PodMov Daily: Wednesday, September 11

Episode 41: What's Up This Wednesday

She Makes Me Laugh: NYC's Podfriendly Comedy Festival

The monthly comedy showcase She Makes Me Laugh returns its party to New York City on October 4-6. The Peoples Improv Theater (The PIT) will host the She Makes Me Laugh Comedy Festival, which highlights “women and non-binary identifying performers in comedy across stand-up, improv, sketch, storytelling, characters, and podcasting.”

In addition to over 100 comedy acts, the festival will feature an industry panel on podcasting and live tapings of Bad Romance and Awkward Sex and the City. Headlining comedians include Jo Firestone, Ophira Eisenberg, and Kerry Coddett, who all happen to be podcasters. We’re noticing a pattern here — podcasting and comedy make joyful partners.

Talking to Strangers: Malcolm Gladwell's New Narration

Malcolm Gladwell’s approach to writing has been deeply transformed by podcasting. Since the summer of 2016, Gladwell has hosted Revisionist History, a wildly successful show about the “overlooked and misunderstood” past. His newest book, Talking to Strangers, bears the show’s influence.

“The minute I did my first season of Revisionist History, one of my first thoughts was, in my next book, I need to do the audiobook like the podcast,” the author told Entertainment Weekly. “It struck me as crazy that you would write this book and then you would just read it into a microphone, and that would be called an audiobook.”

The text of Talking to Strangers takes on uncharacteristically dark subject matter in a “direct, intimate” style. Its audiobook version, “essentially a super-sized podcast episode,” features recorded interview clips, archival audio, and music.

Apple vs. Spotify Monthly Update: Report from Voxnest

Voxnest’s August report on the Spotify vs. Apple rivalry has arrived. “Each month we’ve seen listeners gained by Spotify, while Apple often re-stakes their claim in countries that were previously stolen from them,” writes Ivey Amburgey. (In this case, Apple reclaimed Romania, which was just taken over last month by Spotify.)

A predicted rise in Spanish-language podcasting seems to have had an effect on the Portuguese market this month, where some of the “top listened to podcasts” have been from Brazil. Overall, this development spells a win for the green team, says Voxnest: “Spotify’s claim on Portugal is the most significant takeover from August, and has the explosive podcasting growth of Brazil to thank.”

Time for a Quick Question? $300 Could Be Yours

This Wednesday, we’re asking our dear readers for a small favor. Thanks to those of you that took our partner survey last week! If you haven’t yet responded and feel like winning a $300 Visa gift card, here’s your opportunity. A winner will be randomly selected on Monday, September 16.

Best of luck,

Team PM

Here's what else is going on:

• A Snap-cast: Spotify users can now share podcasts via Snapchat. TechCrunch reports “added support for sharing a song, playlist, artist profile or podcast either directly to your friends […] or to your Snapchat Story.” The capability launched last week for Facebook Stories.
• Get primed: NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) Show is launching a podcast series featuring prominent speakers and highlighting NAB Show New York-related themes leading up to the event, October 16-17 in Manhattan. Episodes to be released periodically beginning next week.
• Check, mate: Fact-checkers say that podcasting’s worth it. Poynter spoke to the creators of the Full Fact podcast, which led up to England’s 2015 general election. “Podcasting about misinformation” can be helpful, even lucrative, despite taking a “tremendous amount of time to craft.”
• Spooky accurate: ART19 will be hosting and distributing a new original podcast for Ranker, “the world’s leader in crowdsourced rankings.” The “darkly-humored” horror series Deadtime Stories is to be monetized using the recently released SmartAudiences targeted marketplace technology.