Spotify’s CFO Paul Vogel quits (with $12.6mn)

• After the company laid-off 1,500 people less than three weeks before Christmas, Spotify and its CFO Paul Vogel have “decided to part ways”, according to a bluntly-worded statement. He will leave in March.

  • As we reported yesterday, Vogel sold more than $9.3mn of Spotify shares on the same day the job cuts were announced. He’d previously sold $3.3m in September. HotPod’s Ariel Shapiro notes that Eve Konstan, Spotify’s General Counsel, also sold $1.1mn of shares on the same day (under her married name). The day before, Spotify board member Shishir Mehrotra sold $0.5mn. These sales may have been automated; but the timing has been described as insensitive at best.
  • On Tuesday, Vogel notified the stock market that upcoming severance costs will mean Spotify will slide back into the red in Q4/23, with a loss between US $100-$116mn.

• Google now plans to kill Google Podcasts in the US as early as April 2024, in favour of the company’s YouTube Music app. For US users, the company has posted information on how to migrate to YouTube Music or another app; the Google Podcasts app in the US will contain an “Export subscriptions” banner at the top.

  • The instructions page is only available for US users. Here’s a PDF of that page that everyone can access, and a sample OPML file from Google Takeout, for testing.
  • We built this tool if you, or your listeners, want to subscribe to RSS shows in YouTube Music.

• Apple Podcasts will be available as a native app next week on Tesla vehicles. It will roll out on Model S, 3, X, Y, and Cybertruck as part of Tesla’s 2023 Holiday Update.

  • You’ll find Apple Podcasts in the App Launcher. There’s a QR code to help you link it to iPhone. Playback is synched between devices; show pages display episode art where available; and it’s in 47 countries with support for 14 languages. You’ll need a Premium Connectivity subscription to stream it over a cellular connection.
  • Tesla also supports Apple CarPlay, which is now in 800 unique models of automobile.

• The OP3 open podcast analytics project has announced its founding sponsors. They are: Transistor, Rephonic, Flightpath, Podium and Podnews. Thank you for supporting us, so we can help further the industry; and please consider joining us in supporting OP3’s open, accurate analytics.

• PodcastAI is a new AI-powered tool, offering a set of tools to automate your podcast post-production. Founded by Edward Brawer, it got $25,000 in funding from Jason Calcanis’s Founder University.

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• Readbox is another tool that promises to make articles you send it into a podcast. It’s “free until enough people use it that I need a paid plan” says the developer, Jacob Peddicord.

• Ukranian was the fastest-growing language for podcasting this year, according to data from Rephonic. Indonesian is the fastest-growing over five years, but that growth has stalled, according to the data.

  • Podnews carries full details of podcasting in Indonesia from Guang Jin Yeo, and the Ukranian podcast market from MEGOGO.

• WePod Project, a European group to help grow the European podcasting ecosystem, published its Podcast Industry Survey Insights 2023. Among the highlights: the Italians and Spanish like longer podcasts; the English and French prefer short ones.

• Slate writes about “the casualties of the podcasting bloodbath”, joining a slew of articles this week highlighting that big podcasts aren’t necessarily successful podcasts. Another is from TechCrunch: Everything you know about the podcast industry is a lie, with a nice quote from Multitude’s Eric Silver: “Spotify is not all of podcasting, although they act as if they are, and make choices as if they’re the only one in the room. Podcasting is not dead.” This.

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Podcast News

One Minute Podcast Tips is celebrating its first birthday today, with a special version of the show, even in full video. Guests giving tips include Ashley Hamer Pritchard, Reena Friedman Watts, Mark Asquith, Dave Jackson, Arielle Nissenblatt, Lauren Passell, Kattie Laur, JJ Ramberg, and our Editor.

The BBC has launched a new podcast feed called Jokes, highlighting the best original comedy. The feed is “a new feed for fans to discover fresh Radio 4 comedy featuring new series, plus brilliant podcasts from the archive”, says the Corporation, and it starts with a sitcom.

Congratulations to Shane Whaley, the host of The Spybrary Spy Podcast, for a great television interview on the BBC News Channel, available across the world. A good, well-prepared interview like this means he’ll now be on a regular contributors list, we suspect.

In the Podnews Weekly Review this week, we learn about Daniel J Lewsis’s new Podgagement website; and hear from Rachael King from Pod People. Plus, Sam and James talk about Spotify’s layoffs (before we heard that Paul Vogel was leaving).

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