Spotify’s All Ears event is on now in Berlin

• Spotify’s All Ears summit is taking place in Berlin, Germany. The largest German podcast summit, the event features six simultaneous tracks including keynotes and panels, and has 1,800 people attending today, including all major publishers - “an open event just like we’re an open platform”, Spotify’s GM for Europe, Michael Krause, told Podnews. Javier Piñol, Global Head of Markets for Talk Content at Spotify, is interviewing our Editor, James Cridland, on stage later.

  • Spotify has unveiled an integration with BeReal, where you can share your favourite podcasts and music on the social platform.
  • Spotify has also announced a deal with Jellysmack. “Jellysmack will help our brilliant creator partners expand onto Spotify by optimizing and distributing their video content onto the video-friendly Spotify for Podcasters platform,” says the blog post.

• Audioboom released the company’s financial update for Q1/23. Q1 revenue was down more than 20% year-on-year, but excluding Morbid, a show that left Audioboom last year, revenue is static. The company posted a profit of $0.2mn.

• Universal Music is asking music streaming services to block access to AI companies, so that the company’s music is not ingested into learning systems for AI.

• Spotify’s Megaphone had a playback fault yesterday for a short while. It was the second playback issue this month.

• The Triton Digital Australian Podcast Ranker was released for March. In the ranker, NRL podcast Bloke in a Bar was the highest new entry at #10; Hamish & Andy regained the top spot with just over 2m monthly downloads. LiSTNR posted a 23% month-on-month increase.

  • The ABC, the country’s biggest podcaster, is still absent from the ranker, which measures participating publishers only.

• In Australia, SCA’s LiSTNR is to add audio content from public service broadcaster SBS, including 40 “premium podcasts” and six radio stations.

• Magellan AI has a monthly update today at 11.30am ET. The company will share more data about podcast advertising spend in March.

• In the UK, Podcast Radio has an exclusive of The Rathband Tapes, to coincide with a TV drama airing this week.

• Further reading: Alex Jungius, Director of UK production company This Is Distorted, is interviewed by Pod Bible … Guy Lambert at the BBC posts Is the 'have-a-go’ podcaster era coming to an end?, suggesting a decline in long-term podcast production. (The basis of the article is false.) … AdsWizz looks back at their involvement at Podcast Movement Evolutions.

Moves and hires

• This is Ariel Shapiro's last week writing for Hot Pod for a while. “I am very pregnant,” she writes. Amrita Khalid (also here on social media) will look after Hot Pod in the meantime.

Tips and tricks

• Allison Willis promises to show how to Streamline Your Podcast with Notion and AI

Podcast News

Podcast Bestie, the Podcast this week talks with Megan Hayward from editaudio on the incredible success of the Mina AF podcast, which has already hit 100,000 downloads.

Podcast Answers interviews Sam Sethi, the founder of Podfans, about his new platform and how he got into podcasting.

Filthy Ritual is a new production from Global Player and Novel; a new true-crime podcast about one of the most prolific fraudsters in British history. It’s hosted by the hosts behind the hit podcast Redhanded – Hannah Maguire and Suruthi Bala.

New from Podimo and Mags Creative, It Can’t Just Be Me launched earlier this week. Anna Richardson, a TV presenter and qualified hypnotherapist, hosts this sex and relationships podcast answering dilemmas sent in from listeners across the UK.

Bodies has returned for a new season. The show, from KCRW and journalist Allison Behringer, compassionately delving into medical mysteries and the complexities within the bodies of women and marginalized genders and how health systems treat them.