Comprehensive coverage of the podcasting industry and its business ecosystem.
Yesterday we reported rumors that Spotify might acquire sports/pop podcast network The Ringer, founded by ex-ESPN Bill Simmons. Today a second swirl of rumors speculates that Simmons is asking $200-million for the deal. We scratch out some rough arithmetic. Continue Reading
The 2nd annual iHeartRadio Podcast Awards were celebrated Friday night at the iHeartRadio Theater in Burbank, CA., and RAIN was there to observe the show. Continue Reading
Podlists proliferate the podsphere. The latest? Podtoppen, which ranks the top 100 Norwegian podcasts. “Norway’s official top list and measurement of podcasts” is compiled by an entity which calls itself the Steering Group, comprised of five Norwegian media companies. Continue Reading
With podcasts on track to be commanding a cool billion dollars in ad revenue, the fight to be the leading listening platform will only be getting more intense. This year kicked off with multiple reports from difference sources with their own datasets about which service is the biggest. James Cridland of Podnews gave his take on how to reconcile the different assessments Continue Reading
The Canadian Podcast Listener published a blog post with an exploration of the value in niche audiences, both for shows and for advertisers. The post included a graphic with a breakdown of the audience demographics for the top 10 podcasts on investing. Only 3.3% of monthly podcast listeners said they listen to shows about investing, meaning that mass-market brands likely won’t turn to those programs to reach a large market. Continue Reading
Podtrac released its December 2019 podcast ranker. The analytics platform made some format changes to its publisher chart last month, and its approach to the top shows has also gotten a slight tweak. Continue Reading
NPR launched a new podcast centered on creating audio in the classroom. The Student Podcast Challenge show is made by the team that runs the NPR contest of the same name. Continue Reading
MIDiA Research posted a graphic from its fourth-quarter podcast tracker survey ahead of the launch of its Podcast Platforms report. The data, from a consumer survey of 576 podcast users, show Spotify with a lead in the overall weighted average of four national cohorts. Spotify is also the leading podcast app for Canada, Australia, and the UK, according to MIDiA’s research — but Google leads in the U.S. Continue Reading
The podcast network Barstool Sports may be changing hands. Recode reported that its owner The Chernin Group is close to a deal to sell the audio brand to Penn National Gaming, a regional gambling company. Continue Reading
A weekly column from the preeminent Radio Futurologist. THIS WEEK: How Australian radio is covering the continued fires. KCRW’s new hire. A counterpoint to the hype coming out of another year of CES. Continue Reading
cabana, the digital audio arm of AdLarge Media, announced the addition of two more podcasts to its portfolio. First is the true crime show Voices for Justice and the second addition is ONE Extraordinary Marriage. Continue Reading
Using CES as a soapbox, Spotify has announced new ad-insertion technology for its podcasts. By most accounting, Spotify is the second-largest podcast distributor in the English-speaking world. Creating its own digital ad-tech unleashes a tectonic shiver in the podcast ecosystem of creators, publishers, technology companies, and advertisers. Continue Reading