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Friday, Aug 28
- Podcast Movement has also announced it is to celebrate sponsors and attendees with a billboard in Times Square (upload your logo through the Swapcard app); and “podcast newsletter checkups” with beehiiv through the event.
Audacy is to close its podcast hosting and monetisation service, Audacy Creator Lab, on Nov 1. Launched as Podcorn in 2019, which was acquired by Audacy for $22.5mn in 2021, the new “Creator Lab” was announced at Podcast Movement Evolutions in Apr 2025 - making some podcasting companies angry at its marketing tactics. It announced YouTube integration this March. There appear to be just 426 shows hosted on Audacy Creator Lab in the Podcast Index, though you could also take part in the Creator Lab Marketplace wherever you were hosted.
- The company’s website doesn’t mention that it’s closing yet; and they’re still marketing on podcasts: Podscribe reports that Audacy Creator Lab has advertised on 52 shows since Monday.
A new website builder called Podspun has released a significant update. The tool creates a website from your podcast - but also your social media as well, to keep it fresh. The websites are also built to be visible in AI search as well as traditional SEO.
✅There's More: HERE
This tap has been turned back on… on Monday, we covered The Parent Tap being wrongly kicked off YouTube, and an automated review almost instantly being denied. YouTube has now reinstated the channel, saying “after taking another look, we can confirm that it is not in violation of our Terms of Service”.
Threads is experimenting with a new interface to share podcast episodes - using a word-by-word transcript. It looks nice; these appear to be tests that aren’t yet available to most users.
Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman has written a long piece about “the unraveling of podcaster Ashley Flowers’ true crime empire” - we’re sharing a guest post to read it today. Thirty of Audiochuck’s 100 employees have left over the past year, she reports; yet, Crime Junkie is reaching a bigger audience than at any point over its eight year run.
On August 13, Beehiiv achieved certification with IAB Podcast Measurement Guidelines v2.2. The company’s Head of Podcasts, Ainsley Rossitto, appeared on Podcast Super Friends this week to talk more about their push into podcasting; and the company is sending two people to Podcast Movement - Rossitto and Senior Software Engineer Jacob Wolf.
Thursday, Aug 27
Building in public: the founders of Podsqueeze appeared on Jason Cohen’s Smart Bear Live, and on his YouTube channel alongside the founder of Castos Craig Hewitt, in a workshop discussing how the company’s growth has plateaued, and what they might want to do to continue growing. It’s a helpful (and honest) view about producing tools for podcasting.
This tap has been turned back on… on Monday, we covered The Parent Tap being wrongly kicked off YouTube, and an automated review almost instantly being denied. YouTube has now reinstated the channel, saying “after taking another look, we can confirm that it is not in violation of our Terms of Service”.
Threads is experimenting with a new interface to share podcast episodes - using a word-by-word transcript. It looks nice; these appear to be tests that aren’t yet available to most users.
Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman has written a long piece about “the unraveling of podcaster Ashley Flowers’ true crime empire” - we’re sharing a guest post to read it today. Thirty of Audiochuck’s 100 employees have left over the past year, she reports; yet, Crime Junkie is reaching a bigger audience than at any point over its eight year run.
On August 13, Beehiiv achieved certification with IAB Podcast Measurement Guidelines v2.2. The company’s Head of Podcasts, Ainsley Rossitto, appeared on Podcast Super Friends this week to talk more about their push into podcasting; and the company is sending two people to Podcast Movement - Rossitto and Senior Software Engineer Jacob Wolf.
✅Theres More: HERE
Quince is buying more podcast ads than anyone else, says Magellan AI - spending $7.5mn in July. BetterHelp and Amazon spent around $5.4mn. Meanwhile, Hero Bread, Accenture and Lululemon were the biggest movers and shakers. Magellan AI has a free webinar on Sep 10.
Crooked Media has acquired the FiveThirtyEight politics podcast - kind of. Its founder Nate Silver sold the brand to Disney; but was laid off in 2023. The podcast podfaded in March 2025 along with the website. Variety reports that the new show will be named Still Counting, and will feature the former hosts and data journalists.
Podcast Movement NYC’s Swapcard is up and running; so if you’ve already bought your tickets, you’ll be able to log in and make connections.
Good news: Podbean stats seem to be getting back to normal, after rolling out a change to its stats that marked all downloads from Apple Podcasts as invalid.
As Bloomberg reported last week, YouTube is apparently giving deals of up to $10mn to creators to not go to Netflix. The Ankler's Like & Subscribe suggests that the company is talking to around fifteen creators.
With companies like beehiiv, Patreon and Substack adding podcast features, Acast has partnered with Kit “to help creators build and monetize their audiences across multiple formats.”
Wednesday, Aug 26
Crooked Media has acquired the FiveThirtyEight politics podcast - kind of. Its founder Nate Silver sold the brand to Disney; but was laid off in 2023. The podcast podfaded in March 2025 along with the website. Variety reports that the new show will be named Still Counting, and will feature the former hosts and data journalists.
Podcast Movement NYC’s Swapcard is up and running; so if you’ve already bought your tickets, you’ll be able to log in and make connections.
Good news: Podbean stats seem to be getting back to normal, after rolling out a change to its stats that marked all downloads from Apple Podcasts as invalid.
As Bloomberg reported last week, YouTube is apparently giving deals of up to $10mn to creators to not go to Netflix. The Ankler's Like & Subscribe suggests that the company is talking to around fifteen creators.
