Amazon parcels up ad-free podcasts for Prime users

• In a renewed fight against Spotify, Amazon has made big changes to Amazon Music Prime, including ad-free podcasts. Included with your Prime account, the service now offers 100 million songs (on shuffle) instead of the 2 million it had before; and “the largest catalogue of ad-free top podcasts”, including Wondery’s catalogue, Amazon Originals and Exclusives, and other publishers.

  • Buzzsprout’s platform stats for September give Amazon Music a 0.7% market share of all podcast downloads; it is, however, the #3 podcast platform in Japan with 24% of the population using it.
  • Amazon Music also now includes short, curated clips of podcasts.

• Sounder has announced it is to close its podcast hosting platform, as it focuses on brand safety and contextual targeting. There are currently 5,425 podcasts hosted on Sounder, according to the Podcast Index. The company is moving “many of our largest creators” to Spreaker; Co-host is offering 6 months free (go here).

• There are seven warnings for the podcast industry from radio, says Tom Webster in this week’s Sounds Profitable from RedCircle. Tom shares four of them, including the high number of ads you hear on-air (and, increasingly, on podcasts).

• SiriusXM saw $123m in revenue from podcasting in Q3/22, an increase of 37% year-on-year, and 5.3% of the company’s total revenue.

• In Australia, reflecting the growth of its podcast unit, SBS Radio is to become SBS Audio in 2023. The multilingual public broadcaster also released their podcast download figures, and will offer pre-roll/mid-roll advertising.

• Libsyn’s AdvertiseCast reports a rise in average CPM in October to $24.26. The second-highest figure on record, it’s a 3.3% annual growth, or 0.4% monthly.

• Spotify’s Anchor continued to lose market share in October: it is now responsible for 21.9% of all new podcast episodes, a fall of 0.3%. Spotify’s Megaphone saw a rise of 0.2%.

• Soundrise is a new podcast sponsorship company from Market Enginuity; the company plans to “connect advertisers to podcast creators with shared values”.

• Veritonic won an award for its sonic identity for Tostitos. The sonic identity increased brand recall by 38%.

• There are just fourteen active indigenous podcasts in Canada, says Pod The North, a newsletter looking at Canadian podcasts.

• A US public broadcaster is bring true crime podcasts to toddlers. Ball State PBS previewed a pilot episode of Daycare Detectives about a child’s missing purple crayon. It’ll launch in January.

Tips and tricks

• 3 Tips for Podcasters From a Top 100 Podcast Host, from Gillian Tietz, includes the advice to “release weekly no matter what”.

Podcast News - with CBC Podcasts

From CBC Podcasts: #19 is: Tai Asks Why Tai Poole won’t rest until he’s uncovered the mysteries of the universe, one probing question at a time. In this Webby-winning series, the 15-year-old talks to everyone from NASA scientists to stand-up comedians.

Better Than Yesterday, with Osher Günsberg has hit ten million downloads according to Acast. “My podcast has allowed me to make public a part of me that none of my TV jobs allowed me to show,” said Günsberg; he started the podcast in 2013.

Transit Unplugged is celebrating its fifth anniversary, and the host Paul Comfort is launching season six with an interview with Rich Davey, President of New York City Transit, New York MTA. The show has produced 225 episodes.

Podcast ads in the wild

Spotted by Arielle Nissenblatt, a sticker for Hinternhof, an LGBTQ and couples podcast. These stickers haven’t been just stuck anywhere: this one is in the Tiergarten in Berlin, Germany, close to Denkmal für die im Nationalsozialismus verfolgten Homosexuellen.