Comprehensive coverage of the podcasting industry and its business ecosystem.
Jacobs Media has released its Public Radio Techsurvey 2021, the latest in an annual canvas of public radio listeners. In a rich array of survey results, we see that podcasting is adopted at a higher rate than in the general U.S. population. Click through for tons of detail, graphics, and a download link. Continue Reading
Media company OZY Media, which created a tornado of news coverage and legal fallout when it announced over the weekend that it would cease operations, plugged itself back in Monday morning in what founder Carlos Watson called “our Lazarus moment.” Details inside. Continue Reading
The 2021 edition of the annual People’s Choice Podcast Awards is out. This remarkable celebration of podcasting excellence is basically crowdsourced — listeners and podcasters select all the nominees and all the winners. Not only a meritocracy, but the results furnish a remarkable trove of discovery. Continue Reading
Presumably (but not explicitly) in honor of International Podcast Day, Apple released two podcast charts: Top Subscriptions, and Top Free Channels. This is the first ranking released by the company since those two programs started three months ago. Click for the details. Continue Reading
As an International Podcast Day commemoration, Acast devised a promotional campaign meant to celebrate podcasting, and selected podcasters. It uses dynamic insertion to place messages from leading creators across the network. Continue Reading
Looking at four podcast listener age groups, Nielsen has determined that each group has grown in size from 2020 to 2021. There are other metrics within that phenomenon. The pandemic flattened listener growth temporarily, and created more at-home listening. Click through for details and more metrics. Continue Reading
In a buy-side survey of marketers by WARC and iHeartMedia, an interesting chart catches our eye. It is a budget outlook for 2021, indicating which media categories will be increased, and which are not used, by percentage of responses. Click for details and graphics. Continue Reading
by Steve Goldstein Radio ownership is down. Digital listening to broadcast radio is only 12% in the U.S. There is no single reason radio’s digital conversion is slow, Steve Goldstein says in this guest column, while noting that “history has been unkind to repurposed content on new platforms.” He offers better examples from other industries and provides a suggestion for radio.
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Apple has introduced two new sharing and personalization features for its podcast listening platform. Both target personalized discovery. Users can share recommendations, and the platform also can deliver personalized suggestions that go across podcast categories. Continue Reading
The Podcast Reader, a hybrid print/PDF magazine created by Melbourne-based David Loggia, has published two issues in what Loggia tells RAIN are “very early days.” The publication features five transcripts of long-form interview podcasts that focus on intellectual topics of history, science, and society. David Loggia gave us more details about the venture. Continue Reading
In a new and intriguing Latino Podcast (non) Listener Report from Edison Research, one key survey question asks why respondents don’t listen. We see the results as pointing to the length of podcasts, and also difficulties in getting familiar with podcasts — a classic ease-of-use problem. Click for details, graphics, and metrics from this fascinating study. Continue Reading
In a reflection of what it calls its “flywheel business model,” the company formerly known as LiveXLive will change its corporate identity to LiveOne, mimicking its acquired subsidiary PodcastOne. A similarly modeled rebrand is being applied to all its business units. Click for deets. Continue Reading