Why podcasters NEED to start looking beyond their local industry 🌏
Eurowaves #34
Hi podcasters,
We are two months away from The Podcast Show, the biggest international podcasting business event. See you there? Use code EW10 for 10% discount on your tickets.
In this issue, you’ll read a fantastic interview with Justine Perez, the founder and head of Bruits Roses Festival - a Mediterranean podcast festival that connects Europe with the world.
Before we get into it…
Entries are now open for the 16th Annual Lovie Awards! 💌
The Lovies is The Webby Awards’ benchmark for European digital excellence, recognising the people, projects and ideas shaping Europe’s contributions to the Internet. If you’re creating standout digital work in and for Europe, our judges want to see it. Enter before 8 May, 2026.
The IWPF 2026 Global Voices Programme! ✨
Get ready for Content is Queen’s Global Voices stream on 26th March! This is your chance to watch The International Women’s Podcast Festival 2026 in partnership with Spotify, for FREE, wherever you are in the world. Join from 12pm BST for a 12 hour stream of talks, workshops and panels from incredible women in podcasting!
🇪🇺 Podcasting & Community News 🇪🇺
🎗️Podcasthon is ON! Until today, March 20, podcasts all over the world are highlight the charitable organizations that matter to them.
🇩🇪Pocket FM is growing its German team and hiring for several key roles in Berlin.
🇬🇧The Inside Counter Terrorism Policing podcast has returned for season 2. Over six episodes, listeners will hear from officers and staff in different roles across Counter Terrorism Policing in the UK.
🎧What’s The Call? is a new sports podcast covering major tennis and sporting events across the world from a female perspective often missing in mainstream media.
‼️Podbean has abruptly pulled its dynamic ad insertion tool across the whole of Europe. No notice was given; the affected countries imply that there is a concern with GDPR compliance. (source: Podnews)
🇧🇪🇳🇱🇸🇪🇵🇱🇮🇪Audible announced “localised experiences” in a further 11 new countries. Listeners in Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Ireland, and 6 other countries will all have local-language recommendations and billing (source: Podnews)
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The Audio Festival Connecting Europe with The World, with Bruit Roses’ Justine Perez 🇫🇷
Justine Perez is a podcast writer-producer and director of the Bruits Roses Festival. A journalist by training and an avid listener, she began her radio career in Spain, where she worked on Cadena SER’s morning show. After returning to her hometown of Marseille, she produced audio documentaries for 13 Prods, including Sauce Algérienne (an original Spotify production) and Chroniques du Grand Domaine.
Together with other sound professionals, she co-founded Sonorama, an organization dedicated to promoting new audio narratives and fostering their circulation among young people across the Mediterranean. She coordinates the traveling residency L’Île aux Podcasts (Algeria, Germany, France) and runs the Bruits Roses Festival.
You can connect with Justine on LinkedIn here.
What’s your podcasting origin story?
I’ve always been a passionate audio listener. I started my professional journey in radio journalism in Spain, where I was a producer for the morning show at Cadena SER. I learned a great deal from an incredible training ground, but it was also quite demanding. Producing a daily live show involves preparing large amounts of content at an intense pace. That experience led me to shift toward documentary storytelling. I joined a podcast project in Spain, where I could take the time to develop in-depth narratives and explore more creative forms.
Later, when I moved back to France, I pitched the idea of creating a documentary podcast production branch within an audiovisual company. That’s how I continued building my path in podcasting as an audio writer and producer.
How was Bruit Roses born?
Four years ago, I decided to create a festival in Marseille. I imagined something simple and open, without competition — a space dedicated to listening together to creative audio works, whether from radio or podcasting. I wanted a festival turned outward, contributing to a more inclusive sonic landscape, where listening becomes a collective experience again — a moment to slow down, share stories, and let sound resonate between us. Along the way, key encounters helped shape the festival and give it direction.
Together with the Sonorama collective, we named it Bruits Roses. The name refers to the sound you hear when you place a seashell against your ear — you think you are hearing the sea, but it is actually your own blood resonating. In the same way, Bruits Roses seeks to take the pulse of intimate and collective soundscapes, near and far, in Marseille and across the Mediterranean.
Why was it important for you for Bruit Roses to move beyond a local French scene to a dialogue between Marseille and the Mediterranean?
After six years abroad in Argentina and Spain, I discovered different radio cultures and ways of narrating reality. When I returned to France, I found a vibrant audio scene, but that could sometimes feel a bit inward-looking. For me, listening has always been an ethical stance as much as a professional practice. Working in sound means staying attentive to what is happening elsewhere and remaining open to other narratives, other rhythms, other ways of understanding the world.
Creating a new festival in Marseille naturally called for a Mediterranean scale. The city, like the region, is deeply shaped by orality, circulation, and layered identities. Across the Mediterranean — from local collectives to diaspora voices — audio has become a powerful space for dialogue, especially among younger generations. With Bruits Roses, the aim is to create a resonating chamber for these plural voices, connecting Marseille to a broader Mediterranean conversation.
Given the important issues addressed in the festival, how do you think audio can act as a tool for resistance and memory, as opposed to traditional journalism?
Audio can act as a tool for resistance and memory precisely because it creates intimacy and duration. Unlike traditional journalism, which is often constrained by immediacy, format, and the need for quick information, audio storytelling allows for depth, subjectivity, and emotional resonance. It gives space to voices that are often marginalized and enables people not only to tell stories, but to tell themselves — to reclaim their narratives. At the same time, this approach does not reject journalistic rigor.
Many of the works presented at the festival intertwine the intimate and the political, offering alternative ways of approaching history, memory, and social realities. Through long-form documentaries or deeply personal sonic portraits, audio can preserve lived experiences, transmit silenced memories, and create empathy across borders. By placing listening at the center, it becomes both an archive and an act of resistance — a way of slowing down, bearing witness, and allowing complex stories to exist beyond headlines.
