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The common wisdom goes that video is the key to podcast discovery: you take the juiciest clips from your show, hope one goes viral every now and then on TikTok, and then that wider (and younger) audience becomes your new listeners. Uncah jamz is the prime example of this, sending a bunch of new attention to Call Her Daddy. But even podcasters who have cracked the code on TikTok have found the relationship between on-app engagement and actual listening to be weak, at best.

That issue may soon be moot. Last week, seemingly out of nowhere, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would force Chinese company ByteDance to sell…

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