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• How much did PodX Group pay for their acquisition of Lemonada Media)? Around $30mn, says Ashley Carman, in her newsletter Soundbite. She reports that QCODE has achieved fresh funding, and that Goalhanger looks set to get funding from The Chernin Group. (Podnews readers get 25% off Soundbite for the first year using this link)
• Podtrac released its US podcast rankers for April. The Daily Wire slipped below Paramount; there are few other changes, and numbers are mostly flat.
  • Spanish-language news podcast Noticentro raised some eyebrows last month by appearing at #6 in the Podtrac chart. Noticentro publishes 18 episodes most days (one every hour); but the podcast chart is based on unique audience, not total downloads. It’s nowhere to be seen this month.
• Sounds Profitable’s Tom Webster released more data from The Advertising Landscape on podcasting’s “fans” - and “anti-fans” - those who listen a lot, and those who are not regular consumers. There’s a clear gender gap; and middle-aged people (35-54) are most likely to be fans of podcasts. It’s data that might help us grow the medium further.

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• The podcast industry might be bigger than you think. New research from Hernan Lopez’s Owl & Co suggests that the global podcast economy is $7.3bn - and says that the US makes up two-thirds of that. The enlarged figure comes from including video and “consumer revenue” (like Patreon and others).
• Exclusive: The London Standard newspaper has partnered with podcast producer Message Heard, to lead the development and production of The Standard’s award-winning audio output. It’s the first such partnership for a UK news brand.
• What are “plays” on Spotify? Since the announcement yesterday that Spotify is adding a play count to its app, we’ve been trying to learn how a “play” is defined. However, Spotify don’t want to say; just that it’s intended to capture user intent, using a number of proprietary signals. As a by-product, “starts” will disappear from the creator dashboard. YouTube has also never published how it calculates “plays”; so, both companies are now using opaque, proprietary numbers as the primary consumption metric for creators.

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• PodX Group is to acquire Lemonada Media. The Swedish company already owns a number of podcast production houses across the world; it’s their first acquisition in the US. No terms were given.
  • Last month, PodX merged its three UK companies.
• Spotify announced that it is to add a “play” count, visible within the app, for all podcasts. “Plays will capture engagement across audio and video content on Spotify”, the company says, also pointing to a blog post for creators.
  • But, what exactly are plays? “Plays are a new metric that reflects the number of times people have actively watched or listened to any episode in your catalog,” the Spotify for Creators page says - but gives no detail of how this is calculated. Podnews asked Spotify for the definition of a “play”: it’s a measure of “intentional engagement”, we were told, but were sent no further clarification on how it is calculated (even when we asked again). Consumption will now be confusingly displayed to creators in “streams”, “downloads” and “plays”, but without a definition of what a “play” is, it seems an opaque and self-serving number, and is disappointing.
  • Consumption hours and consumption hours by user will also now be available.
• The Canadian Podcast Listener, a survey of podcast consumption in Canada, will contain enhanced video podcast metrics when it is released later this year. The research will break out actual audio and video consumption among genres, top podcasts, and among all podcast consumers.

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• German podcast platform Audiorella launched Audiorella Data, a tool that gathers playback data from Spotify, YouTube, and other key platforms into one dashboard. ZDF is its first customer.
• Acast released its financial report for Q1/2025. The company saw sales growth of 30%, up to US$55mn for the quarter. North America grew by 65%. However, the company went back into loss, losing $3mn in the quarter; and total listens dropped by 1% year-on-year - though that is a creditable number, given Acast lost the BBC in November.
• The South African government is planning to regulate podcasters. A government minister said that there was “an obligation to protect the rights of the people who use these podcast platforms, including equality, dignity, and privacy,” adding: “You can’t have a platform where anything goes and has no regulatory parity.”

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• Edison Research released the top 50 podcasts in the US for Q1 2025. Rotten Mango makes its debut in the top ten; The Mel Robbins Podcast makes the top 50 for the first time - at #15.
  • Podnews’s list includes hosting companies; Megaphone host 22, Simplecast host 12.
• Registrations are now open for the Women Who Podcast Awards. The awards are run by a magazine, Women Who Podcast, which is up to issue 17.
• President Trump signed an executive order aiming to eliminate federal funding for NPR and PBS. Public funding for radio and TV costs the American taxpayer $1.60 a year, said New York Public Radio in a statement.

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• PodHeroes, the “world’s first podcast expert marketplace”, has launched. The tool aims to help creators access expert guidance throughout their podcasting journey, and offers knowledgeable mentors who have built their own successful shows.
• The Podcast Show London has revealed the programme for the stages and speakers. Our Editor, James Cridland, will be doing the opening keynote at 9.15am on day one. You can buy tickets now; code PODNEWS10 saves on selected passes.
• More financial reports were released:
  • Broadcaster and podcast producer SiriusXM’s financials showed revenue for “Pandora and off-platform”, which is where podcasts live, was $487mn - down 2% year-on-year.
  • Podcast publisher and broadcaster Cumulus Media’s financial report said that, like-for-like, podcast revenue increased by 39% if you ignore The Daily Wire, which moved away from Cumulus at the end of 2024; overall, though, the unit was down 13%.
  • Phone and computer manufacturer Apple’s latest financial report was released. The financial call mentioned podcasts once; Apple Services, the division that Apple Podcasts is part of, saw an all-time revenue record of $26.6bn.

