I do believe the spike in podcast popularity will be good for its myriad providers in many ways. The rising tide and all of that good stuff. But I do worry that many of its most unique independent voices will get bulldozed as big companies rush to construct skyscrapers. It is our job as listeners, fans and podcasters to make sure those voices are not drowned out.

Independent Podcasts

Last Friday, a group of podcast publishers and related operatives announced the formation of something called the Podcast Academy, which they described as a nonprofit organization dedicated to “elevating awareness and excitement for podcasts as a major media category and advancing knowledge and relationships in and around the business.”

Its various activities will involve things like holding educational webinars, organizing networking events, and publishing white papers. But its flagship endeavor seems to be an awards program to be called the Golden Mics — or, as people are already calling it, the Oscars of podcasting.

Podcasting Is Getting Its Own Oscars. Will It Work?

The soundproof Staples Connect Podcast Studios, developed in partnership with iHeartRadio, will include professional equipment -- a RODECaster Pro control board, RODE microphones and SHURE headphones -- and space for up to four people.

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Starting a podcast is easy. Making one that actually sounds good is another story entirely. We can not help much with the bigger problems facing would-be podcasters -- finding a good topic and getting people to listen -- but we can point you to the best gear to get started. With a few smart purchases, you too can sound like a podcast pro.

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For years, Apple has been the forefront of podcasting. While audioblogging had been around for a while, there is an argument that it was Apple that really invented what we know as a podcast with the introduction of the iPod. Without doubt it was its innovations that sent it mainstream.

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Technologically-enhanced journalism has seen proliferation of online broadcasting channels, blogs and online newspapers. All these are set up in a bid to mainly attract curious millennials, and to offer alternative platforms to the wider content consumers.

In Kenya, online newspapers and TV streaming services have been touted as the next frontier in the media industry.

Legacy media outlets find this both as a challenge and opportunity at the same time. As much as they are a source of new revenue streams, these new digital channels offer tough competition that has seen the traditional media outlets’ earnings substantially shrink.

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Vox Media Podcast Network now generates over $10 million a year in revenue from a roster of more than 200 shows across Voxs 14 brands, including those produced with partners like Stitcher. While president of Vox Media Studios Marty Moe would not disclose revenue figures, he said the goal is to double the eight-figure revenue business. This would mean a minimum of $20 million in 2020. In all, Vox Media worked with over 100 different podcast advertisers last year and he said he expects this number to grow this year, although the focus is on expanding hit podcasts.

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As podcasts continue to grow in popularity, politicians are increasingly using the medium to reach the public without having to go through traditional news media.

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The company behind the hit true-crime podcast Serial is exploring a sale, according to a person familiar with the matter, putting one of digital audios biggest brands on the market as the medium becomes increasingly popular.

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Spotify, the Swedish music and audio streaming giant, has extended its reach further into the growing podcast market with its formal acquisition of the Ringer, a US sports and pop culture platform.

Although Spotify announced the acquisition at the beginning of this month, more details of the deal emerged this week in a filing with the Security and Exchange Commission.

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Podcasts have never been more popular than they are today.

In fact, there are more than 800,000 active podcasts as of 2019, which is a number that only looks to increase in the years to come.

So why are podcasts so popular?

Because they are incredibly huge moneymakers.

Almost a third of Americans listen to at least one podcast a month, and advertisers have noticed.

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Podcasts are growing; we are all going to make millions, get on it, quick! This seems to be the general consensus at the minute.

Now, I can understand the excitement, I’m excited too. A passionate, engaged audience, an intimate environment, niche targeting opportunities; it’s hard not to be interested. So, it’s absolutely no surprise that 75% of brands expect to spend big in the podcast realm this year.

How you do it is the important thing. Fundamentally, you have two options - either to advertise in the space or make your own branded podcast.

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Podcasting has enormous potential for publishers, given the mobile portability of the format and the possibility of converting text content into a spoken-word format listeners can consume while doing other activities. The IAB estimated the podcasting advertising market in the United States may exceed $1 billion by next year, a tenfold increase since 2015.

That estimate is encouraging, but podcasting needs to catch up to the needs of sponsors to become more viable amid a crowded media marketplace.

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We have seen how the radio industry has steadily increased its digital revenue, crossing the $1 billion mark in 2019, according to the RAB. As radio stations look to generate new business, to battle digital monsters Facebook and Google who are coming for their local ad dollars, could podcasting be radio’s next revenue star?

Radio has certainly gotten into the podcast content game, with big companies launching their own networks, some creating original content and most stations converting on-air shows to on-demand podcasts. Revenue has been somewhat elusive so far.

