2025 Podcast Hall of Fame inductees announced

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• The inductees for the 2025 Podcast Hall of Fame have been announced. Those recognised include Sounds Profitable’s Tom Webster, She Podcasts’ Jessica Kupferman and Libsyn co-founder Dave Mansueto. The ceremony is on Jan 17 in Orlando FL. So far, all 51 inductees have been from the US.
• Fiction podcast The Program has released its year in review for 2024. The article contains how the show was marketed; how Spotify’s comments have been really helpful; download numbers; revenue; and even some choir music.
• On Nov 29 Podnews highlighted the Spotify exec who was ignoring video on Spotify, preferring to upload video directly to YouTube. Good news: Bill Simmons, who is currently Spotify’s Head of Podcast Monetization and Innovation, has today uploaded a video to Spotify.
  • The video starts with a... promotion of “our new YouTube Channel, Ringer Movies”, which includes full video episodes of The Rewatchables and The Big Picture, two podcasts which are unavailable in video on Spotify. Seems like that memo hasn’t entirely sunk in.

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• Blubrry has released its AI tools for all podcasters, not just those using Blubrry for hosting. There are a set of AI tools around pre-planning, transcripts, episode art and social promotion.
• Research company Kantar has focused on how effective podcast advertising is. The data - not paid-for by a podcast ad sales company - is independent, helpful, and (mostly) positive.
• SiriusXM has launched the Women’s Empowerment Network, starting with two new shows. “The Women’s Empowerment Network is a destination where women can come together and be heard in ways that are authentic, uplifting, and transformative,” said Karen Hunter.
• CoHost rolled out an improved B2B Podcast Analytics feature, with new features for improving listener and lead identification and measuring the ROI for podcast initiatives.
• A new browser-based video editing tool, your.mov, has launched. Of specific interest to podcasters: “Upload podcast audio or video and your.MOV creates engaging visuals and animations, alongside text commentary.”
• The old joke “if you want to keep something a secret, put it in a podcast after the midroll” might have some truth to it after all: The Times of London reports about an interview with the Director-General of MI5, the UK’s domestic security agency, spilling secrets in a podcast made for the UK civil service.
• Further reading: Novel’s Willard Foxton writes about previous “pivots to video”: “I remember particularly an exec at BBC3 saying to me once "who cares about a linear channel, we're getting 50 million views a week on Facebook" and then he looked like he'd been hit in the face with a frying pan when Facebook decided it wanted Russian dashcam videos not pop doc content, and traffic fell by literally 98% overnight.” ... Regina Larko writes that we are at risk of losing the power that audio-only podcasts hold ...

The Tech Stuff

• Dave Winer, the co-inventor of podcasting, has posted a concern that we’re “losing the word podcast”, and giving the idea of a “listening list” feature for podcast apps. (We think it’s quite close to the “podroll” already implemented in Podcasting 2.0).
• A $140 microphone can sound like one costing $3,595 - with just one small change to one internal capacitor, according to the Aftermath website, which mods an AKG Perception to make it sound just like a Neumann U 87.
• Our posts on Bluesky look nicer now. Find us over there as @podnews.net (of course).
• Truefans, a website and podcast app, has launched a superfans chart. If you’re a particular podcast’s “superfan”, you’ll share in 1% of all the payments that go to the podcast. The app also now supports music artist pages and radio feeds.
• The Podcasting 2.0 “board meeting” last week discussed the switch for streaming payments to use LNaddress; and Godcaster, Adam Curry’s new project for faith-based radio stations.

Tips and tricks

• Riverside has a whole host of online tools including a free transcription service, which doesn’t require registration and converts your audio into TXT or SRT. There’s also a podcast name generator, a test for your microphone or webcam, and other tools.
• Arielle Nissenblatt gives ideas for getting press for your podcast. “Before you pitch, ask them how they like to receive pitches,” she says - please don’t bother for us, just read this.

Podcast News

• Wrongful Conviction has made it to episode 500 today. Today's episode tells the the story of Stacy Larson, who maintains that he was wrongfully convicted of second-degree murder. For 34 years, he has languished behind bars, despite having an alibi and a complete lack of physical evidence linking him to the crime. The show is from Lava for Good and distributed by iHeart Podcasts.
• Fire Escape is released on open RSS today from Wondery - telling the remarkable story of Amika Mota, who was sentenced to almost ten years in one of the largest women’s prisons in the world, and her identity-shifting work as an incarcerated first responder. The show is a Wondery and KQED’s Snap Studios production.

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