Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web:
Will Podcasting Save the News Media Industry?: that’s the premise of this Inc. article which starts by detailing the threat to news media under seige by ad blockers, social media displacement, and the fake news invasion. Podcasting, according to author Geoffrey James, disproportionally rewards high quality and slow production — “Nine of the top ten podcast publishers produce a small number of high quality shows.” (That’s according to the monthly Podtrac report.) “In podcasting, quality beats quantity in terms of creating and holding an audience.”
Pondering a potential Pandora purchase: Recode has was buzzing earlier this month about a possible sale of SoundCloud, now the publication is turning its M&A lens on Pandora. As the Sirius XM and its parent company continue teasing whether they might purchase Pandora, the response from labels has mostly been displeasure.
How much does a Spotify playlist boost popularity? Here’s another interesting piece from Recode, this one centered on the role of playlist placement. Spotify’s playlists have helped break some up-and-coming artists or turned new singles into viral hits. Record shared some numbers about exactly how big a bump artists might see from inclusion in those sets.