What are your reflections after the first Bruit Roses edition and what are you preparing for this year’s festival?
The first edition of Bruits Roses exceeded our expectations. We brought together a dozen creators from across the Mediterranean alongside Marseille-based sound activists, welcoming nearly a thousand participants in six different places across the city.
Beyond the numbers, what stays with me are the encounters and the impact: people felt inspired to create, to engage collectively, and to discover realities they had never encountered before.
What moved me most was the collective energy — festive and political at once — and the sense that the festival was truly written in the plural, shaped by artists, partners, and audiences alike. We are now preparing the next edition with the ambition to deepen these connections, expand the Mediterranean dialogue, and make the festival even more vibrant and resonant.
Share 2-3 recommendations of your favorite pieces featured in the festival.
La Vénus d’Alger (Seham Boutata, France Culture): This documentary traces the life of an Algerian woman who worked as a nude model at the Beaux Arts in Algiers, connecting her story to the broader history of contemporary Algeria.
Maabar (Anthony Tawil and Cédric Kayem): A documentary podcast exploring lived experiences of Lebanon’s complicated history with a focus on the Civil War.
Soldat Bison (Yasmine Mahjoubi, Les Bonnes Ondes): Yasmine Mahjoubi revisits the memories left behind by her father — his notes, recordings, fragments of history.
Thank you, Justine!
🎙️🌍 Podcast Recommendations 🌍🎙️
For a decade, Ángela lived trapped in a relationship defined by fear. When she finally managed to escape, she encountered a system that neither listened to her nor protected her. It’s a story about the lasting impact of abuse, the system that perpetuates it, and the alliances women forge to tell their stories and save themselves. A co-production of Podium and SER Podcasts.
An exiled Northern Irish anthropologist and a hitchhiking Australian psychologist take a close look at the contemporary crop of 'secular gurus', iconoclasts, and other exiles from the mainstream, offering their own brands of unique takes and special insights. Leveraging two of the most diverse accents in modern podcasting, Chris and Matt dig deep into the claims, peek behind the psychological curtains, and try to figure out once and for all.
An award winning podcast spotlighting the UK’s most compelling Black change makers, innovators, disruptors and entrepreneurs. Through honest, nuanced conversations, we explore the realities of work, life and ambition, and how our experiences are shaped through the lens of Black identity. Expect powerful storytelling, real insight and the kind of dialogue that inspires growth, ownership and impact.
Want to see your podcast recommended?
🇮🇹 Podcasts from Italy 🇮🇹
Futura D’Aprile is an Italian freelance journalist and podcast producer. She is the author and procuder of Vie de routier.e.s/Truck Drivers and Grain de Pouvoir/ A Grain of Power (Europod) and the co-author of Divergenti (IrpiMedia). She reports on defense, the Middle East, conflicts and international relations.
Divergenti (Divergents) is a podcast about the war economy, military bases, and the movements fighting for a Sardinia free from war. The series brings together the voices of those building an alternative economic network to the military one, exploring how a single factory can determine the future of a city and how wars fought hundreds of kilometers away can so profoundly impact the fate of an entire island.
“Divergenti” è un podcast sull’economia bellica, sulle basi militari e sui movimenti che lottano per una Sardegna libera dalla guerra. La serie raccoglie le voci di chi sta costruendo una rete di economia alternativa a quella militare, indaga come una sola fabbrica può determinare il futuro di una città e come le guerre che si combattono a centinaia di chilometri di distanza possano influenzare così pesantemente il destino di un’intera isola.
Enclave - Sopravvivere a Srebrenica (Enclave - Surviving Srebrenica) is a seven-episode narrative-journalistic podcast that tells the story of the genocide that took place in Bosnia in July 1995 through the story of Nedžad Avdić, one of the few survivors of the mass executions.
“Enclave – Sopravvivere a Srebrenica” è un podcast giornalistico-narrativo in sette episodi che racconta la storia del genocidio avvenuto in Bosnia nel luglio 1995 attraverso la storia di Nedžad Avdić, uno dei pochi sopravvissuti alle esecuzioni di massa.
Il cuore scoperto (The Uncovered Heart) is a journalistic investigation that explores two major questions: how do cultural and social models influence our emotional relationships? What concrete practices can we implement, individually and collectively, to build respectful and egalitarian relationships?
“Il cuore scoperto” è un’inchiesta giornalistica che esplora due grandi questioni: in che modo i modelli culturali e sociali influenzano le nostre relazioni affettive? Quali pratiche concrete possiamo mettere in campo, individualmente e collettivamente, per costruire delle relazioni
rispettose ed egualitarie?
Thank you, Futura!
You can connect with her on LinkedIn here.
🚀Events and Opportunities🚀
PodRennes (Rennes, France)
A festival dedicated to podcasts and audio creation. PodRennes offers a varied and inclusive program every year: live podcast recordings, audio fiction spaces and networking opportunities.
Deadline? April 4-5.
Chora Volume 3 (Milan, Italy)
A celebration of audio culture and its diversity. There will be three days of panels, stories, performances, debates, and shows, enriched by photography exhibitions, book signings, workshops, and interactive labs for adults and children. Featuring the most beloved voices from Chora Media and the Italian and international podcast scene, as well as prominent guests from journalism, literature, and entertainment.
When? April 10-12.
The Journalism Science Alliance grants support collaborations between journalists and scientists to produce investigative journalism grounded in scientific evidence and focused on topics of public interest. These grants aim to strengthen cross-sector partnerships between media and research institutions across Europe.
When? June 2 - August 4.
That’s it for now!
Andreea