iHeartMedia - still #1, with more podcast revenue

• iHeartMedia’s podcast business brought in $69m during the first quarter - 12% of total revenue; its radio business brought in $416m. The company posted a net loss of $48.7m, though, for the quarter. Meanwhile, competitor Cumulus Media has rejected a hostile $1.2bn bid from a consortium wanting to take it private.

• Podtrac’s Top US Podcast Publishers ranker for April is out. iHeartMedia is still “#1 for podcasts” and pulled further ahead of NPR in the period. Every publisher in the top ten saw a drop in global streams and downloads though, and total downloads were down 5% month-on-month (though April has 3% fewer days than March and the Easter weekend). The ranker lists participating publishers only.

• Spotify is to close Spotify Stations, a lean-back music radio experience. The Pandora-like app launched in the US in 2019, but first launched in 2018, only in Australia, only on Android. Imagine!

• Gimlet’s union reports three layoffs at the company.

• PRX has signed a new podcast partnership with content studio Project Brazen. The new slate of podcasts starts with a podcast following the war in Ukraine.

• Business Insider posts “how much money a podcast with 60,000 weekly downloads earns each month”. The show is Make Your Damn Bed, with Acast - host Julie Merica posts Acast’s earnings for the last six months.

• Triton Digital has signed with Mirchi, India’s largest commercial radio brand, for podcast hosting and monetisation. The company is part of Times of India group (which publishes the largest-selling English-language daily newspaper in the world).

• Acast has signed with Laylo, an audience engagement tool.

Moves and hires

• Ben Calhoun will join the New York Times as Executive Producer of The Daily. He’d worked for This American Life, WBEZ Chicago, and Serial Productions.

Tips and tricks - with SoundStack

• Courtney Kocak published how to grow your show via Google Ads, Facebook and Twitter, interviewing Greg Kaffenberger.
• Tae Haahr gives us 5 Ways to Make Podcasting Easier, including some useful tools.

Podcast News - with Lemonada Media

From Lemonada Media’s BEING Studios: What’s it really like BEING Trans? Beyond the headlines and into diverse, everyday lives -- the daily struggles, heartbreaks and triumphs. Lemonada Media brings you reality TV for your ears: an opportunity to BE someone else. Out now: this is audio reality. This is BEING Trans.

In Podland News this week, Steve Jones from Crowd Network explains how the podcast publisher gets new listeners for its shows - and discusses its differing relationship with Apple and Spotify.

After five years, musical fiction podcast It Makes A Sound has achieved nearly a million downloads, and has spawned an original crowd-funded soundtrack album. A beloved story about a daughter and her mother, the new season launches this weekend, produced independently by creator Jacquelyn Landgraf.