Comprehensive coverage of the podcasting industry and its business ecosystem.
SETI, the institute whose sole mission is the search for extraterrestrial life, has reported the discovery of podcast signals originating from across the galaxy. “We don’t know exactly where these shows come from, honestly,” remarked James Aressess, head of SETI’s audio division. “But we know a podcast when we hear one.” Click through for revelatory details. Continue Reading
Podcast consultancy and production company Quill has released the winners in the 2022 Quill Podcast Awards. The company describes its Awards program as “A hybrid of a public nominations and a judging period by a panel of experts, the awards are given to companies and podcasts that have built strong audiences, innovated within their category, and created outstanding content.” Continue Reading
The Webby Awards, which since 1995 has been operating an annual ceremony for excellence on the internet, now announces a spinoff podcast award program. Called the Signal Awards, the first ceremony will be in January, 2023. Click for categories and submission info. Continue Reading
The Podcast Movement Hall of Fame, which was inaugurated in 2015, was resumed at last week’s Podcast Movement Evolutions gathering after a hiatus of a few years. “We are honoring the pioneers,” was the theme for this returning ceremony. Continue Reading
Podcast network Crooked Media has signed with SXM Media (ad-sales arm of Sirius XM), giving SXM exclusive global ad sales rights across Crooked Media’s catalog. Crooked is best known for Pod Save America but has 27 titles. The sales rights in this deal are extensive. Click for details. Continue Reading
At this week’s Podcast Movement Evolutions, Podnews editor James Cridland released some results of the recent Podnews Report Card 2022, which asks podcasters and listeners to rate and comment on platforms, apps, podcasting services, and directories according to several criteria. Today, the Podnews website spills out an enormous repository of survey results. Click for details and the link. Continue Reading
“Indies should not be discouraged” was the encouragement offered by Wondery CEO Jen Sargent to a hall full of podcasters at Podcast Movement Evolutions 2022 in Los Angeles Wednesday morning. Brought onstage by The Infinite Dial presenter Tom Webster, Sargent talked about podcasting’s growth, and how podcaster’s could view the future. Click for a bunch of quotes. Continue Reading
In a significant upgrade to its reporting features and production requirements, Apple Podcasts has released and defined new podcast metrics for subscription podcast owners, and audio guidelines for subscription podcast producers. Click for details and screenshot of the new metrics dashboard. Continue Reading
When Spotify acquired Chartable and Podsights last month, it was clearly stated that Chartable would be integrated with Spotify-owned hosting and monetization platform Megaphone. Today we learn of progress in that integration. Chartable is winding down its attribution work and throwing it over to former competitor Podsights. Continue Reading
by Steve Goldstein
In the latest guest column from Steve Goldstein, he marches through a litany of podcast listening apps, “a curious business” according to Steve. “Developing a large following is hard and expensive, yet the apps keep coming.” It’s difficult — but not impossible — to break through to scale. Continue Reading
Magellan AI released its always-interesting Top Spenders chart, listing the highest 15 spenders for February. BetterHelp lands in the #1 spot, as it has for (at least) the last 11 months that RAIN has tracked the movements in this ranker. Click for RAIN’s 11-month comparison chart. Continue Reading
Triton Digital has released the February edition of its U.S. Podcast Report, and we see Stitcher in the #1 slot as with the previous report. Audacy (#2) and NPR (#3) switch position from the previous month. The placements are based on average weekly downloads. Click for some context on this. Continue Reading