, Measurement, at Magellan AI. Ballas will oversee the company’s growing suite of measurement solutions.
• Congratulations to Jen Sargent, the CEO of Wondery, and the former publisher of the Podcast Business Journal, Streamline Media’s Deborah Parenti, for being among those honoured in the Gracies Leadership Awards.

The Tech Stuff

• Producing creator transcripts in RSS? The WebVTT format allows you to specify speaker names (which appear in Apple Podcasts transcripts), and work with web browsers too; so if you’re only going to support one format, we’d recommend this one. But: while the WebVTT format has no formal line length definition, we’d recommend no more than 65 characters per line: it’ll help podcast apps display captions, and adds better timing information. --split-on-word --max-len 65 is your friend, if you’re using whisper-cpp.
• An enhanced podcast:location tag is coming to Podcasting 2.0 - which lets you associate shows (and episodes) with locations: “This is a podcast about the Eiffel Tower” and “This is a podcast recorded in New York”. There’s a JavaScript tag generator here; and the specification discussion is here.
• If you show podcast descriptions and episode notes, as mentioned above, spammers are targeting podcast directories to hope that you link out to their naughty websites. Our podcast pages mark all links from podcasts as rel=“ugc”, following Google’s recommendations, which essentially makes these links worthless to spammers. You might want to check you’re doing the same.

Tips and tricks

• These tricks to get live captions for every podcast you listen to - on whatever app you use - also work for every remote recording tool, like Riverside, Cleanfeed or SquadCast.

Podcast News

• We covered the launch of Routes, the new show for British train company LNER, a few weeks ago. We mentioned that the show is even being promoted in station platform announcements - here’s what that sounds like. Her next guest is Candice Brathwaite.
• Table Read has just hit 5 million downloads and continued to keep a top 10 spot on Apple’s Fiction chart for 74 consecutive weeks. It’s also among the first podcasts to secure a SAG-AFTRA partnership, setting a new benchmark in audio storytelling and creator protections. Each episode features a selection of exceptional, award-winning scripts performed live by a talented cast of up to 20 working actors in a world-class studio.
• Pantsuit Politics has joined Lemonada Media. The weekly series is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers, who listeners describe as “America’s political therapists” and “our trusted, smarter friends who can help us make sense of the world. The show promises real conversations that help us understand politics, democracy, and the news, while still treating each other like thoughtful human beings.
• Stop blaming boomers, says the host of new podcast Grandparenthood. Every episode offers wisdom and practical steps on how to grandparent from a distance, the value of grandparenting, spiritual support and what is distinct about a grandfather and grandmother.
• Views on First is new from the Knight First Amendment Institute, exploring the ways the US government uses the border as a justification for censorship and surveillance. It launched last week; future episodes look at the government’s online surveillance of visa applicants, phone searches at the border, and more.
• The Bruce Lee Podcast launched its eighth season today, featuring six new episodes with sport and entertainment luminaries. Each episode is aimed at amplifying how Lee’s philosophy can guide listeners in their professional pursuits and personal lives, while exploring topics that range from process and authenticity, to Taoist thought, self-realization, flow and tools to help us navigate life.
• A new comedy podcast launched last week from Absolute Radio's Andy Bush, about the always hilarious subject of death. DEADPOD looks at famous deaths in TV soap operas, villainous deaths in popular fiction, dead technology, strange burial rituals in ancient civilisations, incredibly weird historical deaths… Bush and co-host Brian Murphy will cover it all.

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