In Entercom’s Q2 earnings call on August 7, CEO David Field held forth with a considerable portion of his opening remarks focused on digital audio and cross-category business in the U.S.’s second-largest commercial radio group. In fact, “radio” is subsumed in Field’s broad definition of Entercom: “Entercom is now a scaled media and entertainment company.” Continue Reading
Veritone One is the latest podcast entity to subscribe to Nielsen’s Podcast Buying Power Service, Nielsen is announcing today. Nielsen’s subscription program ties listeners and their buying habits to podcast categories, to help advertisers (especially brand advertisers) plan more effective and targeted campaigns. The Podcast Buying Power Service launched in July of last year, with five major podcast publishers as charter subscribers. As a new subscriber Veritone One is an audio advertising agency. Continue Reading
The headline number is derived from the Q2 earnings report for E.W.Scripps, Stitcher’s parent company. Scripps has sold Stitcher to SiriusXM, in a deal planned for Q3 closing. Click through for details, quotes from the conference call, and our arithmetic. Continue Reading
Edison Research has released a public version of its subscription product Podcast Consumer Tracker (PCT). The PCT is intended to rank podcasts by reach, while most rankers use downloads as the determining factor of their lists. The time period represented in today’s release is Q3 2019 through Q2 2020. No dark horse surprises here; click through for the whole top-30 list. Continue Reading
ART19 sent us a note that the company has tightened its grip on South Korea podcasting, now providing hosting, distribution, and exclusive ad-repping to all major broadcasters. This follows a December announcement in which ART19 established a dominant footprint in S. Korea, and opened a business unit called ART19 Korea. Continue Reading
After soliciting over 400 nominations, Inside Radio and its sister publication Podcast News Daily have released a top-10 list of podcasting executives. That evidently not being sufficient to represent the field, there is also a second list of 32 “Podcast Power Players.” Conal Byrne (President, iHeartPodcast Network and RAIN Summit speaker) took the top honor. Click through for the top-10 list. Continue Reading
Townsquare Media’s COVID quarter tells a varied story in the company’s Q2 earnings release. Net income for the quarter was down year-over-year (a nearly universal Q2 earnings story), while digital revenue gained in share of total revenue. CEO and RAIN Summit keynoter Bill Wilson noted that sequential revenue (month-over-month within the quarter) rose, and that Townsquare Interactive, the company’s subscription service for digital marketing, earned nearly half of total net revenue. Continue Reading
Wonder Media Network, the podcast content company whose mission is to amplify underrepresented voices, has signed with WME (the talent agency part of the broader Endeavor company). WME will exclusively represent WMN, and help the young network diversify into books, TV, and other categories. Continue Reading
by Jeff Umbro
In this week’s column, Podglomerate CEO Jeff Umbro dives deep into the podcast attribution technology, featuring an interview with Sarah Cotenoff from Podsights. Additionally, making up for going dark last week, this newsletter is packed with news and commentary. A must-read. Continue Reading
An item in today’s Podnews nudged our attention to the New York Times Q2 earnings statement. As Podnews mentioned, the Times disclosed that its leading podcast effort The Daily (the top news podcast in the U.S., and one of the most successful podcasts across categories) serves 3.5-million downloads per daily episode. We do some back-of-envelope math to estimate annual revenue. Click through for meeting quotes about podcast strategy at the Times. Continue Reading
Spotify’s newly launched playlist feature, track IDs, is based on this question: “Do you ever dance to your favorite DJ and wonder what track they’re mixing?” The answer is supplied by an array of 23 playlists curated by DJs and the Spotify editorial team. The volume of music is impressive. Continue Reading
Google Play Music will reportedly be shuttered. The timetable? September for Australia and New Zealand, October for everyone else. Users will have until end-of-year to retrieve their cloud-stored music. The existing YouTube Music will take over as Google’s on-demand streaming service. This shift is helpful to what has been Google’s audio-related miasma of branding. Continue Reading