Now, Spotify hits one million podcasts

• There are now over a million podcasts in Spotify, according to their investor call. The company claims 286m monthly active users, and that it’s “the number one audio service for podcasts in dozens of countries around the world”.

  • If you’re wondering: “more than 70% of new podcasts on Spotify were created with Anchor”, which may be how they’ve hit a million so quickly after Apple. Given that some major publishers aren’t on Spotify - not least, Serial and most titles from the Australian ABC - it might be accurate to say that Spotify may have over a million podcasts, but not the same 1,036,965 podcasts that are available on Apple.

• Player FM, a podcast app, has been purchased by Maple Media, a company that owns more than 30 apps. Player FM was launched in 2012 by Michael Mahemoff, a former Googler; terms weren’t given. (Congratulations, Michael!)

• Podcastpage is a new service that lets you make a dedicated website for your podcast that works with any podcast host.

• Kara Swisher is leaving Recode Decode to move to the New York Times.

• Elizabeth Murdoch’s “Sister” production group has backed a new podcast studio called Campside, focusing on premium narrative non-fiction storytelling.

• We’ve updated our list of podcast hosts, to identify those who offer IAB certified compliant stats; and done the same to the Github repo. We’d quite like to source little SVG logos for each of them, but that’s a job for another day.

Changing times, changing consumption

• Mindshare, an advertising agency, reports that 26% of Americans are spending more time with podcasts since the effects of the coronavirus. However, that number’s beaten by radio (31% of Americans); shopping online (44%); watching movies (53%); or going online (54%).