🎙️Podcasters Are Due Millions While Kast Media Files For Bankruptcy.

Welcome back to Podwires

Podsky, please be aware that this newsletter edition may be coming to you from a different platform, Substack. After nearly a year in Beehiiv, we are relocating to Substack to be a part of an ecosystem that supports writers and emphasises simplicity without a lot of bells and whistles.

We apologise if there are still any issues as we work to migrate all of the data from Beehiiv to Substack, including our domain. I appreciate your understanding.

As always, Contact me via email, and don't forget to sign up for this newsletter here if you haven't already. Encourage a friend to subscribe as well!

• The struggling podcast network, development, and production company Kast Media has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, claiming its assets are valued at $700,000 but it owes numerous creditors nearly $6.4 million. The company made this claim in court in California.

• Triton Digital made the U.S. Podcast Ranker for February 2024 available. The ranker has a reporting period of January 29, 2024 – February 25, 2024, and is measured by Triton's Podcast Metrics measurement service.

• Some markets get music videos on Spotify's mobile and desktop apps. In its mobile and desktop apps, the streaming giant lets you seamlessly switch between audio and music videos, integrating them with its music library.

• Based on the Australian Podcast Ranker, LiSTNR is once again the top sales representation podcast network in Australia, having reached nearly 7 million listeners in February.

• Blubrry Reveals Helpful Apps to Increase Audience Involvement

Triton Digital and ID5 Collaborate To Improve Audio Targeting

Rich audience data will now be available in Triton's Audio Marketplace thanks to a partnership between ID5, the industry-leading identity provider for digital advertising, and Triton Digital, the world leader in technology and services for the digital audio, podcast, and broadcast radio industries. Through this partnership, global privacy regulations will be complied with while also improving addressability and advertising targeting in the audio space.

Through its new product, Identity Enrichment, Triton Digital customers will be able to leverage identifiers provided by ID5 to enrich audio listener profiles with more detailed and accurate information. ID5’s next-generation universal identifier leverages a variety of consented signals provided by media owners to securely identify users without compromising privacy and data protection.

“At ARN, our partnership with Triton Digital and ID5 signifies a pivotal moment in audio advertising. This collaboration enhances our targeting precision and compliance with privacy regulations, allowing us to create richer listener profiles,” said Fayad Tohme, Chief Digital and Technology Officer at ARN. “We're excited about the possibilities this brings, making audio an even more compelling avenue for advertisers to connect with their audiences. Being a partner in the proof-of-concept phase allowed us to convert 60% of our un-addressable audience to addressable, greatly benefiting our advertisers and trading partners."

“ID5’s ID technology is transforming how the advertising world operates through the creation of listener profiles and its privacy-first approach,” said Benjamin Masse, Chief Product Officer at Triton Digital. “Providing access to these listener profiles, supported by rich data, will enhance the value of the inventory available in the Triton Digital Audio Marketplace. We are encouraged by the promising results we have witnessed so far and are excited to be partnering with ID5 to bring this technology to more advertisers.” [ source ]

Enhancing Word Error Rate to Make ASR Transcripts More Accessible and Readable

Podcasting has developed into a strong and well-liked storytelling, news, and entertainment medium. Podcasts might not be accessible to hard-of-hearing, deaf, or deaf-blind individuals without transcripts. It can be difficult to guarantee that automatically generated podcast transcripts are accurate and readable.

In addition to being simple to read, the text must accurately convey the meaning of what was said. We transcribe millions of podcast episodes from the Apple Podcasts catalogue using automatic speech recognition (ASR) models. We compare a small number of reference, or human-generated, transcripts to corresponding ASR transcripts in order to assess the quality of our ASR output.

The industry standard for measuring transcript accuracy, word error rate (WER), lacks nuance. It equally penalizes all errors in the ASR text—insertions, deletions, and substitutions—regardless of their impact on readability. Furthermore, the reference text is subjective: It is based on what the human transcriber discerns as they listen to the audio.

Building on existing research into better readability metrics, we set ourselves a challenge to develop a more nuanced quantitative assessment of the readability of ASR passages. As shown in Figure 1, our solution is the human evaluation word error rate (HEWER) metric. HEWER focuses on major errors, those that adversely impact readability, such as misspelled proper nouns, capitalization, and certain punctuation errors. HEWER ignores minor errors, such as filler words ("um," "yeah," "like") or alternate spellings ("ok" vs. "okay"). We found that for an American English test set of 800 segments with an average ASR transcript WER of 9.2% sampled from 61 podcast episodes, the HEWER was just 1.4%, indicating that the ASR transcripts were of higher quality and more readable than WER might suggest. [ source ]

🎓 Get an MBA in AI without student loans!We're recommending "The AI Entrepreneurs" newsletter because it's like a degree in AI, minus the student debt.

Here's why you'll love it:

• 🚀 Jetpack to success with 58,000 AI-loving empire builders.

• 🧠 Connect with like-minded enthusiasts, and maybe even find your next co-founder with our private community.