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Spotifys continued investment in podcasts appears to be paying off, after the company reported that podcast listening has increased by 200 percent year-on-year in its fourth quarter earnings today. The company says it now has over 700,000 podcasts on its platform, and that over 16 percent of its users now listen to podcasts. Spotify says the amount of users paying for its premium tier increased to 124 million.

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Chasing industry trends, iHeart Media is about to become the latest audio company to release a custom ad network. Executives say iHeartPodcast AdSuite will tempt brands and potential partners—and set the company apart from its competitors—with a unique array of ad formats across platforms and custom tools.

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Podcast listeners make for an interesting audience segment for B2B brands. According to recent reports on podcasting, 74% of podcast listeners want to learn new things, and they are more likely to be active on social media and follow companies. That means podcasts pose a unique opportunity to generate qualified leads and brand advocates.

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A tool called Headliner is solving the discoverability issue in podcasting in a couple different ways, for both consumers and creators.

On the creation side, Headliner allows podcasters to upload snippets of their podcasts, which Headliner transforms into videos, complete with automatic captions and spiffy images or clips of your choice. The resulting files, called audiograms, can be uploaded to the social media site of your choice (unlike audio files, which no major social network allows to be uploaded).

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Podcasting is becoming the fastest growing audio platform in the world, with new shows created each week.

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The decision to implement a private podcast is a critical first step to improving your business communication, but there are a number of other important decisions you have to make before the show becomes a reality. In this article, we’ll focus on one unavoidable decision: what type of equipment should you buy?

The answer, perhaps unsatisfyingly, is that it depends. However, here are the questions you should be asking yourself as you begin the search for podcasting gear.

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Apple Podcasts reported to have 800,000 shows and over 30 million episodes as of December 2019. According to Edison Research and Triton Digital, there are currently 62 million Americans who listen to podcasts each week.

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Advantage: Convenience

With podcasting, you do not have to worry that your audience is busy offline when you make your sales pitch. A listener can download the file and replay it at whatever time is convenient for him, even while jogging or driving to work. If someone chooses to subscribe to your podcast feed, he can get any podcasts of interest downloaded automatically. If you want all your employees to hear what you have to say, podcasting is often easier than trying to get everyone together for one meeting.

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From a walk along Watling Street to exploring space or the music of west Africa, these podcasts will take you out of your living room and into another world

10 Best Travel Podcasts

Public media have a real lead in the podcasting arena — which is burgeoning. But can public media hold that edge?

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Like so many people throughout the country, we at NPR's Student Podcast Challenge are working from home right now. And after months of teaching students how to make a homemade podcast, we put our skills to the test: The latest episode of our podcast was recorded from our bedrooms.


Host/producer Lauren Migaki recorded a podcast from her home/pillow fort studio.

We used pillow forts (just like in our how-to video!), bulky headphones and special, professional-grade microphones. But don't let the equipment discourage you — with just a couple tweaks you can use essentially the same setup: Replace the headphones with earbuds, and the mics with a mobile device like a cell phone or tablet, and you are ready to go!

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Like blogs and social media, podcasts are democratizing the way people share their thoughts with the world, with the episodic audio series continuing to gain traction with listeners seeking both entertainment value and educational dialogue.

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Over the last five-plus years of my podcast, I have turned down a number of interview offers with artists who were not able to meet face to face. I know a lot of folks who do great podcasts remotely, and I have even done a few (relatively okay) ones myself. But there is really no replacement for being able to do an interview face to face. So much nuance is lost amongst the cloud compression algorithms.

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Podcasting accommodates individuals who prefer to passively consume information (meaning they choose what they want when they want it).

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Seventy-five percent of Americans aged 12 and older (about 212 million people) are now familiar with podcasting, up from 70 percent in 2019. Fifty-five percent (155 million) listen to podcasts in general while 37 percent (104 million people) listen to podcasts monthly, up from 32 percent (90 million) in 2019.

It is more important than ever that brands create content easily retrievable through voice as consumption of both podcasts and voice-operated assistants rise. Over six in ten Americans use some form of voice assistant technology and nearly one-third of smart speaker owners have three or more devices in their homes.

Other noteworthy survey findings include smartphone ownership growing to 240 million, smart speaker awareness growing to about 220 million and smart speaker ownership growing to 76 million. The mean number of smart speakers per household grew from 1.7 in 2018 to 2.2 in 2020. As smart speaker ownership increased, radio ownership decreased, as the mean number of radios per household went from three in 2008 to 1.5 in 2020.

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That podcasting is on the rise should come as a surprise to no one. But the Jacobs Media Tech Survey 2020 gives this trend some granularity. According to their research, more than one in four now listen to podcasts weekly, or more often.

