This deal’s on fire - a podcast on sale for $15 million

• A profitable podcast is for sale for $15.5m - the website doesn’t give its name, but gives a lot of detail: with five staff, it makes more than $100,000 in profit every month. We think (no spoilers!) it’s this - and if we’re right, we thank the host for being a personal supporter of Podnews since Nov 2019. (You can too!).

• Podcast hosting and analytics platform Captivate has launched a new membership and tipping product, allowing podcasters to launch subscriptions and receive income directly from listeners. The company also launched the “Captivate Creator Suite,” a toolkit that brings together Captivate’s market-leading workflow and revenue tools.

• A new podcast search experience in Google is being rolled out in the US. Users on mobile who search for generic terms like “kids podcasts” or “news podcasts” now get individual podcast cards, which, when clicked on, include links to players: Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. The podcast pages also contain recent episode titles (and display on tablets as well as phones). Links to Apple Podcasts appear on Android, too (taking you to the web experience); the new search experience does not contain any podcast links to YouTube.

• The Podnews Weekly Review - the last word in podcasting news - will also be the last word on The Amplify Theatre stage at The Podcast Show in London next week. Watch the show, live, with Sam Sethi and Podnews’s Editor, James Cridland, with guests and a look back at the news: Thursday May 25 at 4.15pm.

  • Also, join our Editor for the first keynote of the event, in The Amplify Theatre, Wednesday May 24 at 9.00am. Be early! For tickets, use code PODNEWS on the website for a discount.

• Ahead of The Podcast Show in London next week, The Guardian, The FT, The Economist, News UK and Tortoise have joined Acast’s launch of Publishers in Podcasting, a consortium “dedicated to advancing the podcasting industry, promoting trusted audio journalism and encouraging healthy debate.” The announcement also talks about developing standards.

• Podcast service Recordical has published a report about podcast creators. The survey, which had 648 unweighted respondents in the US, suggests that podcast creators are skewed male, white, and young.

• Edison Research released the top 50 podcasts in the US over the past six months. New entries in the top ten are SmartLess and Dateline NBC.

• The Dubai PodFest was held yesterday. One of the speakers was Michele Cobb, Executive Director of The Podcast Academy.

• And, the number of daily podcast episodes about AI has increased by 500% on Spotify in the last 30 days, tweets Spotify CEO Daniel Ek.

Tips and tricks - with Podnews Live - where podcasting connects

• Are you in every podcast directory? We bet you’re not. We’ve a full list - with links to submission pages - on our website.

Moves and hires

• Teresa Elliott has been hired as the new Chief Revenue Officer at Ad Results Media. She had been at Spotify for eight years; here’s a Q&A with co-founder Kurt Kaufer.

• Chris Hill is to leave the Motley Fool Money podcast and radio show. He leaves the company after 26 years; and has hosted the show since February 2009.

Podcast News

We Can Be Weirdos is new today from Dan Schreiber, co-host of the No Such Thing As A Fish podcast. In this new show, he meets an intriguing line-up of anything-but-normal guests: like the monster hunter who has lived on the banks of Loch Ness for three decades, and in the first episode, a world-renowned neuroscientist who has discovered a cure for chronic pain.

Freeway Phantom is a brand new true crime series from Tenderfoot TV and iHeartPodcasts. Journalist and Public Radio veteran Celeste Headlee looks at the unsolved murders of six black girls whose bodies were found dumped by the side of DC freeways. Who was the Freeway Phantom; why didn’t the murders make the news headlines; and what new evidence is there which might open the case once more?

In the Room with Peter Bergen is the first ever podcast from the CNN national security analyst, and was launched yesterday. It’s also the first weekly podcast from Audible available across all platforms. Alison Craiglow, formerly of Freakonomics Radio, is Executive Producer of the show for Fresh Produce Media.

Doha Debates Podcast is new this week, exploring questions like… Does having money make you happy? Are some sports too violent for children? Is it time to delete all our social media apps? The show is a co-production of Doha Debates and FP Studios, the podcast production arm of Foreign Policy magazine.

The North American bird population has declined by nearly 3 billion birds since 1970. Bring Birds Back returns for a new season today. The show is hosted by Tenijah Hamilton, who interviews experts and bird enthusiasts to help us understand how we can all help birds through simple, everyday actions.

Looking for new shows to listen to? New Podcast Trailers lets you hear trailers from all kinds of new shows every day, right in your podcast app.