We start with an exclusive today. Evergreen Podcasts has acquired Rhapsody Voices. The deal unites the teams, talent and assets of both companies. Rhapsody Voices founder Mike Jensen becomes Chief Business Officer at Evergreen. We have an interview with Mike Jensen in the Podcast Business Journal back in September 2023. We link to that today from our show
notes and our newsletter at podnews.net. We also link to the winners of the Audio Production Awards in the UK which announced at the end of last week. Podcasting is the fastest growing ad format in Australia. According to data from the IAB in the country, podcast advertising for the quarter was up by 26.5% year on year. The quarter's total revenue was US$20.5 million. Podcasts account for 40% of all online audio ad spend in the country.
Evergreen has returned to the list of companies certified to the IAB Podcast Measurement Guidelines. The company is now certified to version 2.2. BBC Sounds, the broadcaster's proprietary radio, music and podcast app has signed a licensing deal with Goalhanger to carry two of its podcasts. The shows will be ad-free and time delayed. The Rest is Football will be delayed by two days while The Rest is History
will be delayed by eight weeks. The shows will continue to be available elsewhere. Goalhanger will receive a fee from the BBC for its shows to be available in this way which we understand is based on total listens within the BBC Sounds app. Goalhanger was one of the companies most fiercely opposed to the BBC's podcast monetisation plans which were designed to push audiences to the BBC Sounds app.
PodPage now supports Podroll lists. A Podroll, supported by podcast hosts like Buzzsprout, Blubrry, RSS.com and Transistor and by apps like Podcast Guru and TrueFans, let you recommend other shows to your listeners. Now if it's in your RSS feed, Podpage automatically creates a page for its pro users. We link to a example page today and also our podcast pages also support that too.
Spotify for Creators is discontinuing its US-only listener support programme which let listeners pledge a monthly recurring amount to support your show. After a period of learnings they say we are shutting down listener support on January 2nd 2025 to prioritise programmes and resources that are more impactful to creators. Alternatives include our sponsor, memberful.com.
Podcast Growth Connect tells us that a client has been following our podcast and deeply admires the value and actionable insights that we provide and would like to be a guest which is exciting. The company's unfinished website uses an address in Sydney that doesn't exist alongside a telephone number based elsewhere. The client apparently wants to be a guest on our new podcast trailers feed which we don't actually make.
"Those are not automated email," said Anisur Rahman-Shuvo, the company's founder. "My team members research them from the internet. Sometimes leads could be mismatched. It's a general issue." And he added, "Please keep your nose aside." It's a Monday so time for some tech stuff and the podcasting 2.0 board meeting this week discussed a significant change to the mechanism behind streaming payments in podcasts.
The proposal is to optionally be able to link a podcast app to an existing service like Strike, a bitcoin banking app, or to a Noster wallet for payment and to use a new protocol - LN address - to receive money. The required changes to receive money will require updates to existing streaming payment apps and to every podcast RSS feed that accepts streaming payments. Currently, payment details are hard-coded in the RSS feed and use Keysend which is a
protocol that only podcasting uses. The change is move payment details out of the feed into a file containing one or more payment destination addresses and it offers more interoperability with other payment platforms. Other benefits include easier onboarding for listeners and leaving the system open to bank transfers or even credit card payments in future. The streaming payment piece is important to get right, painful
though change can be. Suzanne Santo had a song played on 'Boostagram Ball' episode 26 and within five minutes of the show ending said "So far, I've accumulated $7.77, which is more than I've received from Spotify after 28,000 plays." And just to put that into context, 'Boostagram Ball' only gets a thousand plays a week. Joining Bluesky like everybody else? Do your brand a favour and use your domain name as a nickname. Easier to read out on your podcast and comes with
full verification. Bluesky has a guide that we link to today. You can find us on Bluesky. We're at podnews.net. Just as simple as that. You can also find our sponsors for this section, rss.com over there as well. And in podcast news, it was 20 years ago this week that the first podcast came from Australia. This is what it sounded like.
Alright, welcome to the very first edition of G'day World, the Aussie blog cast. I'm Cameron in Melbourne and this is Mick in Sydney.
The voice of Cameron Reilly. G'day World episode one also included a section called 'The Problems with the name podcasting'. How things have changed. Cameron went on to run The Podcast Network which had more than 100 shows by 2007. His current feed contains a chat with Ewan Spence 20 years on. Looking back at their history in the space, Cameron is now based
in Brisbane. Podtastic Audio covers the dirty secrets of podcast scams and how to spot them this week from fake listener boost services to phony sponsorships and sketchy guest booking offers. Channels with Peter Kafka interviews Chris Balfe of Red Seat Ventures who helps stars find audiences and make money via podcasts
and YouTube. Balfe notes that unlike podcasts, 70% of viewers of his content on YouTube find it because of the "algorithm" and in Kafka's words "An algorithm that brought them there today is an algorithm that could not bring them there tomorrow." Stephen Bartlett's Diary of a CEO has reached 1 billion views and listens. Bartlett said "I owe the success of the Diary of a CEO to the now 50 strong team behind the scenes.
This is a result of their hard work and talent." The Dicks are coming to a small town near you. True crime show Small Town Dicks has announced its first tour, taking in tiny places like Portland, Phoenix, Denver and Los Angeles in February. Fans of the show will get a rare glimpse into the detective's experience during an interrogation. The Archery Parent Podcast launches today, the only archery podcast hosted by an archery
mum. The show offers expert interviews, practical advice and real-time stories to help parents navigate the unique and relatively unknown world of archery and to assist them with supporting archers at every level, all around the world. And unlike the Archery podcast which launches today, The Archers is an everyday story of country folk and slightly confusingly doesn't mention archery at all. Broadcast since 1951, this 12 minute daily show has over 5 million listeners in the UK.
In the latest episode, Jacob finds himself on the spot and some new arrivals cause chaos in Ambridge. This podcast is sponsored by CoHost. Uncover the seniority, department, companies and industries your listeners work in, using CoHost's B2B analytics feature to drive revenue. You can book a demo today, you'll find the link in our show notes. And that's the latest from our newsletter. To read all the stories and subscribe, we're at podnews.net.