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FEDERATED MEDIA has launched a podcast division, including a podcast network as well as production and marketing services, with 46 podcasts at launch, including original shows, branded podcasts, and repurposed radio content.

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What are the biggest digital marketing and branding trends shaping the year ahead? How will marketers approach increasing brand awareness, attracting new customers and growing revenue in an always on digital world where the only guarantee is change?

2020 will be like nothing we have seen before in the digital landscape.

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As the global COVID-19 pandemic sweeps the globe, it appears more people are turning to podcasts for news and scientific information as much as a distraction.

Acast, one of the world's largest podcast hosting and analytics companies, said new listening figures for March 21-22 saw a 7% increase in listens globally, equivalent to more than 750,000 podcast plays.

Although some categories experienced declines, podcasts in the education, entertainment, science, medicine and health genres were all up more than 10%.

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Can listeners find you? Or is your name and frequency too difficult to find on a voice-controlled device or in a device-controlled system in the car?

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Podcasts have transitioned from niche to mainstream. As Deloitte, Edison, and Nielsen, etc. all agree, audience growth for podcasts has been nothing short of phenomenal over the past year.

The global podcasting market will grow by 30% in 2020 to USD 1.1bn, Deloitte predicted, topping the billion-dollar mark for the first time. Now, a podcast producer can pull in revenue any number of ways, as the same report pointed out; advertising, content marketing, subscriptions, contracts for branded podcasts, events, and so on. All this hinges on audience reach, and a surefire way to widen that is, naturally, to go multilingual.

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There are now more than one million podcast shows on Apple Podcasts, according to Apple.

Let me reiterate: we do not mean episodes. We’re talking more than one million individual podcast shows: As in the shows which then release their episodes. That’s a lot of podcasts.

Apple confirmed in an email to Mashable that Apple Podcasts hit more than one million podcasts and that this milestone was reached on Monday, April 20.

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Podcast marketing is on a roll in 2020 with many companies releasing audio content to build trust, connect with their audience on a personal level, and boost brand awareness.

1. Ease of production
2. Low entry costs
3. Language is no barrier
4. Repurpose your blog and video content as audio
5. Less competition than blogging and YouTube
6. Easier to grow a following as a podcaster
7. Successful podcasters make millions of dollars a year
8. Build connections by interviewing influential guests
9. Showcase your speaking skills
10. Build high-DA links back to your website

With commuting on hold and everybody Zooming all the time, podcast consumption has taken a bit of a hit as listeners look for new ways to fit shows into their daily routines.

Last month, the analytics firm Chartable released research suggesting that podcast downloads were 10% lower on March 25 than they were on February 26.

Those numbers deserve to be taken with a grain of salt. Chartable, like Podtrac and other podcasting analytics services, is an opt-in analytics service, and many different podcast networks, ranging from Entercom to Vox Media, showed increased listening last month.

Storytelling is powerful.

With the influx of media—both social and traditional—getting consumed in a 24/7 news cycle can be overwhelming and optional. The concept of time seems irrelevant lately leaving our fingertips free for endless scrolling, a particularly slippery slope for mental health during this global pandemic.

Individuals, families and communities worldwide are learning how to grapple with the effects of a changing social paradigm, seeking ways to stay connected and safe.

Adaptability during this new paradigm is key and many tech companies are stepping up to the plate to perfect, iterate, and improve on products to keep up with a new normal and compete in an evolving landscape.

There are early signs that media will be one of many industries to take a huge blow from the COVID-19 pandemic, with sharp declines in ad revenue and significant layoffs. Podcasting is unlikely to be an exception; Podtrac recently reported that downloads have fallen 10% since the beginning of March, while unique listeners fell by 20%.

A different picture emerged when I spoke to Ross Adams,  CEO of podcast advertising company Acast, which works with both bedroom podcasters and large publishers like the BBC and PBS NewsHour.

Adams said listenership is not down — it’s just that audiences have changed when they are listening and what they’re listening to, with Acast  seeing its largest weekends ever in recent weeks. And plenty of people want to start new podcasts; signups for the Acast Open platform increased 49% month-over-month in March.

If the music industry is worried about podcasts eating into music’s share of the American audio diet, new survey data suggests that such worries are unfounded: Podcasts’ share increased at the expense of music a couple of years ago but has held steady ever since. Instead, the rising number of podcast listeners are coming from AM/FM radio. That’s what the numbers in new research from Edison Research, Triton Digital and National Public Radio show.

