Latest / KACC / Podnews Daily - podcast industry and podcasting ne... - Maple Media buys the indie Castro app

Transcript

Podnews Daily - podcast industry and podcasting ne... - Maple Media buys the indie Castro app · KACC

• 0:00
  From our free daily newsletter, the latest from podnews.net with
• 0:04
  Soundstack.
• 0:06
  We start with an exclusive today. The Castro podcast app has
• 0:10
  been bought by Maple Media, according to its Apple App Store
• 0:14
  listing.
• 0:15
  Maple Media is a company that buys apps and acquired Player FM
• 0:19
  in April 2020, Podkicker in July 2020 and Breaker in February
• 0:24
  2022.
• 0:26
  Castro was acquired by Dustin Bluck in January 2024 from its
• 0:31
  previous owners, a VC company called Tiny.
• 0:34
  We've reached out to him for comment, but on a company blog, Bluck
• 0:38
  recently posted a reflective piece about independent podcast
• 0:42
  apps, which are, in his words, dying.
• 0:46
  Indie podcast apps are part of what makes podcasting great, but
• 0:50
  they do appear to be in decline.
• 0:52
  For a keynote at the podcast show London, we analysed downloads
• 0:56
  in the UK for the last three years.
• 0:58
  In 2024, 38% of downloads were to independent podcast apps.
• 1:04
  By 2025, that had fallen to 36%, and in 2026, just 31% were to
• 1:10
  indie podcast apps.
• 1:12
  A cut of podcast ad revenue in return for better analytics might
• 1:16
  help.
• 1:17
  Otherwise, the only differentiator for an indie app might just
• 1:21
  be ad skipping.
• 1:23
  It's emerged that Apple acqui-hired some of the team behind Hux,
• 1:27
  an AI podcast app, in June.
• 1:30
  Hux has closed, but its website is still visible.
• 1:34
  The service made podcasts from your email, calendar, and
• 1:36
  anything else you wanted,
• 1:38
  and you could ask it to generate you a personal podcast about
• 1:42
  anything.
• 1:42
  If you think it sounds similar to Google's Notebook LM, you'd be
• 1:46
  right.
• 1:47
  Hux was founded by former Google developers who worked on that
• 1:50
  project.
• 1:51
  Apple's team lets them make job offers to specific employees and
• 1:55
  allows them a licence to use their technology.
• 1:59
  Former Guardian journalist Marina Hyde has partnered with Goalhanger's
• 2:03
  Goalhanger X division
• 2:05
  to launch a new platform called Always On.
• 2:08
  She'll host a YouTube show and will write on Substack, and while
• 2:12
  she will continue to host The Rest is Entertainment,
• 2:15
  the release doesn't mention podcasting, other than suggesting
• 2:18
  that there might be further audio formats in the future.
• 2:21
  It's the first launch from Goalhanger X, which describes itself
• 2:25
  as building creator-led media businesses around distinctive
• 2:28
  personalities,
• 2:30
  spanning publishing, video, social audio, membership, live, and
• 2:33
  IP, rather than being tied to a single platform.
• 2:36
  On the Podbiz podcast this week is Stacey Newhouse, SVP of
• 2:40
  Marketplace at Soundstack.
• 2:43
  The money in podcasting, she thinks, is in reach extension,
• 2:47
  allowing you to reach the right audience wherever they are
• 2:50
  and whatever they're listening to, rather than only targeting
• 2:53
  business people by ads on business podcasts.
• 2:56
  The BBC announced a number of cuts, including cuts for sports
• 3:00
  podcasts,
• 3:01
  and the overall volume of the podcast slate on BBC Sounds will
• 3:06
  be reduced to make space for new formats, they say.
• 3:09
  The budget for BBC Sounds is reported to have been cut by at
• 3:13
  least 10%,
• 3:14
  although the budget has never been published in its annual
• 3:17
  report,
• 3:18
  so we're not quite sure what that means in real numbers.
• 3:21
  And North Korea fired a missile more than 900 kilometers and
• 3:25
  four more stories you missed while you were asleep.
• 3:28
  Cheery, that's While You Were Out, a fully automated 90-second
• 3:33
  AI-anchored daily news podcast.
• 3:36
  It's updated 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. Central.
• 3:39
  It doesn't disclose its AI in the audio, but does in the
• 3:41
  descriptions,
• 3:42
  and claims it's balanced and fact-checked.
• 3:46
  It's a Monday, so time for some tech stuff,
• 3:48
