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Wednesday, Sep 30
Just in time for International Podcast Day, Podcast Movement has posted the sessions from Podcast Movement NYC, now available for free. There are 82 different sessions to watch, from every stage at the event. Next year, Podcast Week NYC will be held Sep 13-17; Podcast Movement Evolutions is Mar 15-16 at SXSW.
Podcast hosting company Podigee released what it calls a “fundamentally redesigned platform” to celebrate International Podcast Day, with audio and video recording, full video distribution, and advanced analytics. The company is wholly based in the EU, and follows European privacy rules.
In the UK, Radiocentre released Sounds Profits, a piece of research showing that by diverting a small amount of existing adspend away from PPC or paid social towards audio, you can increase your total campaign ROI significantly. The research also shows that audio can increase brand trust, so other parts of campaigns work better.
The Ankler’s Like & Subscribe newsletter reports that Netflix is hiring for a new Head of “Podcasts”. The role has yet to be formally published; it’ll report to Brandon Riegg.
Audiohook has acquired Podscan, an AI-powered podcast monitoring and data platform. No terms were given; Audiohook is to make the majority of Podscan functionality free to the industry. Podscan received “a six figure amount” of funding in Apr 2024.
PAVE Studios released its slate for Q4/26, including a number of video shows for its three brands Crime House (true crime), OpenMind (lifestyle), and Rewind (history). The company’s Crime House 24/7 show will also feature special limited series events on the run up to Halloween.
How I Built This with Guy Raz has partnered with Vox Media on what the company calls an ambitious new chapter in the long-running show. It’ll start publishing video 'later this fall’, and early next year will publish twice as many episodes per week. Raz has also acquired full ownership of the show from NPR; it was been licensed to Amazon Music and Wondery in 2022, and in 2021 was also produced in Japanese. It’s unclear what this means for the radio version of the show; it’s been running since 2016.
✅There's More: HERE
Exclusive: Inception Point AI’s thousands of AI-made podcasts could just have been a publicity stunt, according to a new episode of The Lead Balloon podcast, to be released today. CEO Jeanine Wright is interviewed on the show, saying that some publicity was “a PR strategy to get attention”. We learn that the Quiet Please network now only has 300 active shows, which they’re no longer trying to monetise. Wright tells Podnews that “the catalog itself was never a stunt, and we never chased volume for publicity.” Also in Lead Balloon she gives a definition of AI slop: folks “using AI tools to make as much content as they can with as little expense as possible, in order to be able to monetize the delta.” Sounds familiar. The company is now branded as Liquid Studios, which now suggests that it “transforms existing content, not generates from a blank page”.
The biggest podcast advertiser is going international - BetterHelp has appointed Media Bodies to focus on international podcast advertising. Media Bodies will work alongside BetterHelp to develop, launch and scale campaigns across 10 international markets, combining global strategy and performance data with local market expertise.
The Apple iPhone might not be giving your headphones the best audio quality - because it doesn’t support the latest Bluetooth audio codecs. A new Bluetooth dongle from Questyle could unlock better audio quality - and also much lower latency, which might be useful for recording podcasts without the delay you get with a normal Bluetooth connection.
Avid has made its Media Composer video editor free. “Media Composer 2026.8 removes previous limitations on tracks and resolutions in Media Composer First. Media Composer First gives aspiring editors a true no-cost entry point into professional editing, now with a more full-fledged editing experience that graduates more intuitively into additional features or Standard, Ultimate, and Enterprise.”
Net Influencer has focused on Red Seat Ventures and the strategy behind the company.
FOX News is to launch the Girls, a “new personality-driven conversation series featuring an array of leading female voices”. The show features, among others, three Fox News Channel hosts.
Patreon is removing a legacy “per-creation” membership, forcing creators to move to charging a per-month fee instead. A “per-creation” membership was particularly useful for some podcasters, especially audio drama producers, who don’t make “always-on” material. Paolo from GrowthMasteryHub takes a closer look - and notes that the hard part isn’t just choosing your new price.
Congratulations to Jack Laurence, who has just passed 1.5 million downloads for his (audio-only) podcast What I Survived. He shares his download breakdown in a LinkedIn post.
Apple spent thousands on a front-cover wraparound of London newspaper Metro to promote its new Apple Music Hall in London. Not to sound cranky, but we’re unaware of any money spent promoting Apple Podcasts over the last five years.
Podcasting is global: research should be too argues Paul Riismandel in the Triton Digital blog. Paul highlights that YouTube isn’t the #1 podcast app in many countries, and to be cautious about extrapolating US-only data. (Podnews is edited in Australia by a Brit, so hopefully we’ll help with that).
