The podcasts that charge guests $50,000

• Podcast guests are paying up to $50,000 to appear on popular shows, and the podcasts don’t disclose it, according to a piece from Ashley Carman in Bloomberg. It quotes a number of podcasts who charge more than $30,000 per interview: which only added a full disclosure (an FTC requirement) after being contacted by Bloomberg for the story.

  • One subject of her report, podcast guest booking platform Guestio, has posted copy denigrating industry newsletters on their front page. In a coincidence, Ashley Carman is also to launch Soundbite, an industry newsletter with more in-depth reporting about the podcast and music industry.

• Exclusive: One of the biggest podcasts in the world will be making it to Radiodays Asia in Kuala Lumpur in early September. Presenter Jackie Leonard, and Karen Martin, the Editor of the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, will be speaking in a two-day conference which will also include podcasters from across the world. The Global News Podcast was quoted as achieving 12m downloads a month in 2019. SquadCast’s Arielle Nissenblatt and Podnews’s James Cridland will also be speaking. You can buy tickets here.

• Spotify has turned on podcasts for users in Ukraine. The music service had launched for Ukrainian users in July 2020. (The company pulled out of Russia completely in April this year; Podnews is also unavailable in Russia and Belarus).

• Entertainment company Lionsgate has launched a podcast division, Lionsgate Sound. The company has revealed a slate of four initial shows, one for iHeartRadio, one for CBC.

• Amazon and Wondery are to sponsor the International Women’s Podcast Awards 2022, and have set up a fund to provide complimentary tickets for those who find the costs prohibitive. The awards have closed for entry; the event is on Sep 29 in London.

• The median age of a US podcast listener, based on total podcast listening time, is 36, says new data released by Edison Research. (The median age of an AM/FM listener, based on all radio listening? 51.)

• Meanwhile in Europe, audiences aged 15-24 consume twice as much news via podcasts than the average, according to new data from Eurobarometer quoted in The Fix.

• Podcasting in Ukraine is adapting to the country’s invasion by Russia. iZone Media covers the team from Urban Space Radio, and how fast they changed their plans.

Tips and tricks

• This section might be a waste of time, argues Evo Terra, in an article entitled Avoiding The Perils Of Un-aligned Podcast Advice

Podcast News

Podland News later today includes Jon Spurlock talking about cross-app comments: one of the new podcast namespace tags that will allow comments across all kinds of podcast apps.

The Science Briefing has been launched by LiSTNR and the Royal Institution of Australia. It’s the second co-created podcast from the pair.