True Crime Awards winners

• The True Crime Awards took place last night, including nine podcast awards. The winner of podcast of the year went to Kill List from Wondery and Novel. We’ve a list of the podcast winners.

• Podtrac published its top podcasts, publishers and networks for May. All of the top global networks saw lower consumption, month-on-month.

• Huxe is a new AI-powered audio briefing app that will connect to your email, calendar and other personal feeds, to give you an audio update. Business Insider reports that it’s from some of the original Google NotebookLM team.

• Layoffs:

  • Spotify’s podcast division has made fifteen layoffs, including staff at The Ringer. The cuts are apparently the result of a focus away from audio and towards video. Spotify declined to comment.
  • American Public Media, APM, has also made 15 layoffs. It plans to sell its collection of kids podcasts, the Brains On universe. An interesting development: “APM offered the production teams for the shows and a support person ‘the option to stay on for two weeks to thoughtfully inform the audience of this change’”.
  • Boston-based public broadcaster GBH has made 45 layoffs across multiple departments.

• The BBC has quietly closed The Today Podcast. The weekly podcast was from the biggest radio news programme in the UK, with 5.7mn listeners on BBC Radio 4; but in spite of heavy promotion, the podcast has never broken through. It’s to be replaced with a new podcast from co-presenter Amol Rajan, called Radical.

• US airline United has announced a collaboration with Spotify, to offer “a collection of Spotify’s video and audio podcasts, audiobooks, and specially curated versions of Spotify’s most popular playlists” on the inflight entertainment screens. It’s the first time that Spotify’s video podcasts have made it to an IFE system. The “Audio” category on United’s planes will be replaced with the “Spotify” category.

  • Chief Public Affairs Officer Dustee Jenkins has sold a total of $5.1mn Spotify shares in the last three months. Spotify Board Director Mona Sutphen has also sold $3.3mn.

• The Spotify Podcast Awards took place in Mexico. The “top of the top” podcast was iVoox-hosted comedy podcast La Cotorrisa.

• Working with BBC Studios, Ausha says it helped optimise the podcast search optimisation strategy for The Infinite Monkey Cage. The company has published a case study.

• JAR Audio has revealed the finalists for its 2025 Emerging Women in Podcasting Pilot Competition, spotlighting bold new voices in audio. The winner will be announced next week.

• Descript released a new set of features including improved filler word removal. The company also notes that it’s moving away from using version numbers in its software.

• Joe Rogan’s ATM card PIN code starts with a 1.

• On this, National Donut Day, John Wordock compares podcasts to donuts.

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Tips and tricks - with Memberful

• The Podglomerate posts “What audio producers really need to know about video podcasting”. Plenty of talk about creative strategy and audience alignment.

• Most articles recommending podcast equipment are thinly-disguised affiliate links. This podcast equipment recommendation post from Buzzsprout’s Alban Brooke is based on doing 500 episodes, though. Our favourite line: “better to learn how to use your existing gear than to buy new stuff you don’t need”.

Podcast News

In the Podnews Weekly Review this week, Sam Sethi is on holiday, so John McDermott from Caloroga Shark Media is our guest host. We talk about AI voices, and hear from Zach Justice of The Dropouts about how his show uses Patreon.

Sally Leydon’s search for her missing mum began with The Lady Vanishes in 2019. Then last year after a coroner decided that Sally’s mum Marion was deceased, Sally had 'an’ answer but not “THE” answer. In The Missing Matter, Sally takes up the search herself. Thanks to listener funding she travels around the world chasing leads from the coronial finding.

Camp Shame is new from Acast’s Wonder Media Network and iHeart this week. It’s an 8-episode audio series that delves into the story of a notorious fat camp, one family’s greed, and the heavy price of shame.

Hold the Moment is a podcast full of real stories about life after a dementia diagnosis. Co-hosts Dementia Australia Ambassador Hamish Macdonald, whose father lived with dementia, and Dementia Advocate Jim Rogers, who lives with younger onset dementia, are back for season two, this time shining a light on the realities of caring for a loved one with dementia.