As you may have heard, Podchaser has been acquired by Acast. It is entirely possible that your podcast – or some of its episodes – has been sucked into Podchaser without your knowledge or permission. I recommend you check on that.
I found Shattered Soulstone, the podcast that my husband and I have been working on for years, on Podchaser. Neither one of us was contacted by Podchaser when they decided to grab not only our episodes but also the data it generates.
In an article written by Paul Sawers (TechCrunch) he wrote:
…While Podchaser will continue as a separate brand and business once the acquisition closes, Acast said that it plans a “deep integration” of Podchaser’s data, giving its customers “authoritative, structured, metadata.” Indeed, while Podchaser is a consumer-focused platform in terms of how it aids discoverability, it’s also a utility for advertisers and marketers, as it allows them to find the most suitable podcasts to sell their wares to. Targeted advertising will play an important part of the fast-growing podcasting industry, and its partly why Acast is bringing Podchaser under its wing — Podchaser delivers additional data points spanning demographics, consumption, reach, and “favorability”.
Personally, I don’t want Podchaser to grab the data from my podcast and hand it over to advertisers – for the advertiser’s benefit. I don’t want Podchaser to collect data about my listeners, who have never given Podchaser permission to track them.
There is an Help article on Podchaser titled: “Requesting Removal of Podcasts from Podchaser”. The line under that title says: “Can I delete my podcast from Podchaser?”
The Help Desk person wrote this: “Podchaser is the world’s most comprehensive podcast database that strives to present an accurate representation of podcast information past and present. This visibly allows podcasters big and small to gain new listeners and monetization opportunities.”
It also says: “If you would like to request the removal of your podcast, please fill out this form”. (The word Form has a link attached).
I filled out the form, and waited, but nothing changed. Another problem appeared. In order to remove your podcast you have to “claim” it as the owner. Doing so does not allow you to remove your podcast. I think it’s there to annoy podcasters in the hopes they will give up trying to remove their podcast from Podchaser.
One option is to allow Podchaser to access your Twitter account and let you log in that way. I highly recommend you DO NOT allow it to access to any of your social media accounts.
The image above says: Authorize Podchaser to access your account?
This application will be able to:
- See Tweets from your timeline (including protected Tweets) as well as your Lists and collections.
- See your Twitter profile information and account settings
- See accounts you follow, mute, and block
- Follow and unfollow accounts for you
- Update your profile and account settings
- Post and delete Tweets for you. and engage with Tweets posted by others (Like, un-like, or reply to a retweet, etc.) for you.
- Create, manage and delete Lists and collections for you
- Mute, block, and report accounts for you
I found this to be incredibly troubling! It sounds like if you give Podchaser access to your Twitter account – you pretty much lose control of your Twitter. There’s another thing like this if you want to give Podchaser access to your Facebook account.
I ended up making an account on Podchaser, in the hopes doing so would make it easier for them to hear me. It doesn’t. Instead, I got sent emails about their latest updates, etc, – which is not at all what I want.
When this didn’t work, and days of waiting for a response from Podchaser, my husband Shawn (editor of Shattered Soulstone), had to create his own Podchaser account, claim the show, and then fill out another form requesting that Shattered Soulstone to be removed. There is a spot on the form that asks: “Why do you want your podcast removed?” He wrote: “Don’t want to contribute to your data harvesting business.”
That was on July 30th. We are still waiting to have the show removed from Podcaster. There has been no follow up at all, for either of us. Podchaser may have originally added Shattered Soulstone from a public API. But, they should honor requests to have shows removed.
Podchaster is thrilled to 
Podchaser 
Spreaker 
Since podcasting’s earliest days, there’s been an inherent need to try and organize the chaos that appears to be inherent within the medium. After all, podcasting was born of the old notion that the internet is a free and open environment, where not everything has to be stuffed into a singular vertical. While there are plenty of forces at work today that’d like to fence podcasting in, the medium is still mostly open, and still mostly free. Hence, the need for continued organizing of the ever-expanding podcast space remains essential.