Notices by John Spurlock (js@podcastindex.social)

Buzzsprout just posted their self-reported monthly podcast stats for May 2025, so I just updated my page charting them over time

https://livewire.io/buzzsprout-stats-visualized/

‘the “top 25 podcasts” will qualify for consideration, with a total of six final nominations for the category’

https://deadline.com/2025/05/golden-globes-best-podcast-category-2026-1236387838/

‘Why can’t we seem to make money from digital? Well, now you know. It’s not a revenue problem. It’s a value problem. And not in a vague, hand-wavy way—value, in this case, is time. Your audience simply isn’t giving your digital platforms enough of it.’

https://audioinsurgent.substack.com/p/understanding-public-radios-multi

hehe ActivityPub strikes back

soon all AI crawlers will need to sign their HTTP requests in the same way

https://blog.cloudflare.com/web-bot-auth/

‘When Facebook’s News Feed introduced us to “frictionless sharing,” we learned, or should have learned, that friction is the essence of sharing. Freed of any investment of effort, time, or care, sharing loses all meaning. It becomes mere transmission.’

https://www.newcartographies.com/p/friendship-in-the-age-of-digital

New data: Top CDNs used by the 1.6 million new podcast episodes in April 2025

https://livewire.io/podcast-cdns-by-episode-share/

New data! updated my ranking of the top 3rd-party podcast analytics services, based on the share of the 1.6 million new eps published in April 2025

- all-time high share for Podscribe

https://livewire.io/podcast-trackers-by-episode-share/

New data! My ranking of top podcast hosting companies based on the 1.6 million new episodes in April 2025

https://livewire.io/podcast-hosts-by-episode-share/

@phillycodehound @tchambers @BeAware

very interesting

"For clarity, Meta does not own or control the Protocol or any Third Party Services accessible through the Protocol."

‘“It is television,” Abrams declares. “Anyone who still thinks of YouTube as something for your phone or computer isn’t paying attention.”’

How Ezra Klein’s YouTube Makeover Points to Podcasting’s TV Future
https://archive.is/vR1n8

‘Figuring out what content you liked or didn’t like used to actually involve _you_.’

https://pacific-content.com/podcasting-algorithm/

Got to chat quite a bit about my new SPC spec for standardized podcast consumption metrics on the latest Podnews Weekly Review.

Thanks for @james and @samsethi for having me on!

Looking for intrepid existing podcast apps to early adopt...

SPC: https://github.com/skymethod/spc

‘According to Netflix, “nearly half of all viewing hours” in the US take place with subtitles or captions’

https://www.theverge.com/news/655784/netflix-subtitle-option-spoken-dialogue-only-english

‘The app-based online audio platform had 303 million monthly active users as of 2023, according to a separate listing application it filed last year.’

Tencent Music in Talks to Buy Ximalaya for $2.4 Billion
https://archive.is/8mKbu

Nice to see Pocket Casts support the podcast:funding tag (a link to support the show)

The funding tag is present on over 66,000 podcasts, the second-most prevalent podcast namespace tag, just behind transcripts

https://github.com/Automattic/pocket-casts-android/pull/3840

New Libsyn user agent and country breakdown stats as of Mar 2025, and median/mean as of Feb 2025

- love to see the DoggCatcher old-school android app still hanging in there

https://livewire.io/libsyn-stats-visualized/

‘One of the challenges of the current signup process is that _every Mastodon community looks and acts more or less the same_. Every community should have its own personality: a clear sense of what it's for and who it's for, and experience/features that match this purpose’

https://werd.io/2025/if-i-ran-mastodon

‘Podcasting has always been about the democratization of thoughts’

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whats-a-podcast-episode-3-the-crossroads/id1510649799?i=1000701947652

‘“I do feel betrayed by Google,” Bouskill said, as Corbeil interjected: “Betrayed, that’s the word.”

To rebuild their livelihood, the couple has pivoted their efforts to YouTube, another Google-owned property.’

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-07/google-ai-search-shift-leaves-website-makers-feeling-betrayed?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc0NDAzMzY5NywiZXhwIjoxNzQ0NjM4NDk3LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTVFVFQkpEV1gyUFMwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJEQUZGOTQ2MjMzOTM0NjI5QURDODEzNDRGQ0QwODBBOSJ9.g2Pj57IAuRue1QQiAlaOTEhlYtO4CumxIwre3di6lHA&leadSource=uverify%20wall

New data! My ranking of top podcast hosting companies based on the 1.6 million new episodes in March 2025

https://livewire.io/podcast-hosts-by-episode-share/