PodMov Daily: Thursday, December 12

Episode 104: Your Thursday Podthoughts

800,000 and Counting: My Podcast Reviews Drops New Data

Move over, commonly cited 700,000-statistic. Per a press release, “More than 800,000 valid podcasts are now available in Apple Podcasts, according to independent data from the My Podcast Reviews service, which launched a new webpage to track the podcast industry’s growth.”

In 2014, Daniel J. Lewis launched the service which now aggregates “reviews from 155 countries and multiple apps.” As of the time of this writing, its tally of ‘valid’ podcasts has risen above 801,000.

The new webpage “also reports the total number of available episodes (over 27.6 million), the number of podcasts added and removed from Apple Podcasts each day, and multiple dimensions of activity.”

EdSurge Studies the Value and Love of Microniche Educational Audio PM's Weekly Community Recap: LA Speakers and a Jump-Start

In an EdSurge article on the rise of educational audio, Jeffrey R. Young stresses the field’s remarkably rapid growth. “By educational, we mean shows that focus on some super-focused topic, like a specific period of history or an academic discipline,” Young explains.

Zachary Davis, founder of the Sound Education conference, says that through educational audio “you’re not getting really wealthy or even famous […] You’re doing it [out] of love for your topic and for building a small, passionate community around your subject.”

Young continues the exploration with Mark Sundaram and Aven McMaster. The married pair of academics run a linguistics podcast, The Endless Knot, and regularly use audio in their courses at Ontario’s Thorneloe University.

“It was me wanting to reach a larger audience,” Sundaram remarked. “I wanted to have an output for all of these years of study and teach the kind of open-ended topics that I might not ordinarily get to do.”

Happy Thursday, readers, and thanks so much to those of you that have shared the newsletter. The PodMov Ambassadors program has been reworked and relaunched — we’ve designed custom sweatshirts, swanky PM socks, and more to show our gratitude.

Is 50% off registration for PM 2020 or Evolutions more your style? We’ve got that, too.

Cheers,

Team PM

Here's what else is going on:

• Nostalgia button: Remember the click wheel? The Verge gives the lowdown on Rewound, a music player that uses downloadable skins and haptic feedback to recreate the classic iPod interface. Compatible with Apple Music libraries.

• Cost/benefit: Nicole Dieker of Vox explores how independent podcasters handle health insurance coverage. Dan Weissmann hosts An Arm and a Leg, a show about the cost of healthcare. His valuable perspective includes his own family’s solutions.

• Red line: The Verge reports that YouTube has announced an expansion of its anti-harassment policy. Four “core changes” will ban video creators from insulting one another on the basis of their race, gender expression, or sexual orientation.

• Picking teams: In Podcast Business Journal, Dave Jackson considers the benefits and liabilities of joining a podcast network. Promotion, potential sponsors, and the ability to retain one’s feed are Jackson’s pre-commitment essentials.