Bigger than you think: podcast revenue is $7.3bn worldwide

• The podcast industry might be bigger than you think. New research from Hernan Lopez’s Owl & Co suggests that the global podcast economy is $7.3bn - and says that the US makes up two-thirds of that. The enlarged figure comes from including video and “consumer revenue” (like Patreon and others).

• Exclusive: The London Standard newspaper has partnered with podcast producer Message Heard, to lead the development and production of The Standard’s award-winning audio output. It’s the first such partnership for a UK news brand.

• What are “plays” on Spotify? Since the announcement yesterday that Spotify is adding a play count to its app, we’ve been trying to learn how a “play” is defined. However, Spotify don’t want to say; just that it’s intended to capture user intent, using a number of proprietary signals. As a by-product, “starts” will disappear from the creator dashboard. YouTube has also never published how it calculates “plays”; so, both companies are now using opaque, proprietary numbers as the primary consumption metric for creators.

• Popular podcast Sips, Suds & Smokes has announced it’s to come off Spotify. “Spotify has made the decision to make non-IAB metrics publicly available. They have misrepresented data associated with this show on repeated occasions. This causes confusion with our advertisers that rely on IAB data. That confusion directly impacts our ad revenue.”

• Why doesn’t Sir Michael Palin have a podcast? It’s not even an ex-podcast, it didn’t cease to be, it hasn’t shuffled off its mortal coil, not has it joined the choir invisible, because Michael Palin has never made one. The Crossed Wires podcast festival will seek to change that, in a live-on-stage podcast called Nobody Expects The Michael Palin Podcast. Presale tickets are available now for the event, hosted by Greg James, whose chief weapon is surprise. Surprise and fear. Fear, and surprise. His two weapons are fear. And surprise.

• Podscribe added new features including Spotify Video modelling. The tool now models Spotify video views; those numbers are, however, based on performance of the ad in the RSS audio.

• As part of a larger set of content announcements, Samsung announced “a new partnership with Spotify to launch a dedicated video podcast channel featuring The Ringer’s most popular shows.” The channel will appear on Samsung TV Plus.

• Comedy podcasts still “dominate the attention economy”, and are the smartest bet for brands, says Adelicious CEO Andrew Goldsmith in a blog post.

Tips and tricks - with The Podcast Show London

• How do podcast stats really work? We’ve updated our big article on podcast stats with the latest changes from Spotify.

Podcast News - with Airwave

With Airwave: TechCrunch Daily Crunch gives you today’s biggest tech headlines in a flash from TechCrunch. Yesterday they covered Spotify’s new play numbers, Instacart’s launch of Fizz, a new app for ordering drinks and snacks for parties; and Google’s debut of an updated Gemini 2.5 Pro AI model.

In the romcom audio drama Super Duper, Mosaic, famed supervillain, is infiltrating the hero guild by pretending to repent and become a hero. In order to be accepted into the fold, he gets Solis, the state’s biggest hero, to fake-date him. The villains and heroes face off against each other in a story full of comedy, hi-jinks, and romance.

Tired of being told to pipe down, calm down, or - worst of all - “get a grip”? Angela Scanlon and Vicky Pattison are done staying quiet about the realities of womanhood. Get A Grip is the unapologetic group chat you’ve always wanted, where speaking up, standing your ground, and taking up space are non-negotiable.

The EFF’s How to Fix the Internet is back for a sixth season today. The first guest is Digital Defense Fund’s Kate Bertash discussing how digital autonomy and bodily autonomy go hand-in-hand.

In the On the Media feed, the second season of The Divided Dial, which looks into radio. This season, the untold story of shortwave radio, a cousin of AM and FM radio that – while less-listened to – nevertheless has the distinct capacity to extend its broadcasts beyond national borders.