While the mainstream podcasting industry saw a boom (and bust) of investment into podcast production and advertising, Podcasting 2.0 has quietly gone from strength to strength. The number of podcast feeds incorporating Podcasting 2.0 features (or tags) has grown significantly thanks to adoption from podcast hosting services and podcast players, combined with a growing interest from creators.
2023 was another year of game-changing innovation in Podcasting 2.0. We saw adoption of a number of new tags that are redefining what a podcast can be. For example, the <podcast:liveItem> tag enabled fans to listen to shows live as they are being recorded and support in real-time. Perhaps the most exciting new development was support for music through the <podcast:medium> tag, combined with support for dynamic splits through the <podcast:valueTimeSplit> tag. This paved the way for
a new category of music podcasts where DJs can play music and artists get paid their fair share of the money sent by listeners thanks to the splits changing when one track end and another one begins.
At the close of the year,
we launched Fountain 1.0. Our biggest design and user experience upgrade to date brought major improvements across the app, including a better way to share, discover and listen to clips from podcasts, a clean home feed design that surfaces conversations happening right now and a revamped playlists feature where every listener can become a curator - and get rewarded for it.