Kast Media accused of "not paying creators"

• Kast Media stands accused of not paying its podcasters. Jim Cornette and Brian Last devoted almost an hour of their latest show covering claims of Kast Media’s behaviour. They allege that the company hasn’t paid for the advertising sold on the show for some time; and that, should Kast Media’s acquisition by Live One go ahead - and they sign an agreement - they would only be paid two-thirds of the money they are currently owed, with the final third as shares. Without the Live One deal however, which was pre-announced two months ago but has yet to go through, Kast Media is likely to go bankrupt, according to Kast Media’s own lawyer, they say. The apparent situation is described by the podcasters as “forcing us into a bad deal”.

  • Cornette alleges that all of Kast Media’s sales team have left the company. Podnews has noticed that a number of Kast Media staff are indeed posting on LinkedIn that they are “open for work”, while others left the company a few months ago. Notably, Mike Jensen, the company’s former Chief Business Officer, launched Rhapsody Voices, his own podcast network, in June. Jim Cornette’s shows are now represented by Rhapsody Voices.
  • Another Kast Media show Happy Sad Confused, which signed in January, had a Kast Media logo on its thumbnail in mid June, but now doesn’t, and has shifted hosting to Libsyn.
  • Colin Thomson, the CEO of Kast Media, emailed us a link to a guide on US libel law. He later denied that this email was meant as a threat, telling us: “Was curious myself. I didn’t know, looked it up”.

• A TV rewatch show, Full House Rewind, has launched, starring Dave Coulier. The SAG-AFTRA strike appears not to affect the show.

• Over 700 podcasts are now participating in the Open Prefix Project, including ours. The service offers free and open podcast analytics - here are our stats, and here’s a list of some others.

• YouTube is offering payment to podcasters to be on the platform, according to Adam Curry. Speaking on the Podcasting 2.0 podcast, the 'podfather’ says he was offered access to the company’s RSS ingestion pilot, and a grant if he was to do his show in video form. He refused: “In my opinion, this is a hijack of the term podcast at best and a disingenuous use of the term to build up a competency on the backs of 1000s of developers and content creators over a span of 20 years.”

• Podcast Guide is publishing the “most-boosted podcasts” on the front page of the search engine. The company says… we’re in the top 12. You can keep us there from our listing just saying

• MediaRadar look at how DTC brands are advertising in 2023.

• Over a third of consumers have cut back on their out-of-home entertainment, says a new consumer trends report from WARC - perhaps meaning podcasts could see more consumption. And, while 53% of consumers perceive ad targeting as intrusive, 62% find personalised recommendations helpful, says the data.

• Even though 86% of Americans know what it is (compared to 83% for podcasting), Twitter is rebranding as X. (If you’re still mentioning your Twitter name on your podcast, you’re probably best stopping that).

The Tech Stuff - with RSS․com

• Found a 404 error in Podnews’s archive? In an effort to maintain our archive as a usable, historical resource, we’re automatically checking links and replacing any broken ones, where we can, with links to the Internet Archive. Here’s an example from June 15, 2017; three broken links, with two rescued from the archive; and a Variety story focusing on Spotify, saying that “Exclusive audio content […] is not within our playbook.” Ha! Anyway, here are the technical details of how we achieved this if you’re interested. We’d love feedback as to best practice.
• Headliner is promoting its AI tools in a blog post today.
• Costs, if you’re interested:
  • The Podcast Index spends around $620 a month on hosting fees for virtual machines, said Dave Jones in Podcasting 2.0 last Friday.
  • OP3 spent $412.61 last month for hosting its open analytics service.
  • Podnews spends about $450 per month to host our platform. The majority is caching, the database and email.

Tips and tricks

• Shreya Sharma starts Nine ways to make it easy to reach your podcast with “have a website”.

Podcast News - with the Radioinfo Asia Podcast Awards

Still Paying the Price: Reparations in Real Terms is new from LWC Studios - and goes beyond conversations about whether or not reparations should be paid, but how: and to whom. Each episode delves into stories that reveal the profound impact of the ugly history on which the US was built. It talks to a NASA hidden figure, a man who uncovers the painful history his family hid for decades, and others grappling with what reparations should look like.