Video or audio podcasts? Gen Z choose audio

• Video or audio podcasts? According to Gen Z podcast fans (13-28 year-olds), video is skibidi and audio is slay - they overwhelmingly prefer audio podcasts, according to a new survey from podcast hosting company Transistor. 76% primarily listen to audio podcasts, with 18% consuming a mix of audio and video, and just 6% primarily watching video podcasts, according to the global survey.

  • Transistor also finds that Spotify is the most-used podcast app for Gen Z (56%), with YouTube at 21% and Apple Podcasts at 10%. This mirrors findings in separate studies from Morning Consult and music apps in Edison Research’s Infinite Dial last year. Speaking of which: The Infinite Dial® 2025 will be revealed on Mar 20 in a free webinar, hosted by Edison Research’s Megan Lazovick and Podnews’s Editor, James Cridland.

• Apple announced podcast transcriptions within Apple Podcasts just over a year ago, and the company says it has now completed creating transcripts for all previously published episodes across the 13 supported languages. That means that more than 100 million episodes in Apple Podcasts have transcripts now available. (The company also allows creators to supply their own transcripts, if preferred).

• Leave the laptop at home - Zoom has released the PodTrak P2, a portable recorder for USB microphones. The product includes background noise reduction, and contains a built-in dynamic compressor. The $99 unit can record up to four simultaneous tracks to an SD card.

• Five years after Spotify bought his podcast network The Ringer, founder Bill Simmons is to stay with Spotify, the company has announced. He will “remain at Spotify as Head of Talk Strategy”, a company spokesperson tells Podnews - remaining at Spotify he is, but that’s a new job title, though - he was previously Head of Podcast Monetization and Innovation, but at first appeared to be ignoring the innovation of video on Spotify, preferring instead to promote YouTube. He’ll report into Head of Podcast Business, Roman Wasenmüller.

  • He’s quoted as saying “I think all of us are motivated to do something pretty special in the talk and video space,” and we’re also told that the majority of shows from The Ringer feature video episodes. The Ringer “produces over 100 hours of content weekly, and video is quickly becoming integral to the network.”

• UK podcast production company Lock It In has partnered with Adelicious for growth strategies and commercialisation.

Moves and hires

• Keith Korneluk has been promoted to Vice President of Podcast Development & Production for podcast and documentary producer Believe Limited.

Tips and tricks - with Pod Predictor by Coleman Insights

• One of the quickest ways to ensure nobody listens to your podcast is for them not to find it. You might be in Spotify and Apple - but are you in all the other podcast directories?

Podcast News - with Airwave

Airwave presents, for your Ambies consideration: abandoned: All American Ruins Podcast for Best DIY Podcast. Abandoned guides listeners through immersive audio fantasies, recreating host Blake Pfeil’s experiences exploring abandoned spaces across the United States and around the world. Along the way, the show asks critical questions about American history and culture, community, economics, the environment, and mental health while encouraging folks to activate their imaginations as a tool for healing.

Looking for an antidote to all the bro-casts out there? Normal Curves is flipping the script on how we talk about scientific research. Professors Regina Nuzzo (Gallaudet University) and Kristin Sainani (Stanford University) discuss papers like a journal club does — except with more fun, less jargon, and some irreverent, PG-13 content sprinkled in. In the first full episode, they tackle the infamous Sweaty T-Shirt Study. Do pheromones really drive attraction? Is sexy sweat a myth? Or is the truth… kind of a buzzkill?