This American Life notes that some NPR shows are getting mysterious comments on Spotify. It turns out that kids, banned from social media, are using podcast comments instead as a place to chat. They picked NPR shows because “they didn’t seem very popular”.
The BBC may be forced to close television channels and radio stations, according to its new incoming boss. Ex-Googler Matt Brittin also says that he would allow a programme to be made and presented by AI “within guardrails”.
Tuesday, Sep 29
Exclusive: Inception Point AI’s thousands of AI-made podcasts could just have been a publicity stunt, according to a new episode of The Lead Balloon podcast, to be released today. CEO Jeanine Wright is interviewed on the show, saying that some publicity was “a PR strategy to get attention”. We learn that the Quiet Please network now only has 300 active shows, which they’re no longer trying to monetise. Wright tells Podnews that “the catalog itself was never a stunt, and we never chased volume for publicity.” Also in Lead Balloon she gives a definition of AI slop: folks “using AI tools to make as much content as they can with as little expense as possible, in order to be able to monetize the delta.” Sounds familiar. The company is now branded as Liquid Studios, which now suggests that it “transforms existing content, not generates from a blank page”.
The biggest podcast advertiser is going international - BetterHelp has appointed Media Bodies to focus on international podcast advertising. Media Bodies will work alongside BetterHelp to develop, launch and scale campaigns across 10 international markets, combining global strategy and performance data with local market expertise.
The Apple iPhone might not be giving your headphones the best audio quality - because it doesn’t support the latest Bluetooth audio codecs. A new Bluetooth dongle from Questyle could unlock better audio quality - and also much lower latency, which might be useful for recording podcasts without the delay you get with a normal Bluetooth connection.
Avid has made its Media Composer video editor free. “Media Composer 2026.8 removes previous limitations on tracks and resolutions in Media Composer First. Media Composer First gives aspiring editors a true no-cost entry point into professional editing, now with a more full-fledged editing experience that graduates more intuitively into additional features or Standard, Ultimate, and Enterprise.”
Net Influencer has focused on Red Seat Ventures and the strategy behind the company.
FOX News is to launch the Girls, a “new personality-driven conversation series featuring an array of leading female voices”. The show features, among others, three Fox News Channel hosts.
There's More: HERE
Monday, Sep 26
Congratulations to Jack Laurence, who has just passed 1.5 million downloads for his (audio-only) podcast What I Survived. He shares his download breakdown in a LinkedIn post.
Apple spent thousands on a front-cover wraparound of London newspaper Metro to promote its new Apple Music Hall in London. Not to sound cranky, but we’re unaware of any money spent promoting Apple Podcasts over the last five years.
Podcasting is global: research should be too argues Paul Riismandel in the Triton Digital blog. Paul highlights that YouTube isn’t the #1 podcast app in many countries, and to be cautious about extrapolating US-only data. (Podnews is edited in Australia by a Brit, so hopefully we’ll help with that).
This American Life notes that some NPR shows are getting mysterious comments on Spotify. It turns out that kids, banned from social media, are using podcast comments instead as a place to chat. They picked NPR shows because “they didn’t seem very popular”.
The BBC may be forced to close television channels and radio stations, according to its new incoming boss. Ex-Googler Matt Brittin also says that he would allow a programme to be made and presented by AI “within guardrails”.
There's More: HERE
YouTube made a number of announcements at Made on YouTube, the company’s annual event.
Apple Podcasts Connect seems to have quietly tweaked its listening figures for certain dates. We understand that Apple Podcasts noticed a discrepancy and reprocessed the data.
Goalhanger’s accounts for 2025 are now available in the UK’s Companies House. The accounts contain a lot of detail on how the company operates; including a breakdown of the £37mn (US $49mn) revenue: 67% from advertising, 25% from memberships, 4% from events, and 2% from “commissions” (presumably affiliate deals). The company had 54 staff, and earned 38% of its revenue from the UK, and 46% from the US (from Spotify, it appears).
“I’m not sure why we are feeding our content to one of the biggest gatekeepers in media.” Sounds Profitable’s Tom Webster has published an overview of his talk at Podcast Movement last week. “You can put your show on YouTube or on Spotify, promote it there, and as long as you don’t violate the terms of service, you stay there. You cannot put your show on Netflix. The podcasts that are on Netflix are, frankly, the shows that don’t need the help; they were already the upper echelon by audience, which is precisely why Netflix picked them.” He adds: “We are potentially making a deal with the devil when we put our programming on Netflix, because ultimately we don’t matter to Netflix, and I’d like us to focus on the places where we do.”