The Infinite Dial from Edison Research and Triton Digital is an annual survey that has been published for over 20 years. It originally covered listenership to digital radio such as Pandora and Sirius XM, but it has expanded to include other types of streaming music services, social media, podcasting and most recently esports; it has also tracked trends in consumer ownership of devices such as smartphones and smart speakers. The Infinite Dial is highly respected because of its methodological rigor and its year-to-year consistency over a long period of time. The 2020 edition of the Infinite Dial was released last week.

The podcast industry as a whole is expected to produce more than $1 billion by 2021, according to a new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

With that much money floating around, you have to wonder what is stopping you from getting your share.

Since many people are still stuck at home, craving connection and entertainment, there is really never been a better time for podcasting. And, contrary to what you might think, getting your own podcast off the ground is not just possible, it’s quite easy thanks to resources like

New Sony venture. Sony Music Entertainment announced another podcasting venture today, this time in the shape of a partnership with U.K. audio company Somethin Else. This continues a recent run of Sony investments in audio — previous examples include Jonathan Hirschs Neon Hum Media, Adam Davidson and Laura Mayers Three Uncanny Four and Renay Richardsons Broccoli Content.

Fifteen years after Apple first offered 3,000+ free podcasts on iTunes, the medium has become mainstream.

Basic Facts: According to Edison Research and Triton Digital, there are now 62 million Americans listening to podcasts each week, up from 19 million in 2013. One reason for the growth is the number of choices podcast listeners have today. There are now over 800,000 active podcasts with over 54 million podcast episodes currently available worldwide. Because of a low cost of entry, in the first ten months of 2019, a record 192,000 new podcasts have been launched.

Podcast Advertising: Another reason for the growth in podcasting is the potential income a popular podcast can earn from selling advertising. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PriceWaterhouse, ad revenue is expected to reach $679 million this year, increasing to $863 million in 2020 and over $1 billion by 2021. Popular podcasts can charge advertisers between $10 to $50 for every 1,000 listeners, approximately two or three times the ad rate for broadcast radio.

Megaphone, a podcasting hosting and advertising technology provider, has signed a lease at Comstock’s Reston Station.

The company will take up roughly 10,000 square feet in the first office building at the mixed-use development, the tower designed by architect Helmut Jahn at 1900 Reston Metro Plaza.

With 165,000 square feet of leased space, Google is the anchor tenant of the building. Other tenants include Rolls-Royce North America (18,000 square feet) and infrastructure management firm Solar Winds (16,349 square feet) and digital identify firm Certipath (7,500 square feet).

In order to understand how to start a podcast for your business, there are a few key elements to keep in mind.

Podcasting is a disruptive technology that has found acceptance in the present-day global digital market. From storytelling to interviews, there are podcasts for everything. And, if used correctly, podcasting can give your business a major boost by ensuring better customer and market reach, showcasing your industry expertise and forming extensive networks.

The popularity of podcasts is universal. In the U.S., about 40% of Americans above the age of 12 listened to a podcast in the year 2017. Imagine the potential channels and benefits the medium of podcasting can create for you if used correctly.

However, starting a successful business podcast is not a piece of cake. You need to be appropriately prepared before venturing into this project, especially if you plan on doing it without the help of a professional podcaster. There are certain technical and other related requirements you must take care of before you can even air your first podcast episode. But fret not; here are the crucial steps to start a podcast for your business.

More than half of the U.S. population over age 12 has now listened to a podcast, according to Edison Research. The medium has fundamentally altered the landscape for audio content, liberating and empowering both listeners and creators.

So you want to get into podcasting? By now, you have probably had a few friends launch their own podcasts and read a handful of articles on what it really takes to start a successful podcast. Our company has bought roughly a half a billion dollars worth of podcast ads over the last decade. We know a thing or two about what makes a podcast special.

Podcasting is one of the best ways to find and connect with your customers. Do it right and you’ll engage a growing community of loyal fans who hang on your every word and buy all your products and services. Do it wrong and you’ll end up broke. Most podcasters – some 85% – miss the opportunity to profit from podcasting while wasting precious dollars on fancy equipment. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

1. Be Your Own Sponsor
2. Reverse Engineer Your SEO
3. Know and Understand Your Audience
4. Incentivize Engagement With Gamification

In the wake of a seismic deal in the podcast industry that will see top host Joe Rogan bring his show exclusively to Spotify for a reported $100 million, Apple — which will lose distribution of Rogan’s show come 2021 — is revamping its own podcast approach.

According to Bloomberg, Apple — an early distribution platform for podcasts that is also the largest hub for the medium stateside — is now seeking an executive to lead development of original audio series. The exec would report to Ben Crave, Apple’s head of podcasting.