Spreaker’s Rob Greenlee joins Libsyn. There, Greenlee will assume the role of VP of Content and Partnerships, where he will “further the Company’s relationships with podcast producers and develop industry partnerships,” according to the press release.
A Dunkin’ By Any Other Name. Loved this piece on Vox’s The Goods about brand naming, which involves an interview with the brand naming and verbal identity expert Rachel Bernard that comes with this jam:
Q: Where do trends in naming come from?
A: They happen in the same way design trends happen; it’s just catching up with the culture. Wherever there’s economic opportunity, marketers are going to follow that. The other thing that happens a lot is there can be technology or trademark factors that constrain naming more than other marketing fields… The other factor coming up a lot more is voice recognition and AI. Names that are spelled weird or might have a tough time pronouncing is not a trick you can use anymore. As a compensation, we’re seeing interesting symbolic language or metaphors, like calling your makeup Herbivore, because it’s plant-based makeup. It’s a real word, easy to spell, a lot of people know it, but it’s just kind of slightly outside the category that it makes it ownable, but it also helps with the constraints that technology is presenting.
Also podcasts — it’s a cool throwback thinking about how your brand would sound on an audio medium versus television. I think those are two really interesting factors that are emerging and I don’t think we’ve had a really good solve for it yet.
VERBAL IDENTITY, Y’ALL. Read the whole thing, do it.
Tracking
- A music feature for now, but with an obvious potential podcast application: Spotify is trialing a kind of Instagram Stories-esque feature called Storyline where listeners are served rotating cards of related text and images while a song plays. Unlike the existing ‘behind the lyrics’ feature, which is pulled from third-party site Genius, this info comes directly from the artist.
- Blubrry has introduced partial download reporting along side its IAB certified stats.
- Tell how old you are by how much the existence of a 1TB SD card blows your mind (for me, a nerd who grew up carrying a shoebox of floppy discs to school every day, this is a big deal).
- NBC’s Dateline is now a podcast.
- Remember that moderately chilling Reply All episode about robocalling? Well, there’s a new FCC proposal out there that could seem them blocked by default.
- This is cool: Google is trialing a system called “Translatotron” that can translate one spoken language to another without having to convert it to text first.
- Joe Berkowitz over at Fast Company, a self-confessed podcast addict, went cold turkey for two weeks. The result? He worried a lot, struggled with all the quiet, and even found the feeling of wearing silent headphones comforting. Worth a read if you’re spending hours a day listening to other people talk.