  and RSS.com has added a free transcription tool which works in
• 3:52
  your browser and is available for everyone.
• 3:55
  You'll find it at transcribe.rss.io, and it works quite nicely.
• 4:01
  FileWisk, an AI-encoded tool, lets you trim an audio file
• 4:05
  without re-encoding it,
• 4:07
  and it points out that you can't quite cut an MP3 or an Opus
• 4:11
  file wherever you want.
• 4:13
  The first 35 milliseconds won't decode correctly thanks to the
• 4:18
  way MP3 is encoded.
• 4:20
  The tool automatically adds enough frames to fix that.
• 4:24
  Documentation on how to produce HLS for Apple Podcasts has been
• 4:28
  published on the Apple Developer website.
• 4:31
  It's also got the contact details for how to get access to the
• 4:34
  proprietary Apple Podcast Connect API.
• 4:37
  Now, in terms of audio, Apple Podcasts prefers 192K, 48kHz, AAC-LC,
• 4:44
  and supports 5.1 surround sound.
• 4:47
  That's significantly better audio quality than a typical 128K MP3
• 4:52
  podcast,
• 4:53
  and reflects that podcasts are now often watched on televisions
• 4:57
  and beefy audio systems.
• 5:00
  M3U8s served to Apple Podcasts also support standard HTTP
• 5:05
  redirects,
• 5:06
  which indicates that tools like OP3, PodTrack, Magellan AI, or
• 5:10
  PodScribe,
• 5:11
  could work for additional analytics or attribution.
• 5:15
  We're linked to a page today, helpful for how Apple Podcasts
• 5:18
  stores and plays back HLS-enabled episodes.
• 5:22
  Auto-downloads are audio-only by default,
• 5:25
  but interestingly, if a user then turns video on,
• 5:27
  it'll continue playing the audio track from the download and
• 5:31
  only streams the video track.
• 5:33
  There's also a new user agent you should look for, which you
• 5:36
  shouldn't be counting as part of a valid playback.
• 5:39
  And there's more in a video from Ted Hossman of Apple Podcasts,
• 5:43
  speaking at the IETF's HLS Interest Day.
• 5:47
  And an amazingly good thing from iOS and iPadOS, if you play a
• 5:50
  video and reduce the volume to zero,
• 5:53
  subtitles come up automatically and they disappear again the
• 5:56
  moment you increase the volume again.
• 5:58
  It's a feature which doesn't appear to be in Apple Podcasts yet,
• 6:02
  but it does look like a neat feature for any podcast app that
• 6:05
  has access to the transcripts in VTT format.
• 6:10
  And in podcast news, in B2B Podcasting Insights,
• 6:13
  Neil Velio celebrates 50 episodes of the podcast,
• 6:17
  which has been publishing since the COVID era,
• 6:19
  but took regular breaks before gradually progressing from
• 6:22
  monthly to weekly.
• 6:24
  And in the latest episode,
• 6:26
  Neil explores the often complicated relationships B2B brands
• 6:30
  have in place between their podcasts and their email lists
• 6:33
  and uses his own podcast as an example of eating his own dog
• 6:38
  food.
• 6:39
  Miami's former city attorney disappeared without a trace in 1962.
• 6:46
  And for 64 years, his family has wondered what happened.
• 6:50
  Now, three-time Emmy-winning former TV reporter Dana Dean
• 6:54
  investigates the disappearance of her own grandfather in Miami
• 6:59
  mystery,
• 7:01
  the disappearance of Olavi Hendrickson.
• 7:03
  You'll hear the clues she's uncovered.
• 7:05
  A Kansas City lead, a letter mailed after he vanished,
• 7:10
  and forgotten newspaper headlines buried in a family suitcase.
• 7:14
  And a new season of Palace Intrigue presents King William is
• 7:18
  live.
• 7:18
  Callaruga Media's popular speculative fiction series imagines
• 7:22
  the British monarchy under King William.
• 7:25
  A leaked story sets the year in motion.
• 7:27
  A memoir from California lands with little impact.
• 7:31
  And a forgotten soldier in a foreign jail tests what a
• 7:35
  constitutional monarch can do when a system moves too slowly.
• 7:40
  And this podcast is sponsored by Soundstack.
• 7:43
  Your new revenue opportunity lives in existing podcast content.
• 7:47
  Rediscover, repurpose, and monetize more of the audio and video
• 7:51
  you already have with Soundstack AI.
• 7:54
  You can learn more with a link you'll find in our show notes
• 7:57
  today.
• 7:57
  And that's the latest from our newsletter.
• 8:00
  To read all the stories and subscribe for free, we're at podnews.net.