The latest from our daily newsletter at podnews.net with CoHost.
We start with an exclusive for you today. There's a new comedy
podcast network in town.
The launch of the WITZ podcast network has been announced by
entertainment studio Cineverse
and comedy club brand The Stand. Cineverse is currently well
known for horror, true crime
and entertainment. Comedy is the number one most popular podcast
category in the US.
Speaking of which, the Golden Lobes Awards, celebrating the
funniest podcasts, people and
moments in the audio industry, are closing shortly, even till
the end of March the 15th.
Entries are just £25 or $32 to you. Fourth Wall, a membership
and e-commerce platform for creators
integrated with Spotify recently and has shared a chart of the
number of paid subscribers
for one podcast before and after enabling the feature. We link
to that today and also link
to a show with it enabled. There's an early access button which
links your Spotify account
to your Fourth Wall membership in a browser. Other platforms
supported by Spotify Open Access
include Memberful, Supporting Cast, Substack and Patreon.
Spotify doesn't take a cut.
Yesterday's suggestion that Spotify's partner program was losing
some publishers' money was
refuted by Spotify. They told us,
While we can't comment on specific creators or shows, creators
who join the Spotify partner
program late in the month, who have irregular posting schedules
or experience broader declines
in audience engagement, may see lower initial earnings and less
accurate month-to-month comparisons.
Overall, though it's still early, the program has proven
valuable for the vast majority of enrolled shows.
Well, we've asked for some clarity on that statement. Meanwhile,
Amanda McLaughlin,
who posted her experiences on LinkedIn, reiterated to us,
Spotify is asking creators to try an unproven program with undisclosed
revenue splits.
Our experience is, my client opted into video on Spotify and
lost a pretty significant chunk of
money during their first month in the program. Because of that,
we made the best decision for us
with the data we received and opted out. We suspect that'll run
and run. We were made.
We were made. By Wondercraft. Google has removed the ability to
ask your phone to play podcasts,
news and radio stations, with its release of Gemini to replace
Google Assistant. Google Play,
the latest news, had been responsible for significant download
numbers for some podcasts.
But it no longer works on phones using Gemini. The company doesn't
appear to have communicated that
to its content partners. Ad-skipping podcast app Auddia released
its annual financial report.
The company made a loss of $8.7 million in the year, while
failing to earn a single dollar in
revenue. The CEO, though, received a 17% pay rise. The company's
auditor says it has
substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a
going concern.
Probably unrelated, Audia will share how the company views the
podcast industry's financial
financial landscape in a keynote at South by Southwest. We'll be
taking notes.
And if you're playing along, the mystery of 20 times as many
downloads for our podcasts,
but only from two countries, appears to show that those
downloads are automated in some way.
If you're listening to this and you're in Indonesia or Malaysia,
please get in touch.
Updates at podnews.net. And tell us how. And thank you to Brett
Johnson of Circle 270 Media for
becoming our latest personal supporter, or perhaps that's Circle
270. Who knows? Anyway, he's Ohio's
first full-time podcast consultant and one of our supporters
that pays for Pod News so that everyone
can read it for free. You can become a supporter at podnews.net
slash Patreon. And thank you.
In People News, Carrie Legner has joined Audio Hook's sales team,
and Rumble is hiring for an audio
podcast manager and monetization strategist to oversee and grow
our audio podcast portfolio.
And in podcast news, in German, Antritt, De Farad podcast is 10
years old today. It's grown to be
one of the most popular podcasts in the cycling world. The show,
part of Detector FM, will be focusing on
bicycle media all this month, including a bicycle podcast icon
from the USA.
In Calm History this month, Harris reveals if Florence Nightingale
was truly an angelic nurse,
or if it was all a false legend.
Wild Sounds is New Zealand podcast publisher RNZ's first
dedicated super feed,
and will be home to RNZ's best science and nature series. Voice
of the Sea Ice is the first off the block,
talking to New Zealand researchers investigating the future of
Antarctica.
And HeadGum launches Wayne Brady's What If with Jonathan Mangum
today.
The actor, producer, singer, dancer, songwriter, author, and
television personality Wayne Brady,
and fellow improviser Jonathan Mangum interview special guests
about their life and career,
creating what-if scenarios along the way.
And this podcast is sponsored by Co-host. If you're looking for
better podcast analytics,
Co-host gives you insight into download sources, audience
demographics, episode consumption,
and more. You can sign up for a free trial of Co-host today. You'll
find a link 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.