U.S. stream listening in September was steady as a month-over-month metric following August, according to Triton Digital’s Webcast Metrics Top 20 Ranker. While group leader Pandora dipped by about one percent, gains for iHeartRadio, RADIO.COM, and ESPN helped keep the overall ship on an even keel. Click through for RAIN’s long-term trend chart from 2009 to present. Continue Reading
Veritone, the artificial intelligence enabler and digital content licensing firm, has started a new monetization and licensing service for audio publishers and audio advertisers. The audio and video content is mainly news and sports, and is available for audio-only programs. Continue Reading
When is an impression an accountable impression? The answer isn’t as simple as you might think, especially for audio ads which play out with duration. Pandora is stepping into potential standardization with an “Audibility initiative,” which it plans to launch in collaboration with Moat, a division of Oracle Data Cloud which measures consumer attention across media channels. Continue Reading
UK-centered media company Global has struck a partnership with The Story Lab, an offshoot of dentsu international. The arrangement is focused on podcasts, with the two entities co-commissioning a slate of six new shows over the next 12 months. The launch show is set — it is Hunting Ghislaine, investigating the elusive and controversial life of Ghislaine Maxwell. Other original productions could be in True Crime, Comedy, Entertainment, and Sports. Continue Reading
by Jeff Umbro
In this week’s column, Podglomerate CEO Jeff Umbro covers key podcast news items from the past week. Megafy? That’s mega-Spotify. Also, a review of three radio quarterly earnings reports. Continue Reading
Yesterday’s virtual event, RAIN Digital Australasia, brought together 25 audio professionals from Australia, Malaysia, India, United Arab Emirates, New Zealand, Indonesia, Canada, the UK, and the U.S. in a four-hour sequence of discussions about the state and future of the digital audio business. Click through for highlight quotes. Continue Reading
In this week’s third-quarter earnings call, iHeartMedia executives preached digital, podcasting, and the recent acquisition of Voxnest. Click through for quotes. Continue Reading
by Steve Goldstein
In this guest column, Steve Goldstein chats with Edison Research SVP and ubiquitous keynote speaker Tom Webster about the podcast experience through smart speakers. the conversation is informed by stats and charts from the Edison/NPR Smart Audio Report. Continue Reading
In an intermediary report before its end-of-year accounting, Podtrac has released a chart of the top 25 new podcasts through Q3. This ranker is based on average number of U.S. downloads per episode. Even though it has been an extremely newsy year, and we observed the launch of news podcasts from major media brands, only two podcasts categorized as News made the list. Click through for key points and the entire list. Continue Reading
Triton Digital, parent company of podcast hosting and technology company Omny Studio, is announcing today that Omny is being introduced into Gaana, India’s largest audio streaming platform. Gaana is perhaps best known as a music streaming app. But, like Spotify which is a better known brand globally outside of India, Gaana also distributes podcasts. Until now Gaana has mostly traded in Indian-produced shows, presented either in Hindi or English. The Omny Studio portfolio will bring a more global reach with nearly 30,000 podcasts. Continue Reading
Podcast content, hosting, and monetization platform Acast is announcing a partnership with Patreon, the crowdfunding platform used by many podcasters to support their ongoing projects. In this arrangement, Patreon podcasters can manage both their public feeds and private patron-only episodes in one place, and patronage listeners can hear public and private content in their favorite app. Continue Reading
Podcasting consolidation continues, as Spotify — an acquisition giant in the field — announces that it is buying Megaphone, one of the world’s leading podcast hosting and ad-tech companies. The deal represents not only Spotify’s growing imperialism in the podcast space, but the deepening influence of modern ad technology and audience targeting on the business of podcasting. Continue Reading