News

American billionaire and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has launched an effort to acquire Universal Music Group (UMG), one of the world’s largest music ownership labels. There is a speculative acquisition cot of $64 billion. UMG stock jolted upward and seems to be holding. The takeover could be slowed or conceivably prevented by one family which owns a large share of UMG. Click for details and the chart. Continue Reading →

Database and search engine Podchaser has released its first Power Score, a ranking success metric of recently released podcasts. This exercise is intended for advertisers, publicists, and researchers identify high-impact shows. The results provide a comparative measure of success and standing in the podcast ecosystem.  Continue Reading →

Audacy steps onto the mound (sorry, we’re taking a swing with the puns) with a bit of research and an announcement. The announcement is somewhat buried in the company’s summary of research findings, but we will reverse the order of events. Continue Reading →

Delta Airlines has launched an in-flight music discovery initiative, partnering with YouTube Premium. It’s a new programming project that features live music performances recorded inside a Delta Boeing 767 airplane. More than just a branding exercise for YouTube, the partnership goal is to enroll passengers on YouTube Premium. Continue Reading →

In this monthly feature, we look back one decade and revisit selected headlines. Today — highlights from April 2016. In this review we see streaming expand around the world, and many other signs of progress.  Happy decade surfing.   Musicians… Continue Reading →

OpenAI, parent company of ChatGPT and other AI creations, has acquired TBPN (Technology Business Programming Network), a startup founded last year by Jordin Hays and John Coogan.  Continue Reading →

Right on schedule, History Daily has released its annual April Fools episode. This year, in what we regard as comedic genius, expert historians uncovered leading podcast advertisers in 1572. The episode is freely available on Spotify. Click for link. Continue Reading →

Research studies abound, measuring who listens to podcasts and how they listen. Much of that output is organized and presented by eminent audio researcher and Sounds Profitable partner Tom Webster. Such it is with the recently released presentation The Last Quarter: Understanding America’s Podcast Holdouts. The information in this package derives from a 2025 survey (“The Podcast Landscape 2025”) of over five thousand respondents. Continue Reading →