ART19 sent us a note that the company has tightened its grip on South Korea podcasting, now providing hosting, distribution, and exclusive ad-repping to all major broadcasters. This follows a December announcement in which ART19 established a dominant footprint in S. Korea, and opened a business unit called ART19 Korea. Continue Reading
After soliciting over 400 nominations, Inside Radio and its sister publication Podcast News Daily have released a top-10 list of podcasting executives. That evidently not being sufficient to represent the field, there is also a second list of 32 “Podcast Power Players.” Conal Byrne (President, iHeartPodcast Network and RAIN Summit speaker) took the top honor. Click through for the top-10 list. Continue Reading
Townsquare Media’s COVID quarter tells a varied story in the company’s Q2 earnings release. Net income for the quarter was down year-over-year (a nearly universal Q2 earnings story), while digital revenue gained in share of total revenue. CEO and RAIN Summit keynoter Bill Wilson noted that sequential revenue (month-over-month within the quarter) rose, and that Townsquare Interactive, the company’s subscription service for digital marketing, earned nearly half of total net revenue. Continue Reading
Signal Hill Insights President Jeff Vidler contributes this very interesting column about how to program (radio and podcasts) for the COVID and post-COVID eras. He notes that radio has worked its way through reinventions before — in the 1950s and 1970s. During those transitions, radio invented new station categories to address changes in audience and listening routines. A must-read. Continue Reading
Wonder Media Network, the podcast content company whose mission is to amplify underrepresented voices, has signed with WME (the talent agency part of the broader Endeavor company). WME will exclusively represent WMN, and help the young network diversify into books, TV, and other categories. Continue Reading
by Jeff Umbro
In this week’s column, Podglomerate CEO Jeff Umbro dives deep into the podcast attribution technology, featuring an interview with Sarah Cotenoff from Podsights. Additionally, making up for going dark last week, this newsletter is packed with news and commentary. A must-read. Continue Reading
An item in today’s Podnews nudged our attention to the New York Times Q2 earnings statement. As Podnews mentioned, the Times disclosed that its leading podcast effort The Daily (the top news podcast in the U.S., and one of the most successful podcasts across categories) serves 3.5-million downloads per daily episode. We do some back-of-envelope math to estimate annual revenue. Click through for meeting quotes about podcast strategy at the Times. Continue Reading
Spotify’s newly launched playlist feature, track IDs, is based on this question: “Do you ever dance to your favorite DJ and wonder what track they’re mixing?” The answer is supplied by an array of 23 playlists curated by DJs and the Spotify editorial team. The volume of music is impressive. Continue Reading
Google Play Music will reportedly be shuttered. The timetable? September for Australia and New Zealand, October for everyone else. Users will have until end-of-year to retrieve their cloud-stored music. The existing YouTube Music will take over as Google’s on-demand streaming service. This shift is helpful to what has been Google’s audio-related miasma of branding. Continue Reading
In an example of SiriusXM’s cross-platform strategies, the satellite company will broadcast one of Pandora’s new weekly “Thumb” playlists. Alongside that announcement Pandora is also pushing a top-100 playlist to be refreshed each week. A “Thumb” playlist is informed by Pandora users’ thumb-up actions on individual tracks. The company takes the entire thumb-up database across all listeners during the week, and makes a top-100 list out of it. Using the same method, a top-20 list is also manufactured and is broadcast on the Pandora Now channel on siriusXM. Continue Reading
The Hidden Brain podcast, hosted by Shankar Vedantam, has moved its ad representation exclusively to Midroll Media, the ad sales division of Stitcher. (Stitcher has recently been acquired by SiriusXM, from E.W. Scripps, in a deal which will close by Q3). Alongside this deal, Hidden Brain will be produced independently by Hidden Brain Media, starting October 1. The podcast will continue to be distributed by NPR. It’s a chart success — click through to see its placements.
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In eMarketer’s latest projection of ad revenue to podcasting, the market research company forecasts two headline points: 1) Podcasting ad revenue will surpass $1-billion in 2021, and 2) Podcast ad revenue will capture 20% of digital radio ad spending in 2020. Click through for a chart and the company’s forecast of programmatic ad buying in podcasting. Continue Reading