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• POD Pods are earbuds with a case specifically designed for podcast listeners - with hardware that includes a dedicated skip button, and a colour e-ink display. Disappointingly - they’re just a concept, from Japanese designer Lee Huang. We’d buy one. Maybe.
• In the UK, Bauer Media sold its stake in digital audio marketplace Octave to its joint venture partner, News UK, last month. This month, the company has announced its digital audio ad platform AudioXi will be rolled out into the market - “our long-term strategic plan”, said ad-boss Simon Kilby.
• Google’s NotebookLM is now being rolled-out in over fifty languages. The tool makes AI-hosted podcasts from whatever information you feed it.

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• Spotify released its Q1/25 financial update. Making more than US$1.4bn profit in the quarter, the company saw a year-on-year growth of 10% monthly-active users to 678 million; 12% growth in premium subscribers (268 million), and 15% growth in total revenue (US $4.7bn). In the prepared comments to investors, Daniel Ek raised concerns about increased economic uncertainty in the world; and bragged that the company can now add new features to their apps six times faster.
  • Investor Chris Peterson suggests that the results show “podcasts are leading the creator economy.”
  • Don’t know whether to read anything into this, but the Spotify Earnings Call Replay podcast has yet to be updated.
• Wondery has signed a first-look deal with Lindsay Graham and his company Airship. It’s the first time Wondery has done a first-look deal directly with talent. The two collaborate on American History Tellers and American Scandal.
• Goalhanger is celebrating hitting one billion streams of its content. The company says it’s the biggest independent podcast producer outside the US.

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• In the UK, the IAB says that podcast advertising grew by just 8% in 2024, to £90mn ($120mn) - a slowdown from a 23% growth last time. However, this number only accounts for audio podcast ads - the video display ad category, which includes video podcasts, grew by 20% year-on-year. (Now we know why the industry is fixated with a definition for what a podcast is - and the perils of being too narrow).
• Spotify says that they paid out $100mn to podcasters in Q1/25. (That’s both ad-based revenue and from the Spotify Partner Program; the company haven’t split out the two).
  • The focus on video by Spotify has resulted in the number of active monthly video podcasts increasing by 28%, and the release says that some publishers have seen weekly consumption increase substantially after introducing video.
• Pocket Casts has launched automatically generated transcripts for Plus and Patron members. Transcripts will be automatically generated for “the most-followed podcasts”; the company continues to make creator-produced transcripts, using the podcast:transcript tool, available to everyone.
  • Pocket Casts has also posted a guide to fiction podcasts for nonfiction listeners from Tal Minear.

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• Chinese podcasting company Ximalaya is reportedly to be acquired by Tencent Music for $2.4bn, reports Bloomberg. (Spotify bought Anchor for just $140mn). Ximalaya, which claimed more than 303mn monthly active users in 2023, spent $100mn on a US expansion in 2019 (though it may not have done); the company tried to float on the NYSE, but didn’t, and was going to float in Hong Kong, but hasn’t.
  • Himalaya’s highest-profile employee in the US was Peter Vincer, who made the headlines in Jun 2021 (though he denied the story); now called Notorious LLC, his company hasn’t posted on socials for the last five months (one of its last posts: a picture of Vincer dressed as Superman).
• Spotify quietly launched a trending podcasts chart a few weeks ago: “designed to spotlight the shows that are getting people talking right now.” Available in many different countries, you can see it at the Spotify Podcast Charts website, or in JSON form.
  • It’s quite similar in intention to the Apple Podcast chart, which is also mostly based on trending information. And for bragging rights, it’ll be much better than the standard Spotify chart , since newly-launched shows should rocket to the top.
• Podlibre has been launched - the project is to build an all-in-one, open-source, privacy-first desktop app to help make podcasts. Run by Benjamin Bellamy’s Ad Aures, it has funding from NLnet.

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• From the New York Times, The Daily, one of the most popular podcasts in the world, is to get two new co-hosts. Natalie Kitroeff and Rachel Abrams will join Michael Barbaro as co-hosts, as Sabrina Tavernise returns to a reporting role. Rachel hosts today’s episode. “Natalie and Rachel are the perfect journalists to take us into this new chapter,” said Barbaro.
• Today is DNA Day, and also the launch day for Gene Pool Media, a new podcast network dedicated to healthcare and genetics. The new network brings together some of the most influential voices in science to reshape how scientific stories are shared.
• BBC Studios has announced a partnership with The Podcast Exchange in Canada. TPX will be its exclusive third-party advertising reseller for BBC podcasts in the country.

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Gold supporters: Buzzsprout, Mowpod, Mamamia, The $100 MBA, Cloud10, Sounds Profitable, The Podglomerate, Audiohook, RedCircle, Cohost, SALT, Resound, Steve Lack: Audio, audioBoom, Podscribe, Simplecast, Riverside.fm, Jar Audio, Podchaser, Awesound, Disctopia, Podpage websites, Acast, Libsyn, Knucklehead Media Group, Evergreen Podcasts, We Edit Podcasts

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