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Wednesday, May 13, 2026
Exclusive: Amazon Music begins rolling out video podcasts from today. Video podcasts will initially be available for customers in the US on iOS and Android, across all subscription tiers. A spokesperson told us: “In today’s rapidly evolving podcast landscape, video has emerged as an increasingly essential format for creators and their audiences. With more consumers engaging with video podcasts of their favorite shows, Amazon Music is introducing an integrated video podcast experience for customers, making it simpler for customers to watch a selection of their favorite podcasts without leaving the app. This early experience will help us gather valuable customer feedback to shape and enhance the experience.”
- Amazon Music is initially launching video podcasts with Amazon’s ART19, and has plans to expand to additional partners later this summer. Initial shows with video include Higher Ground’s IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson, and Dear Media’s Khloé in Wonder Land, Not Skinny But Not Fat and Let’s Be Honest with Kristin Cavallari. ART19 and Amazon Music will work directly with creators and publishers to provide instructions on how to make their videos available on Amazon Music.
- Podnews is told that the app will use HLS video, including support for HLS multivariate playlists via an alternate enclosure in RSS. Videos remain hosted by the creator’s podcast hosting company. A company spokesperson told us that the approach “maintains an open RSS ecosystem, meaning podcast creators retain full control over their hosting, ad inventory monetization, and audience targeting.” There is no private API to submit video, and Amazon Music is not charging podcast creators or networks for access to video distribution. A number of podcast hosting companies offering video have already said that they aim to support video delivery using the alternate enclosure.
Acast claims its the first to monetise Apple Podcasts’ HLS video, signing campaigns with State Farm and T-Mobile. The company says that 117 shows have already enabled Acast’s Apple HLS integration, with over 1,000 video episodes published to date (on Acast, access to video is currently invite-only). HLS video with Apple Podcasts, like with Amazon Music, remains hosted by podcast hosts like Acast.
At The Podcast Show in London next week Flightpath will unveil Revenue Optimizer, a tool that is built to ensure that publishers maximise the available revenue from advertising campaigns in their shows. (Brand Stage, Wed, 2pm)
- Muck Rack, a communications platform, will also be speaking at The Podcast Show. The company has joined Sounds Profitable’s Partner Network, and will be alongside Sounds Profitable’s Head of Communications, Molly DeMellier, on “The New Word of Mouth: Podcasts, Earned Media, and AI Search.”
✅There's More: HERE
Oprah Winfrey’s The Oprah Show today features guests that are out of this world - or, at least, they were. After their extraordinary, history-making trip around the moon, Oprah has an in-depth conversation with the crew of Artemis II. The crew shares how they were transformed after spending more than nine days traveling farther into space than any human being has ever been. The show was acquired by Amazon’s Wondery last month.
Spotify drives 1.5x more podcast consumption than YouTube, according to new data from Podstock. However, part of that is due to discovery tools and reach for new audiences - new listeners lower average time spent per stream. The data, based on thousands of different podcast episodes, highlights the increasingly multiplatform world of podcasting.
In the UK, podcasting reaches more 18-34 year-olds than broadcast TV, says research from Sounds Profitable, written up by Ben Robins of Sound Insights. The data on the UK’s podcast consumers arrives a week before The Podcast Show in London: Ben Robins and Tom Webster will cover more of the data on May 20 at 10am.
Alitu and The Podcast Host have been acquired by AI software developer Rocketable. The acquisition occurred a couple of months ago, it’s emerged, and is now complete. Colin Gray leaves the company, but “is not sure at this stage what comes next” - he’ll be at The Podcast Show in London.
iHeartMedia released its Q1/26 financial report. Podcast revenue was $147mn, up 27% year-on-year (and above guidance from the company). Podcasting represents 16.6% of the company’s revenue - around 50% of podcast revenue came from iHeart’s 1000+ local sales force, Bob Pittman noted in the earnings call. He also said that iHeart is the #1 podcast network according to both Podtrac and Triton - neglecting to mention that Triton is owned by iHeart.
Exclusive: Daylight Media has acquired the online publication Podcast Review. We first reported on the website in Feb 2018; the well-regarded website contains human-curated podcast recommendations, reviews and analysis (like this, for The Idiot). The weekly newsletter goes to 12,000 people. Alice Orr becomes the Managing Editor.