A lot is said about the benefits of open RSS. One is that you can publish, almost anonymously, on all the big podcast players: especially if you have a story to tell. In Slip Three, the audio has been treated to disguise the voice of the host - who is somewhere at sea, hiding from the authorities, after what he calls an incident where four men died. It’s an intriguing listen, with more of the mystery to discover.
The shortlist has been announced for the International Women’s Podcast Awards. There were almost 500 entries received this year; it was judged by over 80 people across the world. Winners will be announced on Oct 8.
Podbean’s PodAds dynamic ad insertion tool has quietly got worse. Not only does it no longer place any ads throughout the 743mn people who live in Europe - pulled without notice in March - you’re now no longer able to geo-target advertising at all, with the system now forcing all campaigns to air in “all supported regions”. The “select targeted geographies” feature, visible in Podbean’s support pages on Jun 30, was removed in late August.
Crooked Media is expanding its political podcast and digital sales network, bringing Adam Mockler, The Argument, and Weekly Skews into its growing host-read advertising lineup.
Friday, Sep 25
- YouTube is to add a voice likeness detection tool, to help creators sign up for deepfake detection. The company is also launching A/B video testing, where different videos can be tried to see which work better.
- YouTube Music premium subscribers will get a “new personalized AI-audio guide available in the YouTube Music app that delivers a quick, weekly spoken preview of recommended podcasts and digs into why you’ll like them, before jumping into the suggested episodes — completely eyes-optional and hands-free”.
- Live video on YouTube get an update, too, with co-hosting, live reactions, and live auto-dubbing.
Apple Podcasts Connect seems to have quietly tweaked its listening figures for certain dates. We understand that Apple Podcasts noticed a discrepancy and reprocessed the data.
- Data we screenshotted on Sep 16 appeared to claim, on average, that listeners were consuming 176% of our Jul 9 show. Now, the same data we screenshotted today suggests average consumption of that episode was 85%. Similarly, our Jul 6 show had “average consumption” of 166%; but now that number is 83%.
- It’s notable that the number of “plays” has significantly declined on both affected episodes, as well as the consumption data. However, our Jul 1 show still suggests average consumption of 127% (which, we’d suggest, probably isn’t true).
- Our podcast is comparatively short, but we’re aware of other, significantly larger, podcasts that have shown the same over-consumption issue.
Goalhanger’s accounts for 2025 are now available in the UK’s Companies House. The accounts contain a lot of detail on how the company operates; including a breakdown of the £37mn (US $49mn) revenue: 67% from advertising, 25% from memberships, 4% from events, and 2% from “commissions” (presumably affiliate deals). The company had 54 staff, and earned 38% of its revenue from the UK, and 46% from the US (from Spotify, it appears).
There's More: HERE
Thursday, Sep 24
“I’m not sure why we are feeding our content to one of the biggest gatekeepers in media.” Sounds Profitable’s Tom Webster has published an overview of his talk at Podcast Movement last week. “You can put your show on YouTube or on Spotify, promote it there, and as long as you don’t violate the terms of service, you stay there. You cannot put your show on Netflix. The podcasts that are on Netflix are, frankly, the shows that don’t need the help; they were already the upper echelon by audience, which is precisely why Netflix picked them.” He adds: “We are potentially making a deal with the devil when we put our programming on Netflix, because ultimately we don’t matter to Netflix, and I’d like us to focus on the places where we do.”
A lot is said about the benefits of open RSS. One is that you can publish, almost anonymously, on all the big podcast players: especially if you have a story to tell. In Slip Three, the audio has been treated to disguise the voice of the host - who is somewhere at sea, hiding from the authorities, after what he calls an incident where four men died. It’s an intriguing listen, with more of the mystery to discover.
The shortlist has been announced for the International Women’s Podcast Awards. There were almost 500 entries received this year; it was judged by over 80 people across the world. Winners will be announced on Oct 8.
Podbean’s PodAds dynamic ad insertion tool has quietly got worse. Not only does it no longer place any ads throughout the 743mn people who live in Europe - pulled without notice in March - you’re now no longer able to geo-target advertising at all, with the system now forcing all campaigns to air in “all supported regions”. The “select targeted geographies” feature, visible in Podbean’s support pages on Jun 30, was removed in late August.
Crooked Media is expanding its political podcast and digital sales network, bringing Adam Mockler, The Argument, and Weekly Skews into its growing host-read advertising lineup.
✅There's More: HERE
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