This is a Hot Pod ~exclusive~: after shifting subgenres and taking on the Biggie-Tupac story with Joel Anderson at the helm for its third season — which has brought in over 7 million downloads, and counting — the next iteration will see the franchise dip back into the political history well to examine David Duke’s […]

Just got this from the Luminary comms team: the paid podcast platform is adjusting its prices. The standard monthly price in the US is now $4.99 — down from $7.99, a fairly big dip. It’s also rolling out an annual plan for the first time, at $34.99. This move has some implications for the platform’s […]

ICYMI. Last Wednesday, I published an extra issue on Spotify’s push into podcast ad tech, via its new Streaming Ad Insertion product roll-out. I principally view the story as one about platform power, with Spotify looking to assume more market power by solving the monetization via advertising problem for the many deep-pocketed brands still meh […]

One of the big 2019 developments for UK podcasting was the announcement of Sony Music’s joint venture with producer Renay Richardson, which takes the form of a London-based production company called Broccoli Content. Given that Sony seems to be seeking out quite a few of these strategic partnerships at the moment — others formed so […]

Just before Christmas, the BBC put out a press release announcing “record listening on BBC Sounds” and hailing “a surge in podcast listening.” There are now three million weekly users for “the BBC’s digital home for all audio,” it said, a major increase on the 1.3 million figure announced in June 2019. For the first […]

Okay, so, there’s a question that I’ve been getting a lot more lately. Sometimes, it’s the last thing said in a conversation I’m having with a source. Other times, it comes as a text message sent out of the blue. (This has happened five times now.) Once, it was shoved into the first paragraph of […]

As we drag our stiff, tired bodies into the new year and deeper into what will undoubtedly be the most exhausting presidential election cycle of all time — until the next one — one should probably expect some deck-shuffling on the part of news orgs, and in particular their respective audio teams, as they continue […]