RIAA asks U.S. government for protection against AI; targets Voicify

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has identified voice-cloning services as threats to musicians’ intellectual property, and reported Voicify particularly to the U.S. government. Voicify.ai was the only service called out by name, though it certainly is not the only service in the game. The RIAA makes two specific complaints. Continue Reading

Podtrac: Podcast consumption down 10% in September, and RAIN Remix

In the Top Podcast Publishers ranking in September from Podtrac, we are told that podcast downloads and play decreased in September. Meanwhile iHeartPodcasts, Wondery, and NPR repeated month-over-month to take the top three spots based on the ranker’s native sorting. But things get shaken up in the RAIN Remix, which resorts the Podtrac data to show audience and downloads per active show. Click for details and graphics. Continue Reading

Will Ferrell’s pod network to create multi-platform comedy show and talent incubator

Will Ferrell’s podcast network, Big Money Players, is working with iHeartMedia to create a multi-platform comedy creators program and multimedia comedy show. The talent incubator part of this will roll out at Ferrell’s discretion, highlighting his personally selected comedians. Those individuals will join the BMP network and be showcased across the iHeartMedia ecosystem. Continue Reading

New podcast creation on track to lowest yearly level since 2018

Looking at the monthly and yearly podcast creation statistics at Listen Notes [HERE], we observe that new podcasts have been started this year at the lowest rate since 2018. In a larger view, Listen Notes is reporting 3,195,616 active podcasts in the world, with nearly 178-million episodes. That means there are nearly twice as many podcast episodes as music tracks in Spotify. Continue Reading

Latino podcast listeners control $2.8-trillion purchasing power and podcast ads motivate them

In its most recent Latino Podcast Listener Report from Edison Research, this segment of podcast listenership is portrayed as racing into podcast engagement, and highly receptive to advertising. As a national group, Latinos wield impressive purchasing power. Edison puts a number on that: $2.8-trillion, and dramatically computes that overall purchasing budget as greater than the GDP of the UK or India. Click for much more info, and a link to the presentation slides.
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