Podcast News Roundup | The Last Podcast On The Left To Leave Spotify Exclusive Deal & More!
Welcome back to HeadStuff’s Podcast News Roundup, your go-to place for podcast news and recommendations. This week’s roundup features HeadStuff’s Podcast of the Week and also looks at The Last Podcast on the Left as it leaves its exclusive Spotify deal, a new Irish podcast about a visually impaired girl and more!
As always if you host a podcast and want it featured as our podcast of the week, email us at [email protected] and we’ll be sure to check it out!
Podcast of the Week
The Substantial Meal podcast is a great comedy podcast to listen to when you need a bit of a pick me up. Thanks to the hilarious banter between the three hosts, Justine Stafford, Martine Angolo and Dermot Ward, you can’t help but enjoy their ridiculous sense of humour and infectious laughter.
A podcast born out of the coronavirus pandemic, the three friends gather together online to have a few drinks while they chat about some of life’s most important questions. And I mean really important questions, like “what’s worse, people or murder hornets?” or “who from the world of film and TV would be the best to share a pint with?”
Starting each episode with a discussion of their drink of choice, the conversation quickly unravels into the chaos of the rest of the episode as they try to provide answers to these most pressing of questions. Often these discussions come out of random google searches which bring us down the rabbit hole of late night internet searches with us. Like having a bouncy pub in your back garden. You know, perfectly normal things.
The Last Podcast On The Left to leave Exclusive Spotify Deal
SiriusXM’s Stitcher has just signed a deal with The Last Podcast on the Left to distribute the comedy-horror podcast on platforms next year.
The Last Podcast On The Left covers all the horrors our world has to offer both imagined and real, from demons and slashers to cults and serial killers, The Last Podcast guarantees to satisfy your blood lust.
Agreement with SiriusXM brings the critically acclaimed show back to wide distribution with ad-free listening on Stitcher Premium.
The show is set to continue with a multi-year agreement with SiriusXM’s Stitcher. Under the deal, original creators Ben Kissel, Marcus Parks, and Henry Zebrowski will host a weekly live radio show on SiriusXM’s Faction Talk (channel 103) starting in February.
Starting on Feb. 1, 2022, The Last Podcast on the Left will be available on all podcast platforms following its exit from Spotify exclusivity.
The podcast had 2.5 million downloads per week in 2019, prior to when it joined Spotify exclusively, and recently boasted 3,000 attendees at its live show in Los Angeles.
Last Podcast on the Left is the second podcast to leave its exclusive status to Spotify, following Joe Budden exiting his exclusive agreement after both sides could not come to an agreement on terms. At the time, Budden said his show was undervalued.
Visually impaired Dublin girl stars in new podcast
Seven-year-old Bonnie O’Meara from Beaumont, is the star of a new radio series and podcast for RTÉjr called Maddie + Triggs.
Maddie + Triggs is about the adventures of a 7-year-old girl called Maddie, who is vision impaired, and her dog Triggs.
“I tried my best and did everything I could to get this part. And now I have it. It’s exciting and it’s cool, because every episode is different. Maddie has a visual impairment like me, but it doesn’t stop her from going out and following her heart and doing anything she wants to.” said Bonnie speaking about her very first acting gig.
The series was created by production company Turnip and Duck.
It has been funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland and was developed with assistance from the NCBI.
Series producer Colm Tobin said: “We wanted to create a wonderfully inclusive brand for an audience that is often overlooked. From the start, our dream has been that if a child with vision impairment was to sit down to enjoy the show side-by-side with a child with full sight, they would have no less of an experience”.
The first eight episodes of Maddie + Triggs are available now, with more episodes already in production.
The Bella Twins Sign With Stitcher To Relaunch The Bellas Podcast
WWE Hall of Famers The Bella Twins have signed with SiriusXM’s Stitcher for their new podcast home.
Stitcher announced this week that Nikki Bella and Brie Bella will bring The Bellas Podcast to their platform. The series returns with new episodes on Wednesday, November 3.
Each week, Nikki and Brie will give listeners uncensored access to their lives, while welcoming special guests, discussing current issues, and opening up to share real life moments and experiences.
“I’m excited to relaunch The Bellas Podcast with Stitcher,” Brie said. “Since we’ve been on hiatus, I’ve really missed the authentic connection with the Bella Army that podcasting creates. It allows us to be vulnerable, raw and more present than any other platform and I can’t wait!!”
“This podcast has been one of my favorite platforms yet to use my voice,” Nikki added. “I get to be uncensored, unedited and so raw. I’m beyond honored to be with SiriusXM’s Stitcher now! This is the perfect home for The Bellas Podcast. We’ve missed you our listeners and can’t wait to start chatting again!”
AI turns Podcaster into a Fluent Spanish Speaker
Starting this week Sounds Profitable, from Bryan Barletta, will be available every week in Spanish.
But Bryan Barletta does not speak Spanish, in fact he “absolutely failed Spanish multiple times.” Enter the MARVEL.ai tool from Veritone.
MARVEL.ai received high-quality recorded content that would get them three hours of Barletta speaking. They were able to target his voice and extract it, without reading any scripts or having Barletta’s editor Ian Powell provide unique audio files where only he was speaking. Already this removes substantial barriers of recording new audio of reading scripts or having an editor pull out only the speaker to provide a more pure input.
In two days, a text-to-speech voice was created, allowing any audio editor the ability to easily change the breaks/pause, rate, pitch, and volume of how Barletta’s synthetic voice read the script within the MARVEL.ai tool.
Two weeks later, a speech-to-speech mapping was finalized allowing his voice to either be a source for another voice to be mapped on top of or to be the target voice.
MARVEL.ai is providing a managed service solution that first runs the content through their translation engines. After that, the transcript is reviewed by a bi-lingual person to give it a human thumbs-up. They’re focused on catching obscure word choices and making sure the flow is correct. But it’s still Barletta’s words being processed and his own direct concepts he’s trying to get across translated into another language.
Marry these two and you have a synthetic Brian Barletta speaking fluent Spanish.
“Ultimately, if enough interest is generated in the Spanish language version of the newsletter and the podcast, I would be foolish not to expand into localization instead of only translation, finding a peer who speaks Spanish, and collaborating with them to create unique content for Sounds Profitable. Not just the same content in Spanish, but speaking with professionals in the space who I’m personally unable to speak with due to language barrier” said Barletta.
With 25% of US Latinos being monthly podcast listeners, this is also a great opportunity to expand a podcast’s advertising revenue and open up to new markets.
