PodMov Daily: Monday, May 4

Episode 197: Your Monday Mix

Monday Q&A: Podchaser CEO Bradley Davis

This Monday’s Q&A features Bradley Davis, the CEO of Podchaser. Described as podcasting’s IMDb, its comprehensive database includes ratings, reviews, lists, and credits alongside a social, interactive element. Davis discusses Podchaser’s beginnings, its platform-agnostic model, and future projections.

What will bringing podcasting onto a standard dataset, a main Podchaser objective, mean for creators? “Having credits standardized and open to use across hosting platforms, players, and publications means podcasters getting the credit they deserve for their work,” the CEO asserts. “This is an important step to push the industry forward.”

Davis’ comments on the company’s philosophy are forward-facing as well. “I do believe that with the cooperation of the industry, we can drastically improve the listening experience and grow together,” he says. “There are some pretty drastic technological shifts that need to happen, but it seems we’ll get there.”

Our Show: The Moving Close of a Collective Audio Project

At the end of March, we featured a call for recordings from podcast producer Erica Heilman. With the remarkable project Our Show, Heilman aimed to “make something that marks the time during this event […] that sounds like where you are — wherever you are — and keeps us company.”

Brief recordings poured in from listeners across the globe, which Heilman has arranged into warm, hopeful, and heartbreaking episodes. Jay Allison, founder of the public media organization Transom, calls the result “a gathering of voices, a voluntary oral history of this moment on the planet, a global vox pop.”

A special compilation, “The Hour,” is ready. (Your editor recommends the clip “Cali in Florida.”) Describing the process, Heilman writes, “During those first few weeks of the pandemic, listening to these wildly intimate recordings from all over the world — it was one of the greatest privileges of my life.”

Happy Monday, readers, and best of luck to those entering this year's RØDE podcasting competition. (Of course, we'd bet the winner will be a Podcast Movement regular.) Entries will be accepted until Tuesday, June 16th.

Here's what else is going on:

• Rapid response: Last weekend's well-attended digital podcast fest Podapalooza was also a virus-relief benefit. In a Spotify for Podcasters post, Wil Williams speaks with festival organizer Amira Valliani about how the team developed the live event “in just a few short weeks.”

• Technically speaking: According to Darian Muka of Pocket Casts, there has been no “statistically significant decline in listening hours” for podcasts. In an insightful Q&A from Dan Misener of Pacific Content, Muka discusses consumption shifts from a “data-informed point of view.”

• Narrative arc: An audio drama writer and producer, Matthew McLean of The Podcast Host has released a thorough new guide to the process. “How to Make a Fiction Podcast” treats potential creators to “8 chapters, taking you through the entire process, step-by-step.”

• Stability counts: In an article for Discover Pods, videographer and editor Brian Benton details his top 5 picks of microphone shock mounts for podcasting. The list includes both universal and specialized mounts along with explanations of key features and helpful warnings.