The latest from our daily newsletter at podnews.net with Riverside.
YouTube released a new headline datapoint, suggesting that
there were more than 1 billion viewers of podcast content a
month in January.
It also repeated that 400 million monthly hours of podcast
watching were consumed on TV sets.
Well, putting that 1 billion number in context, Spotify claimed
just 120 million monthly podcast listeners in November.
Apple Podcasts is likely to be even smaller in terms of monthly
listeners, according to Podtrac, but Apple Podcasts had a
significantly higher share of downloads.
Worth remembering, too, that a listener to a second of podcast
content on YouTube, even automatically played content, will
count towards the 1 billion figure.
Irrespective of the amount of downloads they make or the amount
of time they spend with podcasts, reach doesn't translate to
time spent.
However, Edison Research said in October 2024 that of all the
podcast platforms, YouTube was used most often to listen to
podcasts.
Well, we wondered what YouTube considered a podcast to be.
A YouTube spokesperson told us that the company follows the lead
of creators marking a playlist as a podcast when they upload.
And the YouTube podcast homepage in the US, as one example,
includes full TV news shows like NBC Nightly News and PBS NewsHour,
which both broadcasters have marked as a podcast.
But there are audio podcasts for NBC Nightly News and PBS NewsHour
as well.
Australia's podcast homepage includes individual news stories
from 7 News, which are in a YouTube playlist called 7 News Just
In.
But there's also a 7 News Just In audio podcast, too.
Well, YouTube's blog post was authored by Tim Katz.
Who's he?
Well, he describes himself as VP Partnerships Podcasts.
That's the first outing for this job title on LinkedIn.
He's Director, Head of Sports and News Partnerships.
In news coverage in 2023, he was Director and Global Head of
Responsibility.
And in 2024, he was Global Director of Responsibility and Leader
for the Canada and Latin America region.
We don't see any use of this podcasting job title until this
announcement.
Katz is interviewed as Vice President for Partnerships in
Bloomberg.
The YouTube podcast trend existed, but it was a matter of us
pouring some gas on it, he said.
Some parts of the industry give notes of caution.
Transistor's Justin Jackson believes in a personal blog post
that the podcast industry is fundamentally misdiagnosing YouTube's
role in consumers' lives
and overestimating the benefits it'll get from the platform.
And Wondery's founder, Hernán Lopez, suggests to keep in mind
the bigger picture.
Of note, he says, YouTube cited 400 million monthly hours of
podcast watching on TV sets,
but that's against 30 billion hours of overall YouTube time
spent on TV sets.
In other news, an exclusive for you, Ira Glass is to be honoured
as this year's recipient of the Governor's Award at the Ambies
from the Podcast Academy.
The award will be given at the Ambies in Chicago on March the 31st
in a ceremony hosted by Tig Notaro.
Triton Digital has announced new features for its enterprise
podcast host, Omny Studio.
Feed Drops is a new feature to allow cross-promotion between
shows,
and there's now a multi-step scheduler offering more options
when new episodes are released to different people.
The UK's Crowd Network is celebrating a new partnership with
beer brewer BrewDog.
The sponsorship shows the power of an interconnected podcast
network with different shows and different hosts trying
different beers.
And a free radio and podcast festival, Dire Fare Ascoltare, is
taking place in Ascoli Piceno in Italy on April the 5th to the 6th.
And in podcast news, Brit winner Sam Fender has called the music
industry rigged against musicians who, quote,
can't afford to tour.
On a new episode of 101 Part-Time Jobs, West London songwriter
Matilda Mann confirms she will lose £10,000 personally even if
she sells out her upcoming UK tour.
Alan McLeod's Walking About has joined the Maximum Fun Network
in each episode of Walking About.
Alan is joined by a guest in conversations that marry humour
with very light cardio and features some of the hidden gems of
Los Angeles and beyond.
Realm's film podcast, Unspooled, has a new look which will
appear later today, as will its eagerly anticipated episode, all
about this year's Oscars ceremony.
In our beloved medium this week, real radio history unfolds
against a fictional fight for survival as the world's last radio
station battles extinction in the streaming age.
You can support the fictional fight of WFYZ as it broadcasts
important stories about radio from World War II to MTV and
beyond.
It's a docu-fiction podcast by Stuart Barefoot and Matt Medeiros.
Californian Governor Gavin Newsom is going solo and diving into
the real issues that matter in a new show from iHeart called
This is Gavin Newsom.
It'll cover government, politics, affordability, quality of life
and the cultural moments shaping our world.
We're promised no spin, no scripts, just real talk about what
impacts listeners most.
Drink?
A new podcast from San Francisco's KQED launches this week,
Close All Tabs, hosted by tech journalist Morgan Sung, which
explores how the ever-evolving tech industry is more intertwined
with our daily lives than we think.
And from Morning Brew, Bossy returns for a brand new season
today.
In the season premiere, Tara, the founder and CEO of Apps
Without Code, sits down with fashion icon Rebecca Minkoff for a
can't-miss conversation about how Minkoff built her business
empire.
This podcast is sponsored by Riverside.
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You can try Riverside today and grow your podcast.
There's a link to do that in the show notes.
And that's the latest from our newsletter.
To read all the stories and subscribe for free, we're at podnews.net.