PodMov Daily: Tuesday, March 15

Episode 608: Testing, One Two-sday

What We Know About Women Podcast Listeners

In #GoodData from Sounds Profitable, Caila Litman takes a look at what we know about women podcast listeners. This comes from studies, stats, and a Twitter experiment. Most of the limited data available is ad-based and “seeks to define women in podcasting through two lenses”: Programming and listener behavior.

A major takeaway is that people want to identify with what they hear. “Equitable host representation and the steady growth of podcast audiences are deeply intertwined,” Litman says. However, about 27% of top-rated shows featured female hosts in 2020, and 49% of monthly listeners are women or non-binary identified.

True Crime and Kids & Family appear to be the most popular genre with women, but fiction is making significant headway. At the bottom are Business, Sports, and Technology. Litman suggests that these categories could benefit from rethinking talent and content focus if they want to grow their audience bases.

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Updates to Apple Podcasts in iOS 15.4

The iOS 15.4 update to Apple Podcasts has two primary features: browsing by season on show pages and filtering episodes by played, unplayed, downloaded, or saved. Listeners can also filter episodes within specific seasons of any serialized show. (Creators need to have set their show type to ‘serialized’.)

Apple tells those podcasters to include episode numbers in the corresponding metadata fields, not in the episode titles. The numbers will be displayed above the titles, making it easier for listeners to start from the right place. Filters help, too: When a show filter is set to ‘unplayed,’ for example, it will stick until changed.

If you’re looking to only display unplayed episodes across all of your shows, Apple offers instructions for that as well. There’s not a whole lot to inform (or warn) listeners about, if that makes sense for your audience. When they update to the new operating system, a new splash screen will cover the details.

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Here's what else is going on:

• Team player: Fed up with spammy podcast guest pitches? Jay Acunzo (Unthinkable) updated his contact form with firm, friendly instructions on how not to use it. ‘For their own use/sanity,’ fellow podcasters are encouraged to steal the new elements: “Finding signal in the noise is no longer worth it.”

• Group chat: This Thursday at 4:00 pm ET is “She Podcasts: The State of Podcasting,” an all-women panel hosted by Libsyn. Elsie Escobar will moderate a future-focused discussion on discovery and measurement, listener engagement, and shaping a podcast career to fit your life. Free registration.

• Mixed media: This Thursday at 7:00 pm CT, “the end of gatekeeping in podcasting” will be discussed on Twitter Spaces. For Arielle Nissenblatt, Caila Litman, and Shreya Sharma, this means welcoming more women and gender non-conforming folks into the podcast industry. No account needed.

• Love songs: This Saturday at 12:00 pm ET is “Radio Boot Camp: How to Use Music in Podcasting.” Award-winning composer Nina Perry (BBC, NPR) will help you think about selecting music, how to work with it to enhance your storytelling, and achieving a professional feel. $75 registration.