In the recent Q2 earnings call from Sirius XM, we heard a measured bullishness about the audio giant’s podcast business, including a key bragging point of interest: CEO Jennifer Witz noted that the first half of 2023 booked over 2,600 podcast campaigns across more than 100 Fortune 500 brands. Click for lots more detail. Continue Reading
In a sad but arguably predictable action, Sirius XM announces it will shut down the Stitcher podcast app in August. Founded in 2008, Stitcher is a venerable brand in the renaissance of podcasting. Existing Stitcher registered users will be shifted to the Sirius XM platform. The decision might have a brand maintenance aspect as well. Click for details. Continue Reading
New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR) has made an exclusive national marketing agreement with Stitcher, a subsidiary of Sirius XM, in which SXM Media will represent ad sales for NHPR’s original podcasts. Continue Reading
Digital audio advertising company AdsWizz is announcing having reached the milestone of one billion monthly downloads. The company is paired with podcast host Simplecast, via separate acquisitions by parent entity Sirius XM. Continue Reading
UK-centered media and technology company Global has activated its investment arm, Honeycomb Investments LTD, to acquire 8.8% of iHeartMedia, the largest American commercial radio group and top podcast publisher. Remembering that Liberty also owns a stake in iHM, we speculate a brewing battle of buyers, as listener reach and advertising pull are increasingly parts of a cross-category landscape. Continue Reading
by Jeff Umbro
In this week’s column, The Podglomerate CEO Jeff Umbro rounds up recent earnings reports from Spotify, SiriusXM, The New York Times, and Amazon. (With stock charts.) A nice grab-bag of industry updates rounds out the issue. Oh, also a podcast recommendation. Continue Reading
SiriusXM, whose native and acquired assets address 150-million listeners, one of the largest audiences in American audio, reported Q4 earnings. Here, we recap the major financial points, then dive into key remarks pertaining to subsidiaries Pandora, Stitcher, and podcasting generally. Click through for illuminating quotes from the investor call. Continue Reading
by Jeff Umbro
In this week’s column, The Podglomerate CEO Jeff Umbro grapples with the often-overlooked, always-challenging topic of podcast content moderation. Should podcasting undergo the level of scrutiny that social networks do? Along with these ruminations, the column catches up with news from Spotify, Apple, and elsewhere. Continue Reading
AdsWizz is trumpeting a major get — Berlin-HQ’d global streamer SoundCloud has chosen the U.S.-HQ’d global ad-tech company AdsWizz to exclusively represent digital audio ad sales in significant European markets. This deal has an in-house feeling; AdsWizz is a subsidiary of Pandora, which is owned by Sirius XM, which also owns 30% of SoundCloud. Continue Reading
by Jeff Umbro
In this week’s column, The Podglomerate CEO Jeff Umbro catches up after a mini vacation, rounding up the latest acquisitions, a prediction, a podcast recommendation, and other topical items. Continue Reading
In this week’s Q1 earnings call from parent company Sirius XM, we learned (and reported) that Pandora experienced a drop in monthly listeners to about 61-million, down from the year-ago Q1 report of 66-million. Sirius XM executives think they know exactly why. Continue Reading
Sirius XM has released its financials for the first quarter of 2020. The satellite radio and audio company reported revenue of $1.95 billion, up from $1.74 billion in the same period of 2019. Net income totaled $293 million, or 7 cents per share, up from $162 million, or 3 cents per share, in the year-ago period. Continue Reading