Spotify's most popular podcasts in 2020

• Spotify has announced its most popular podcasts in 2020. The Joe Rogan Experience took the top slot, in spite of only being available on Spotify since September. The Michelle Obama Podcast was #4 - a former Spotify exclusive.

  • Spotify says there are now 1.9m podcasts in its catalogue (Apple Podcasts lists 1.7m); while streaming data is given for music tracks (especially visible in their poster campaign), no consumption data is given for podcasts.

• Happy Joe Rogan Day. The Joe Rogan Experience goes exclusive on Spotify from today. As of writing, there’s one show remaining in the public RSS feed, from Friday.

• Podcast advertising will be worth nearly $3.5 billion globally by 2025, according to a new study from Omdia. The technology research company says that global podcast advertising revenue is set to reach $1.4bn by the end of this year.

• Chartable, which supports Podnews this month, has added podcast-to-podcast advertising benchmark data. It shows more than 2,200 podcast promotions, and updates daily.

• Podcast Radio is now available worldwide on Deezer. The 24-hour podcast radio station from the UK, complete with “pod jocks” and daily news updates from Podnews, is now available inside the Deezer app.

• Podcast hosting company Podiant has unveiled its manifesto and core values - openly shunning far-right rhetoric from its platform. “Saying that 'we welcome all viewpoints’ is fine if you’re not interested in what your customers make or do with your product, but that’s not how I see Podiant’s place,” says founder Mark Steadman. We think this policy invites a direct comparison with some podcast hosts, who hide behind “free speech” to happily take money from racists and bigots to facilitate their arguments.

• Nielsen is running a webinar about their Podcast Ad Effectiveness solution later today. “This webinar will uncover insights such as the overall impact of ad placement, ad length, frequency of brand mentions, and other characteristics to better understand and benchmark brand and content metrics among podcast listeners,” they say. Here’s where to register.

• How different - and similar - is audio across the world? Matt Deegan, who runs both the Australian and British Podcast Awards, says that a lack of ambition from commercial radio seems similar in both cases; but the BBC’s commissioning structure adds depth to the UK’s audio landscape. You can also watch both ceremonies.

• Podpage has added guest profiles. The service allows a fully-featured podcast website wherever your show is hosted.

• SportsPro wrote about the business of sports podcasting, focusing on (and interviewing) a number of sports podcast companies.

• Podcast Transcribe has dropped their price - until 2021, transcribing your show is just $2.21 per podcast. We see what they did there.

• There’s two weeks left to enter The Ambies, The Podcast Academy’s awards.

  
  Aug 29 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

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Paid content

Tips and tricks

• The Ultimate Guide To Monetizing Your Podcast Through Sponsorships The host of Young and Profiting highlights how to find a sponsor, the various ways of getting paid, and claims she’s making “multi-six figures”.
• The Promise And Peril Of Podcast Cross-Promotion was written by Jenna Spinelle before Chartable’s data came out; but gives some good ideas about who to approach.

Podcast News - with Fable & Folly

Fable and Folly presents The Carlötta Beautox Chronicles -- a screwball comedy that follows the misadventures of a wanna-be actress. Called “One of the 100 Outstanding Podcasts of 2019” by Bello Collective.

About a Girl is new from Double Elvis Productions and iHeartRadio: the stories of twelve women who inspired and supported some of the most celebrated and enduring music of the modern age, from Angie Bowie and Jane Asher, to Rita Marley and Pam Courson.

Podland is a new weekly podcast about the world of podcasting. It’s presented by James Cridland, Podnews’s Editor, and Sam Sethi, the editor of Sam Talks Technology. The first episode is this Thursday.