Hot Pod Archives
Tag: ACast
Acast raises $35 million in Series C funding
The money will apparently fund expansion into new content and territories, a push towards more non-advertising revenue streams, and an improved offering for smart speakers.
Google wants to do for podcasts on Android what Apple did for podcasts on iOS
GOOGLY EYED. You might have already heard about Google’s new strategy around podcast servicing on Android devices — I briefly linked to it last week after my whole spiel on the Apple HomePod — that the search giant announced through the content marketing blog of Pacific Content, the Canadian branded podcast studio. The announcement was […]
What a podcast needs to do to put on a good live show (and why so many are trying)
Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 138, published October 31, 2017. Happy Halloween folks! Subscriptions at a personal level. When I wrote about Panoply’s paid kids-oriented listening service, Pinna, earlier this month, I was drawn to a question that didn’t end up being articulated in the piece: Does a subscription-first audio product […]
Hot Pod: What does an audio producer actually do, anyway?
Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 104, published January 24, 2017. Panoply signs two more partners for its Megaphone platform: WBUR and BuzzFeed Audio. The company also announced a platform feature called Megalink, which purports to “simplify the podcast subscription process.” The feature doesn’t seem to be anything particularly fancy; […]
Hot Pod: Should Apple become a more useful middleman for the podcast industry — and if so, how?
Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue ninety-seven, published November 29, 2016. Ken Doctor on the role Apple should play. The media analyst made an appearance on the latest episode of The Wolf Den, Midroll’s pretty handy content marketing podcast-slash-guide to the industry, to discuss his spectacular series on the podcasting […]
Hot Pod: Is podcasting about food the new dancing about architecture?
Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue ninety-two, published October 18, 2016. Gimlet ends Sampler. The company announced the end of its podcast about podcasts at the top of its last episode, which was published late Monday evening. In the preshow note, Gimlet CEO Alex Blumberg explained that the move was […]
Hot Pod: Is there an opening for budding U.K. podcast businesses to challenge the BBC?
Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue ninety, published October 4, 2016. Night Vale Presents welcomes a new show to the podcast universe: The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air), an audio drama that will “tell the story of a mysteriously impossible variety show broadcast from the top of the Eiffel […]
A new player aims to bring the podcast advertising analytics some want (and others fear)
Art19 steps into the spotlight. “We’re not really pulling ourselves out of beta,” said Sean Carr, cofounder and CEO of Art19, a California-based tech startup that’s built a podcast hosting, monetization, and distribution platform. “We’re just ready to make some noise and draw attention to ourselves.” And you should, indeed, pay attention. Art19 organized a […]
Is the BBC’s power to blame for the U.K. podcasting scene’s underdevelopment?
The view on the other side. “I think the corporate heart of the BBC currently undervalues radio and may well be about to undermine it,” wrote Gillian Reynolds, the radio critic at The Telegraph, in a column published two weeks ago. (Radio critic! I want that job!) Reynolds noted that “a 20 percent portion of […]
Is the Stitcher deal a step toward a closed podcast ecosystem?
Big moves at Midroll Media and EW Scripps. Okay, two big things from Midroll: (1) E.W. Scripps, the parent company of Midroll Media, has acquired Stitcher, the podcasting app that’s widely considered to be the most popular alternative to the default Apple podcast app, for $4.5 million in cash. According to the Wall Street Journal […]