Music podcast celebrates India’s neighbours

Our picture story: Maed In India: Our Neighbours, in our Podcast News section

• iHeartMedia, the owner of iHeartRadio, says that its podcast revenue grew 103% year-on-year in Q2 - total digital revenue was $93m. Unique podcast listeners grew by 30% year-on-year; downloads grew by 62%. Revenue for the quarter across the company, however, was down by 46.6%: we can blame the pandemic for that.

This link is no longer available, as at Aug 26 2023

As you try and understand the disparate podcasting models, let me explain (iHeartMedia’s) view of the current landscape. There are really two different approaches out there: one, paywalling exclusive content on a single app. Good for the app, not good with the listeners because they now have to pay for content that was previously free. Not good for creators because their audience and impact will be small. And not good for sponsors because there is insufficient scale in exclusive distribution. Ours is the opposite model and, we think, better model. Wide distribution, so listeners find the content they want, where they want. Creators build the largest audience size possible, and sponsors can scale their messages across these large audiences. Looking at the listing as measured by Podtrac and the associated revenue and earnings, the latter strategy is working. And we have yet to see an example of success anyone has had with the paywalling strategy in podcasting. - Bob Pittman, iHeartMedia

• Podtrac has published its Top US Publishers list for July 2020. iHeartRadio is now #1 for US unique monthly audience as well as global downloads, beating NPR in both rankings. ABC is now measured alongside ESPN; it only measures participating publishers.

  
  Aug 26 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• An SEC filing states that Libsyn’s former CEO Christopher Spencer, who resigned on July 31, will continue to be paid until the end of this year (he earns $400,000); will get a bonus of $177,776 in early January; and will then earn $215,000 a year for his role as Senior Advisor until the end of February 2023, for which he’ll have to work a maximum of eight hours a month. Libsyn will also pay Spencer $4,061,385 to buy back shares he holds.

  • The board of Libsyn includes those who last year criticised the company for “outsized executive pay”.

• Rockwater highlights a surge in deal activity around sports podcasts - why it’s happening, and how sports podcasters can take advantage.

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• The pre-events for the Podfest Global Summit 2020 have been happening all week; here’s a link to a bunch of recordings. Additionally, The New Media Show was also recorded at the event, including Podnews’s Editor.

• Dear Dearest is a new exclusive podcast on Spotify. The podcast is in Indonesian, and focuses on letters written and read by writers, musicians, and actors. It’s made by journalism podcast company KBR Prime (via Splice Slugs)

  
  Aug 26 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• A number of additional podcast hosts are now allowing you to submit your podcasts to the yet-to-be-launched “Amazon Music/Audible” podcast service (some people are giving a backstage link that works for anyone on any host).

• Only got fifteen minutes? Popular podcast app Pocket Casts is releasing an update to allow you to filter and sort by duration.

• Is it possible to fit an hour’s podcast onto a floppy disk? - interesting for many reasons, but not least that Spotify appears to automatically transcode audio files encoded in AMR format.

Thank you to Adonde Media for becoming our latest gold supporter. A globally minded podcast production company, the company’s team works across the US, Canada and Latin America.

Tips and tricks

• How to direct a podcast host (from Andy Sheppard at Pacific Content)

• Our Guide to Recording a Podcast Remotely (Entrepreneurs on Fire)

Podcast News - with The John Bartolo Show

In The John Bartolo Show Josh Emmett is an American mixed martial artist currently competing in the featherweight division with Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). A professional competitor since 2011, he has also competed for King of the Cage. As of June 30, 2020, he is #7 in the UFC featherweight rankings. Listen now

India celebrates 73 years of independence next week, but India’s music indie podcast Maed in India wants to remind us that our love for music isn’t defined by geographic boundaries, and will produce three shows focusing on music from India’s neighbours.

The Cut returns to audio with a new weekly podcast from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Avery Trufelman (99% Invisible) is the host, leading “an ensemble of voices engaged in the conversations that matter most to women and those who love them”. It returns on August 19.