• 📰 Featured on over 400 sites like Market Watch, Fox, and Benzinga – they're not just a newsletter; they're a movement.

• 💼 Build your AI-driven business without spending a dime.

Subscribe today for the clever price of FREE, and experience empire-building made easy, one email at a time. 🏰🤖 🎉

🎉Plus, Get 100 ChatGPT FREE prompts instantly, a FREE AI writer to go viral on social media, Our FREE "Building A Minimum Viable Business In Record Time" Course and our FREE "4 Hour AI Workweek" Course!🎉

👉 The Podcast Exchange is excited to welcome Nina Sturm aboard as the company's new senior client Partner. Prior to joining TPX, Nina held the position of Head of TV and Digital Partnerships at The Canadian Traffic Network, led the TV Traffic platform, and developed the company’s digital strategy.

👉 Tim Clarke, Senior VP of Digital Audio at Audacy, the parent company of Cadence13 and Pineapple Street, will leave the company at the end of the month.

New York Times Critic Wesley Morris Reflects on this Year’s Oscars and What the Nominees Reveal about our Culture and Politics on “The Amendment” Podcast From Wonder Media Network

The newly launched news and politics podcast from The 19th News and Wonder Media Network is now hosted on Acast.

 We'd like to recommend a good podcast to our readers. Just click here. 

This section is updated regularly. View more, feel free to add yours.

Here are our current featured roles. Check the job board for more jobs and some freelance gigs.

• Bumper is looking for a Podcast Growth Specialist to Help provide consulting services to a wide range of clients, including large-scale, internationally recognized podcast networks, Fortune 500 companies, and influential non-for-profit organizations

• Global Situation Room, inc looking to hire a multi-platform Podcast Producer and Editor for three high-profile podcasts.

• Audacity is hiring a Part-time Sports Podcast Producer. Candidates should possess good and basic Audio board operation skills, digital editing abilities AND be able to multi-task in a fast-paced environment.

Please mention Podworks.io or Podwires in your application.

Do you need to hire for your podcast? Here's where you can post a job (for free). Come hang out with us at podworks.io if you are a professional podcast producer!

• Join us for our AI & Creator Tools Summit to stay ahead of the game with various AI tools!

• The Podcast Show London is back, and from May 24–25, it will unite thousands of podcast enthusiasts from around the world under one roof at the Business Design Centre in Islington.

• The 2024 International Women's Podcast Awards will return on Wednesday, June 19. Podcasters, audio professionals, and podcast enthusiasts will gather at the IET London: Savoy Place for this 4th annual event to celebrate women in podcasting. A global livestream will be available.

• IIJ Insurance for Freelancers Webinar Join our webinar on protecting yourself as a freelance journalist.

• Independent & Self Employed Podcasters & Audio Makers Meetup @ Podcast Evolutions on March 28,2024

• The Sound Walk September (SWS) Awards celebrate the skills of those composing audio, listening, and sound walks. Winners get awarded with cash prizes of up to 1000 euros.This section is updated regularly. View more, feel free to add yours.

👉 There has been a lot of reporting in the news industry lately regarding Meta's role in the news industry and how news content is shared on our platform, according to a blog post from Meta.

👉 Fountain provided us with an incredible The Podcaster's Handbook on Purchasing Advertisements to Expand Your Listenership.

👉 Emarketers give us A TikTok guide that can help your podcast business and be used for social media marketing and commerce

Welcome to the Podcaster Toolbox, a crowd-sourced resource for independent, DIY, and/or beginning home-based podcasters.

The Kangaroofern Media Lab team will review the resources submitted here and add them as soon as possible to the Podcaster Toolbox.

• 🏜️ Transistor.fm - is a powerful and simple podcasting platform. The ability to host multiple podcasts on one account makes it ideal for podcasters with multiple shows.

• 🎙️ Acast - is a podcast hosting service that enables you to publish, share, and earn money from your podcasts.

• 🎧 Epidemic Sound - is a company that provides content producers with access to a sizable library of royalty-free music.

• 🚗 Niceboard - modern job board software, helps communities and organisations create and manage job boards.

• 📼 Tubebuddy - is a complete tool for YouTube channel management and growth.

• 📹 VidIQ - is a website for learning that focuses on offering video tutorials and analytics to aid users in expanding their YouTube channels.

The complete Toolbox can be seen at https://www.podworks.io/toolbox

🚀 Advertise with our newsletter to get in front of Podcasters and Podcast Producers

Please contact us by sending a direct message (DM) to @realmikosantos and @podworks_io on Twitter if you have anything interesting to share or  send press releases because we love to hear them at [email protected] Editorially, we may rewrite headlines and descriptions

🎁 Don’t just stare, Share the Podwires

There is no simpler or more effective way to assist. Podwires should be shared with others. If you enjoyed it, or even if you didn't but believe someone you despise might, SHARE IT

A newsletter for independent podcast producers, Podwires also hosts the largest candidate and job board for podcasts in the world.​​​​​