With companies like beehiiv, Patreon and Substack adding podcast features, Acast has partnered with Kit “to help creators build and monetize their audiences across multiple formats.”
- As an aside - Dave Jackson has compared Kit to Substack and Sendfox in his recent Podcasting Observations newsletter.
- And Substack has added a set of new features including improvements to its podcast tools, allowing you to edit speakers within the transcript. Only one problem.
✅There's More: HERE
The full schedule for Podcast Movement NYC has been published on the website. There are announcements still to come for the keynote sessions. We’re told that the event will be using Swapcard, as previous years, so you’ll have an app to plan it all. Tickets are still available.
Podbean podcasters were given a shock this week, as the company rolled out new filters to its download analytics “designed to identify and filter AI and crawler-related traffic” - but the change marked all downloads from Apple Podcasts as invalid, causing a significant decrease in reported numbers to its customers. Podnews has seen data from some podcasts showing hundreds of plays on Apple Podcasts Connect, but apparently zero downloads to Apple Podcasts in Podbean’s analytics dashboard during the same time period. One support email says: “We recently pushed an update to mitigate disingenuous traffic from accessing podcasts on our side. Unfortunately, this inadvertently also affected the genuine traffic reporting. It has been advised that we rolled back our current update.” If a rollback has happened, no change has been visible in the numbers as yet.
RØDE released the DS3, a new desktop studio arm. It’s capable of holding a microphone weighing 1.5kg, and doesn’t need a desk clamp.
In a recent communication from Apple Podcasts, a reminder of a useful stat about followers that the company released in 2023: “Followers typically listen or watch your show regularly. On average, users who follow a show on Apple Podcasts listen to 80% more of the show than users who do not follow the show.”
Tuesday, Aug 25
Podbean podcasters were given a shock this week, as the company rolled out new filters to its download analytics “designed to identify and filter AI and crawler-related traffic” - but the change marked all downloads from Apple Podcasts as invalid, causing a significant decrease in reported numbers to its customers. Podnews has seen data from some podcasts showing hundreds of plays on Apple Podcasts Connect, but apparently zero downloads to Apple Podcasts in Podbean’s analytics dashboard during the same time period. One support email says: “We recently pushed an update to mitigate disingenuous traffic from accessing podcasts on our side. Unfortunately, this inadvertently also affected the genuine traffic reporting. It has been advised that we rolled back our current update.” If a rollback has happened, no change has been visible in the numbers as yet.
- Podbean is certified compliant with IAB Podcast Measurement Guidelines v2.2, and was last certified in January. However, it seems that a company is able to significantly change its podcast measurement toolset without affecting its published IAB Tech Lab certification.
RØDE released the DS3, a new desktop studio arm. It’s capable of holding a microphone weighing 1.5kg, and doesn’t need a desk clamp.
In a recent communication from Apple Podcasts, a reminder of a useful stat about followers that the company released in 2023: “Followers typically listen or watch your show regularly. On average, users who follow a show on Apple Podcasts listen to 80% more of the show than users who do not follow the show.”
✅There's More: HERE
Top 10 parenting podcast The Parent Tap has been suddenly pulled from YouTube - apparently by an automated tool. With no strikes or warnings, the show was permanently pulled on August 14th, accusing the channel of trying to circumvent a ban: a ban that the channel owner says simply didn’t happen. An attempt to appeal the closure was knocked back almost instantly by YouTube, using an automated template. Ryan McDonough, the channel’s owner, has opened a petition; and told Podnews: “I poured my heart and soul into building this channel from scratch. In 4 short months, I went from zero to 2.3k subscribers and over 50,000 views with a 150 video catalog. Having all of that wiped out overnight by an automated system is a gut-punch that keeps punching. The fact that I can’t reach a human and have literally no idea how this happened is completely beyond comprehension.” His show continues on open RSS.
Fictional TV shows like Only Murders In The Building are giving an image of podcasting that is “at best, a crude simplification, and at worst, a fantasy flatly incompatible with the physics of sound”, says a new academic study conducted by Spanish researchers. Writing for Podnews today, one of the authors, Maria Fitó Carreras, says don’t believe everything you see on television - and, for the value of the craft, don’t let others either.
Bloomberg is suggesting that YouTube is not happy about creators who are also posting videos on Netflix. YouTube is apparently less likely to promote these shows, will exclude creators from major brand campaign revenue, and may offer “millions of dollars” to retain first-view exclusivity. Tubefilter reports on Bloomberg’s paid story; YouTube is said to be reluctant to pay for content, and doesn’t want to appear to show favouritism to some creators over others.
Monday, Aug 24
Fictional TV shows like Only Murders In The Building are giving an image of podcasting that is “at best, a crude simplification, and at worst, a fantasy flatly incompatible with the physics of sound”, says a new academic study conducted by Spanish researchers. Writing for Podnews today, one of the authors, Maria Fitó Carreras, says don’t believe everything you see on television - and, for the value of the craft, don’t let others either.
Bloomberg is suggesting that YouTube is not happy about creators who are also posting videos on Netflix. YouTube is apparently less likely to promote these shows, will exclude creators from major brand campaign revenue, and may offer “millions of dollars” to retain first-view exclusivity. Tubefilter reports on Bloomberg’s paid story; YouTube is said to be reluctant to pay for content, and doesn’t want to appear to show favouritism to some creators over others.
✅There's More: HERE
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