Apple & Google making money from ad-blocking podcast apps

• Far from being a friend of podcast creators, Apple and Google are making money from an ad-skipping podcast app, Podnews can reveal today. The app, called Podtastic, takes podcasts and automatically skips the ads on-device, charging $9.99 a month - none of which goes to creators, but up to 30% goes direct to Google and Apple’s own app stores. Automatically skipping the ads in this way means that advertising won’t work, and creators will see lower renewals and unhappier advertisers; but because the skipping takes place on-device, US case law suggests that the behaviour of the app could be considered legal, if clearly unethical.

  • Podnews reported this app to Apple on July 22; but Apple’s legal team required us to deal directly with Ben Bowler, the developer. You may remember “Adventurer and Startup Founder” Bowler, who we covered in January as the author of a similar app which we reported had closed in May. But Bowler has learnt from our reporting: his new app now spoofs the user-agent of Apple’s Safari, which is apparently quite acceptable under Apple’s App Store rules, to circumvent blocking by podcast hosting companies. And, because the requests come from the user’s device, it’s technically unblockable.
  • Neither Apple, nor Google, have taken any action against this app - so these companies can continue collecting the 30% app fee. Never mind that creators will see less money, long-term, from their advertisers - the richest companies in the world still need to get richer.

• Exclusive: The ABC News Podcast Network and 20/20 have announced a new podcast series about one of the most daring jewel thefts in history - Heist at the Louvre. Hosted by James Longman, the trailer is available now, and it starts on Monday.

• Last week, LiveOne bought back more than $4m of shares in its spinoff business PodcastOne. PodcastOne went public in Sep 2023, after separating from LiveOne in Dec 2022. LiveOne has reduced its workforce to 80 employees from 350, partially after Tesla stopped giving free access to LiveOne’s radio services as part of its Premium Connectivity solution. The release suggests that PodcastOne could consolidate once more into LiveOne (which could save $3mn a year).

  • PodcastOne proudly states in financial reports - like the Q2/26 report published last month - that its free podcast hosting company, LaunchpadOne, is a “talent pool for us to find new podcasts”. However, LaunchpadOne appears to have closed more than a year ago: its website was shuttered in mid-July 2025, and some highlighted podcasts are now hosted elsewhere. A material misstatement in an SEC filing is illegal. PodcastOne didn’t return requests for comment (though we were left in cc as the company worked out what to tell us).

• Do you have a weekly show, but want to offer it two days early with an Apple Podcasts “Early Access” premium subscription? Easier said than done, according to Courtney Elmer, who has spent six weeks and more than fifty emails trying to achieve something that Apple Podcasts claims to offer. It turns out that Apple Podcasts only lets listeners subscribe if there’s an episode waiting - so, most of the time, the subscribe button simply doesn’t display. “Who pays?” she asks - “Not the platforms. You and me, the podcasters.”

• Apple has opened the Apple Music Hall in London’s Battersea Power Station. The live music venue looks impressive, with wiring for 16 cameras; the company doesn’t appear to consider that it could be used for podcasts, though, since any mention of podcasts are absent from the glossy release.

• Lucas Shaw reports that some Netflix podcasters are having second thoughts about deals over there. Nick DiGiovanni is now, reportedly, reconsidering his deal with the streamer.

• Do you think you could make a 2-minute finished piece of audio storytelling, completely from scratch, in a single weekend? Do you think that piece could be REALLY GOOD? You could win $1,000 in the Winter 2027 Sonic Dash, a new competition just announced. Everything has to be made inside the window: no archival material, no sound libraries, no pre-existing music and no generative AI - and you can compete from anywhere in the world.

• Journalist-founded storytelling studio Brazen has announced a $2.5mn investment from Lotus Singapore Group. Among other things, the company produced The Sound: Mystery of Havana Syndrome with PRX, which won a number of awards. Brazen has also launched The Foundry, a digital long-form magazine; The Tell is that magazine’s first serial feature: focusing on a Supreme Court litigator who also had a secret life in high-stakes poker.

