Joe Budden’s Patreon earnings

• After he leaked his earnings himself in June, it’s official - this year The Joe Budden Network has earnt more than $1mn/month on Patreon from podcasting, according to a (susbcription-needed) feature from The New York Times. The network has around 70,000 paying subscribers. Budden is the top earner on Patreon, who told us that Joe shared the level of his earnings “to make a broader point: it’s possible for creators to maintain control over their IP and audience, stay independent, and still build massive, sustainable businesses on Patreon”. The network also earns “several million” from advertising.

  • You can support Podnews on Patreon. We don’t earn that much.

• How private are Apple Podcasts listening analytics? As you’d expect from Apple - very private. In a new blog post, Apple says it deliberately applies noise and minimum thresholds to protect individual user identities. What happens on iPhone stays on iPhone, as the poster said in 2019.

• Nielsen says that YouTube posted a new record of 12.8% of all TV usage in the US, partially driven by school-aged audiences. Netflix also benefited from this annual summer increase, reaching the #3 slot for the first time. The data is also affected by the lack of sports during June.

• Magellan AI has added estimated podcast ad spend in more countries. The tool now covers Canada, the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Australia, and the US.

• YouTube’s blog has posted The new rules of podcasting: top takeaways from our talk with Jon Youshaei & YouTube’s Steve McLendon, referring to a video from YouTube Insider. (That month-old video had just 884 views at the time of writing this, which makes us feel better.)

• The Behear Indie Audio Awards have been launched, to recognise the contribution of the indie audio community. The awards are run by UK audiobook producers Behear, are open for entry until the end of September.

  • Meanwhile, The Signal Awards has extended its entry deadline until Aug 1.
  • And, this Friday, the Just for Laughs comedy festival will give its Best Podcast Award to the Handsome Podcast.

• Barrett Media publishes Why Triton Digital Exec Sharon Taylor Thinks Podcasting Is Losing Sight of Its Audio Origins. “As the video audience grows and the audio audience remains, my message to the industry is, ‘Hey, don’t forget that you’ve got a ton of people who love audio.’”

• Mother Jones publishes a profile of conservative podcaster Shawn Ryan, who has one of the most popular podcasts in the country, and more than 4.6 million followers on YouTube.

• The Podcast Standards Project will have a private meeting room at Podcast Movement in Dallas, the group has announced. There will be open meetings for everyone, as well as PSP members meetings.

  • The group also published details of discussions in London at The Podcast Show.

• The UK radio industry trade body, Radiocentre, is launching a campaign to show the benefit of radio advertising. Like any sensible brand, the campaign will include a podcast.

Moves and hires

• Edith Chapin is to leave NPR. She is Senior Vice President and Editor in Chief. Chapin also currently acts as Chief Content Officer, overseeing reporting, radio shows and podcasts. The resignation comes days after Congress voted to strip public media of federal funding, but it’s reported she made the decision two weeks ago.

Celebrity Hosted Podcast Finds New Life

Paid content

A newly relaunched podcast featuring a well-known television and culture personality set out to reconnect with existing fans and attract new audiences through headline-making guest interviews. To maximize reach and engagement, the team partnered with Audiencelift, promoting the trailer across top-tier cultural platforms like The New Yorker and Vanity Fair.

The strategy paid off: the show surpassed 13,000 episode listens and gained over 1,200 new followers. It climbed to #6 in Apple’s Society & Culture charts and reached #54 across all podcasts—re-establishing the host’s momentum and building a strong listener base on major platforms.

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Tips and tricks - with Podcast Movement

• Do you need to work with a podcast agent? Pod The North talks to one to discover.

Podcast News

The Orbit for Creators podcast - a podcast for solo creators who want to grow on YouTube without losing their minds - interviews Regina Larko in the latest episode about why audio still matters. We’re a particular fan of 9 minutes 25 seconds in.

The Stuck in the ’80s Podcast is celebrating its twentieth anniversary, publishing episode #750. Created and co-hosted by award-winning Orlando-based journalist Steve Spears, the show is marking the milestone with a special two-hour retrospective.

The latest episode of Switched on Pop asks the question… All podcast themes sound the same — why? The show looks at the musical lineage that connects NPR’s classical gravitas to dubstep wobbles, from the very first RSS feed experiment to Breakmaster Cylinder (who also appears for an exclusive interview).

Nick Cannon @ Night, a “reimagined talk show” with Wondery, launches today. Nick opens up his DMs, creating his own version of the old school relationship advice call-in show, and responds to listeners’ most intimate love, sex, relationships, and dating questions.

Crowdtalks History launches its third episode of its short weekly show, History in Minutes. History in Minutes is a weekly round up of current historical topics and or profiles on renowned historians. We also host longer special episodes. Shane Appel is the host once a history teacher now a lawyer.

Lore and Crime is a new podcast that dives into the dark heart of history, where true crime meets ancient legends, folklore, and forgotten mysteries. Each episode unearths eerie tales from around the world. dive into murders, curses, hauntings, and unsolved crimes all told with cinematic storytelling and chilling detail.

The storied history of the Māori Wardens organisation in New Zealand began some 170 years ago. But the story behind a new podcast from RNZ, Hi Viz Manaaki: Māori Wardens, started just a few decades ago, when a hitchhiking 11-year-old boy was picked up by Māori Warden Joyce Williams - the start of a relationship that would change his life. That 11-year-old was Murdoch Ngahau, who grew up into a career in Māori media and communications. He told the story to his community radio colleague Dr Amber Hammill, and that conversation turned into collaborating on this podcast which explores the heart, history and future of the Māori Wardens.

Antisocial Economics is an informed and accessible space for thinking and talking about wealth as a social problem, and specifically, for thinking about the effects of extreme private wealth ownership on social and environmental sustainability. This podcast is for anyone who wants to understand our social economy in a more critical way, whether you are a student or researcher interested in inequality and social justice, a professional working in economics or public policy, or a concerned citizen trying to make sense of rising inequality.

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