Exclusive: Million Podcasts has published The State of Video Podcasting 2026 - an analysis of 34,000 English-language video podcasts. This beautifully-designed report suggests that there are 7.7mn video podcast episodes available, but it’s very unequal: the top 1% of video podcasts are getting 42% of all consumption. The inequality also extends to who’s behind the microphone: there are twice as many video podcasts hosted by men as women. You can also score your podcast against the top ten.
Exclusive: Niche podcasts may lose on scale - but they outperform in many other ways. Strategist Losh Moodaley writes for Podnews to highlight the blind spot of the podcast industry - inventory is valued in bulk, while context is largely ignored.
The Golden Globes has tweaked the eligibility rules for podcasts for the 84th awards - bumping the number of eligible shows up from 25 to 30. As before, eligibility for podcasts in the US awards will be determined by Luminate, using a proprietary methodology including audience reach and engagement, and platform visibility and presence.
Edison Research has published the Top 10 Podcast Networks in the US for weekly reach. Spotify is #1, SiriusXM is #2, while iHeartPodcasts is at #3.
A community to connect BIPOC creators through education, networking and partnerships, BIPOC Podcast Creators has announced that it is closing. The co-founders announced that the closure is partially driven by capacity and time constraints, but also reflects the structural challenges of sustaining community-driven work in the current content creator landscape. “The industry benefits enormously from communities like ours, but the infrastructure to sustain them long-term requires arduous work and significant financial investment. And frankly, it’s not enough to ask our creators to pay to make up this difference,” said co-founder Maribel Quezada Smith.
VeePod has launched dynamic 3D branding for any video podcast, particularly useful for product placements and logos, as well as busy podcast publishers. The toolkit will be demonstrated at The Podcast Show later this month.
Yesterday, we reported on what we called Spotify’s “video lock-in”. This story was based on screenshots of Podigee’s implementation of Spotify’s video distribution API, which we erroneously attributed to Spotify’s own UX: we’re happy to make that distinction clear. What’s a little less clear is the extent of the lock-in. Spotify denies that creators are permanently “locked in” to using a Spotify API feed if they opt for video distribution in this way, though the company has confirmed that changing your feed back to RSS requires manual work from both the podcast hosting company and from Spotify itself.
Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Oprah Winfrey’s The Oprah Show today features guests that are out of this world - or, at least, they were. After their extraordinary, history-making trip around the moon, Oprah has an in-depth conversation with the crew of Artemis II. The crew shares how they were transformed after spending more than nine days traveling farther into space than any human being has ever been. The show was acquired by Amazon’s Wondery last month.
Spotify drives 1.5x more podcast consumption than YouTube, according to new data from Podstock. However, part of that is due to discovery tools and reach for new audiences - new listeners lower average time spent per stream. The data, based on thousands of different podcast episodes, highlights the increasingly multiplatform world of podcasting.
In the UK, podcasting reaches more 18-34 year-olds than broadcast TV, says research from Sounds Profitable, written up by Ben Robins of Sound Insights. The data on the UK’s podcast consumers arrives a week before The Podcast Show in London: Ben Robins and Tom Webster will cover more of the data on May 20 at 10am.
Alitu and The Podcast Host have been acquired by AI software developer Rocketable. The acquisition occurred a couple of months ago, it’s emerged, and is now complete. Colin Gray leaves the company, but “is not sure at this stage what comes next” - he’ll be at The Podcast Show in London.
iHeartMedia released its Q1/26 financial report. Podcast revenue was $147mn, up 27% year-on-year (and above guidance from the company). Podcasting represents 16.6% of the company’s revenue - around 50% of podcast revenue came from iHeart’s 1000+ local sales force, Bob Pittman noted in the earnings call. He also said that iHeart is the #1 podcast network according to both Podtrac and Triton - neglecting to mention that Triton is owned by iHeart.
✅There's More: HERE
Monday, May 11, 2026
Exclusive: Daylight Media has acquired the online publication Podcast Review. We first reported on the website in Feb 2018; the well-regarded website contains human-curated podcast recommendations, reviews and analysis (like this, for The Idiot). The weekly newsletter goes to 12,000 people. Alice Orr becomes the Managing Editor.
Exclusive: Million Podcasts has published The State of Video Podcasting 2026 - an analysis of 34,000 English-language video podcasts. This beautifully-designed report suggests that there are 7.7mn video podcast episodes available, but it’s very unequal: the top 1% of video podcasts are getting 42% of all consumption. The inequality also extends to who’s behind the microphone: there are twice as many video podcasts hosted by men as women. You can also score your podcast against the top ten.
