New partners announced for Apple Podcasts video

More video is coming. At Podcast Movement Evolutions at SXSW, Stacey Goers and Jake Shapiro from Apple Podcasts announced a number of new podcast hosting partners for the upcoming Apple Podcasts HLS video feature. Transistor, Audiomeans, PodBean, Captivate, RSS.com and Podigee are all soon to support HLS video on Apple Podcasts. The companies join Acast, Omny Studio, ART19 and Simplecast.

• This now means that almost all major podcast hosting companies - ones with more than 2 % market share of new episodes - will be able to deliver HLS video to Apple Podcasts. But, no HLS video for you if you’re with competitor Spotify for Creators and Spotify-owned Megaphone (28 % market share), Spreaker (14 %), for which the obvious answer is an upgrade to Omny Studio, and two heritage podcast companies are also not yet offering HLS video: Buzzsprout (7,20 %) and, surprisingly, Libsyn (2,70 %). (It should probably also be noted that video is likely to be an additional charge, given the cost of hosting).
• Apple Podcasts also announced that there are now 12 million episodes in Apple Podcasts with chapters. The company announced AI-generated chapters in November. Their keynote at Podcast Movement Evolutions was the first time that the company has ever officially spoken at a podcast conference in North America.

Podcast Movement Evolutions will return to SXSW next year. “The event far exceeded our expectations”, said Bryan Barletta: "Showing up at SXSW with real talent, meaningful programming, and new voices in the room is the new baseline.” The event was covered by GritDaily.

Podcasthon is on right now - with 2 800,00 podcasters registered from 65 countries. The initiative - we covered it in January - invites podcasters to dedicate one episode of their show to a charity of their choice. Shows are being added to the Podcasthon website as they go live.

The winners of the NYC Podcast Awards were announced. There were 38 categories, and 11 creator excellence awards.

Further reading:

• Stephen Robles - who has made a career out of producing video - suggests Apple’s Video Podcast Push Feels Like the End of an Era. He points out the things you lose if you switch to video on Apple’s platform (no chapters, no audio edit for listeners, no motivation to edit the audio version if fewer people will get it).
• John Wordock inadvertently tells us how much the Apple Podcasts team has changed. Five years ago, they were so secretive, it transpires that they were having meetings in the hotel across the street from Podcast Movement Evolutions! This year, they were on stage. Quite the change. Wordock wonders whether video is “a game-changer for Apple; or a desperate play”.
• Sharon Taylor from Triton Digital writes Video Podcasting in 2026: What the data tells us (and what’s next for creators and brands). “Video isn’t just adding “more of the same audience.” It’s adding incremental audience segments.”

Mark Levin, Megyn Kelly, and Donald Trump have all said things.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• John Spurlock has taken a deep-dive into the technical aspect of podcast hosting companies doing HLS video, both for Apple Podcasts and for other apps. We learn that the audio track is AAC, between 128kbps and 160kbps. Acast is serving ads already; ART19 isn’t yet; Triton Digital and Simplecast are not yet serving video.

  • Podnews has removed our earlier HLS test from the Podnews Daily feed. If we can work out the ffmpeg commands needed to build a video/audio multivariant playlist, we will; though our video is just an animated graphic. (Anyone want to help with that?)

• Jivetalking is a good little tool produced by the Linux Matters team. Provide your raw microphone recordings, and they emerge with loudness, room rumble, background hiss, clicks, and harsh sibilance sorted automatically, inspired by analogue audio processor units. A single binary, it’s available for Linux and macOS (both Intel and Apple silicon).

• Futuregazing: a new thing from the people who gave you Bluetooth is Auracast: like Bluetooth but one-to-many. It could be a great way to do those talks-with-headphones at podcast conferences, but we can wear our own comfier headphones.

• A new experimental podcast app from the makers of Castro, Pod Seek - available for iOS - is designed to be focused on discovery and recommendations. It uses trailers as well as other Podcasting 2,00 tags including funding, ‘person’ and transcript tags.

• Sponder - “filter, merge and reshape RSS feeds and podcasts”. Of particular interest: it has “automatic rerun detection”.

People News

• DAX US has hired Jennifer Tang as SVP, Programmatic. She joins from Spotify, where she was Director of US Automation Sales.

• Spotify has hired a new Head of Podcasts for the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands. Talia Stolerman has worked with Spotify since 2020; and spent five years at Audioboom before that..

• Long-time co-host of No Agenda John C Dvorak is recovering well after double bypass heart surgery. His wife, Mimi Smith-Dvorak, has been co-hosting the show in his absence; we learn that one of his nurses listens to the show. Get well soon!

• Hey! Podnews has a free jobs board, where you can post your vacancies!

Tips and tricks - with Riverside

• Thinking of a new podcast but having trouble thinking of a name? Riverside’s Podcast Name Generator reckons that a good name for an egg recipe podcast might be “Sunny Side Up”. We like it.
• How much does it cost to host your show on Amazon AWS? We “did the math”, and… mmm.