Audacy, a leading sports broadcaster and streamer, is opening a new sports podcast studio called 2400Sports. The venture begins with a content partnership with Major League Baseball, and another with Jody Avirgan’s Roulette Productions. Get ready for a LOT of baseball documentaries and team-specific podcasts. Continue Reading
Yesterday’s late-afternoon acquisition of ART19 was buttoned down by Amazon with exceptional discipline. Which is to say nobody in either company would talk about it. But Kintan Brahmbhatt, GM Podcasts (Director) at Amazon, celebrated more openly in social media, and offered career opportunities to “define the future of podcasts.” Continue Reading
Amazon has acquired ART19 for its Amazon Music distribution platform. ART19 has long been one of the most innovative and future-tech podcast hosting and monetization platforms. The acquisition puts a third leg on Amazon’s podcast stool, joining the Wondery acquisition in December and Amazon Music’s distribution power through Alexa smart speakers. Continue Reading
A majority of Latinos in the U.S. have listened to a podcast. That teaser is leaked by Edison Research to promote an upcoming webinar release of the second annual Latino Podcast Listener Report. Dual-language presentations are scheduled at different times on Tuesday, July 13. Click through for details and registration links. The webinars are free. Continue Reading
As of today, global audio streamer Deezer has joined Ad For Good, a certification label that encourages brands to give at least one percent of their media budgets to social or environmental causes, and provides technology to do so via partnership with Boon.Today. Click for details.
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If podcast rankers reveal stagnation at the top levels of popularity (they do), Magellan AI’s monthly ranking of top advertisers shows the same characteristic. Looking at the just-released list of top 15 spenders in May, and comparing it to April, we see the same top five advertisers: BetterHelp, HelloFresh, ZipRecruiter, Amazon, and Geico. Click through for comparison chart. Continue Reading
Jottings of Note
— Smart (“Smartless” podcast)
— No Party Favors (Wondery)
— Missing the Mark (Apple Music)
The Washington Post has hired Renita Jablonski as director of audio (title uncapitalized in the press release). Jablonski comes from Spotify, and is also ex-NPR. The move signals the importance of audio to WaPo, which displays neary 30 shows on its podcast page. Continue Reading
In a very interesting (and fairly technical) new report from AdsWizz targeted to advertisers and agencies, audio advertising is evangelized in a general way while the company’s audio ad attribution product is explained and promoted. Attribution has been a blazing-hot keyword in podcast advertising for a couple of years. AdsWizz expands the scope of potential attribution to the entire realm of digital audio advertising. Continue Reading
U.S. government-regulated collection agency SoundExchange distributed $947-million in online performance royalties last year. The money went to labels and independent owners of recorded music in 2020. It’s a 4.3% lift from 2019 distributions. Continue Reading
Jottings of Note
— A Breeze (NH Public Radio)
— Smart Down Under (Edison Research)
— Work (Chartable)
Remote podcast interview recording platform SquadCast has released v4 of its built-in toolkit, adding features which dramatically enlarge group sizes, and appear to rival and automate certain mastering capabilities of DAWs (digital audio workstations). Continue Reading