• All top ten US podcast advertisers spent more money in August than July, according to Magellan AI’s rankings. Quince is still #1, spending more than $7.6mn. The top mover and shaker was OpenAI, spending more than $4.8mn.

• HiddenPod gives podcasts a “quality” signal, which allows shows to be discovered in a new and different way. Listeners can discover shows by quality score, topic and duration. It scores our podcast as 70: we’re knocked down for our background music and our consistency of release (one show every weekday since 2017 isn’t, apparently, consistent enough for some reason!)

• We’ve updated our podcast hosting changes page, adding clearer visuals for Riverside, Flightcast, and Beehiiv.

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People News

• Alan Black has been hired as Director of Operations and Development at Cited Media, an award-winning academic podcasting company. He is also founder of Left of Dial Media.

Tips and tricks - with Audiencelift

Podcast News

With Airwave: History Dispatches covers people, places, events and even objects from throughout history. The latest episode looks at the ten-day coup that rocked Mexico in 1913.

Unfamous with Justin Tranter launched in March, but had already had an episode selected for Spotify’s Best Podcasts of the Year So Far. Co-created by Grammy-nominated songwriter Justin Tranter and producer/director Morgan T. Stuart, it focuses on the creative processes and collaborators behind major moments in pop culture, including failures, nonlinear career paths and difficult decisions.

This Is Leadership is a new ten-part video podcast hosted by Karen Blackett CBE and Katie Lloyd in partnership with British Airways. It launches today on podcast platforms, before joining BA’s in-flight entertainment from November. It’s from HERA, which launched in October last year.

What do you really know about the Plantagenet Kings? Is Richard III just a hunchbacked monster, and Henry V a tavern-crawling prince turned warrior? The truth is, much of what we believe comes from William Shakespeare, who cheerfully bent historical facts and relied on Tudor propaganda to script his dazzling plays. In Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis and Dr. Eleanor Janega are joined by Professor Emma Smith to unravel where history ends and the Bard begins.

Genuine environmental advocates are often silenced by corrupt politicians and powerful corporations. But, podcasting can help - and Green Arenas, which launched nine months ago, has just hit 100,000 downloads. The latest episode focuses - where else - on data centers.

The Me Mindset explora la psicología de quiénes somos y en quiénes nos estamos convirtiendo. El programa habla sobre desarrollo personal, filosofía, comportamiento humano, mentalidad, relaciones, propósito y los patrones ocultos que dan forma a tu vida, e invita a desafiar tu manera de pensar.

The Rest Is Politics is part of the 'Be Hope’ podcast takeover - a global collaboration, where major podcasts have come together to inspire hope. Top podcasts from India, the UK, the US, Canada, South Africa and Australia are joined by activists, experts and influential public figures this week to offer a hopeful take on the future, while remaining honest about the scale of the challenges ahead.

In Podmastery: podcasting insights and advice for indie creators this week, we learn what Podnews Weekly Review hosts James Cridland and Sam Sethi, Hall of Famer Dave Jackson, and this show’s host Neal Veglio all share in common. (All devastatingly handsome?)

New Zealand broadcasting icon Kim Hill is back with a new season of her chart-topping RNZ podcast Kim Hill Wants To Know - now also a video series. Following unmissable interviews with the likes of Boris Johnson, Malcolm Gladwell and Jon Lee Anderson in season one, Kim continues her conversations with guests from around the world such as The Undertones Feargal Sharkey, BBC Security Correspondent Frank Gardner, and Professor of International Relations Rory Cormack.

Podcasts in the wild

We presume this in NYC somewhere, since that’s where Podnews reader Lauren sends these from. It’s a “wheat-pasting” campaign for Future Hindsight’s Occupy!, the story of Occupy Wall Street. Two “Listen Here” QR codes at the bottom of each one, which sensibly takes the listener to Nathan Gathright’s podlink.