Exclusive: Niche podcasts may lose on scale - but they outperform in many other ways. Strategist Losh Moodaley writes for Podnews to highlight the blind spot of the podcast industry - inventory is valued in bulk, while context is largely ignored.
The Golden Globes has tweaked the eligibility rules for podcasts for the 84th awards - bumping the number of eligible shows up from 25 to 30. As before, eligibility for podcasts in the US awards will be determined by Luminate, using a proprietary methodology including audience reach and engagement, and platform visibility and presence.
- In case you were wondering: A “podcast” shall mean an episodic digital audio and/or video series that is made available to the public for download or on-demand streaming over the internet via a widely recognized media platform.
Edison Research has published the Top 10 Podcast Networks in the US for weekly reach. Spotify is #1, SiriusXM is #2, while iHeartPodcasts is at #3.
✅There's More: HERE
Friday, May 8, 2026
VeePod has launched dynamic 3D branding for any video podcast, particularly useful for product placements and logos, as well as busy podcast publishers. The toolkit will be demonstrated at The Podcast Show later this month.
Yesterday, we reported on what we called Spotify’s “video lock-in”. This story was based on screenshots of Podigee’s implementation of Spotify’s video distribution API, which we erroneously attributed to Spotify’s own UX: we’re happy to make that distinction clear. What’s a little less clear is the extent of the lock-in. Spotify denies that creators are permanently “locked in” to using a Spotify API feed if they opt for video distribution in this way, though the company has confirmed that changing your feed back to RSS requires manual work from both the podcast hosting company and from Spotify itself.
From others, we hear that this reversion process may remove comments, reviews, and video files from your podcast; and we also understand that following our story yesterday, Spotify has contacted all partners to clarify messaging about this process. Not that any of us would know - at least two podcast hosting companies have told us that the whole API is under a non-disclosure agreement, and that they are prohibited from speaking about it.
The winners of The Golden Lobes 2026 were announced. The comedy podcast awards hosted by podcast festival Cheerful Earful, gave the Big Ears for Funniest Podcast of the Year to sketch show Crowley Time with me, Tom Crowley. We’ve a list of all the winners.
What’s going on at self-styled “world’s largest indie podcast network”, Inception Point AI? The company, which has around 15,000 entirely AI-produced shows, has suddenly stopped auto-publishing new podcasts. Previously, they were pushing out more than two hundred a day. And existing episodes that we have sampled today appear to no longer contain advertising.
✅There's More: HERE
✅There's More: HERE
Thursday, May 7. 2026
Thinking of using a podcast hosting company to upload video to Spotify? That ease of use comes with a big cost, we learn today: you will be forever locked in to your current podcast hosting company, according to warnings given by Spotify in the signup process. “This cannot be undone”, says one checkbox on Spotify; another points out that “this permanently replaces your RSS feed with API-based distribution”, repeating, twice, that “this cannot be undone”.
- Podnews has seen at least 3,500 podcasts switch podcast hosting company in the last 30 days alone: it’s part of the freedom given with any RSS feed, allowing you to find better deals and different monetisation options as your podcast grows. It’s also, free to upload video to Spotify using the Spotify for Podcasters website - wherever you’re hosted.
- It seems that it’s unlikely, however, that podcast hosting companies will mention this lock-in. Podigee, which launched Spotify video this week, doesn’t even have any documentation about it (they’re working on it, they tell us); while Libsyn, who launched Spotify video distribution last week, don’t mention this lockin at all. But then - why would they?
The winners of The Golden Lobes 2026 were announced. The comedy podcast awards hosted by podcast festival Cheerful Earful, gave the Big Ears for Funniest Podcast of the Year to sketch show Crowley Time with me, Tom Crowley. We’ve a list of all the winners.
What’s going on at self-styled “world’s largest indie podcast network”, Inception Point AI? The company, which has around 15,000 entirely AI-produced shows, has suddenly stopped auto-publishing new podcasts. Previously, they were pushing out more than two hundred a day. And existing episodes that we have sampled today appear to no longer contain advertising.
- Jeanine Wright, CEO, tells us: “We’re in the middle of an ongoing platform migration and commercial transition, so some publishing and monetization signals may look unusual from the outside during the handoff. We’re not commenting on counterparties or active negotiations, but the business is very much moving forward. There’s a much more interesting story here than the tired “AI slop” caricature. I’ll be speaking about the future of AI in podcasting at The Podcast Show in London on Thurs May 21 at 2.20pm on the Origin Stage, and I’d encourage anyone interested in what we’re actually building to come hear it directly.”
✅There's More: HERE
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