This is sponsored by Podcastle. Create, Edit, Publish, and Grow your podcast -- all in one collaborative, AI-powered platform. Make your voice heard with Podcastle. Visit https://podnews.net/update/spotify-billion for all the links, and to get our newsletter. Spotify has released its Q1/24 financials. The company made over €1bn gross profit (US$1.07bn) for the first time; and returned €197mn of net income. Spotify’s profit margin for Q1 increased Y/Y from 25.2% to 27.6%. It laid off over 2,300 people last year, and raised prices in many territories. Ad revenue grew 18% Y/Y. “Podcast adverti ..read more

This is sponsored by Podcastle. Create, Edit, Publish, and Grow your podcast -- all in one collaborative, AI-powered platform. Make your voice heard with Podcastle. Visit https://podnews.net/update/webby-awards-24-highlights for all the links, and to get our newsletter. EXCLUSIVE: The Webby Awards will announce the winners of the 28th annual awards later today. Podnews can reveal that Julia Louis-Dreyfus will receive the Webby Podcast of the Year Award for Lemonada Media’s Wiser Than Me and her embrace of the internet as a platform for connecting generations through meaningful, funny and imp ..read more

This is sponsored by Podcastle. Create, Edit, Publish, and Grow your podcast -- all in one collaborative, AI-powered platform. Make your voice heard with Podcastle. Visit https://podnews.net/update/sports-fans-listen-longer for all the links, and to get our newsletter. Sports fans in the US spend more than two hours longer with audio content every day, according to a preview of the Sports Audio Report from Edison Research, SiriusXM Media and GroupM. Ariel Shapiro’s final Hot Pod was published. In an editorial, she paints a picture of a new industry landscape - where investments have dried up ..read more

This is sponsored by Podcastle. Create, Edit, Publish, and Grow your podcast -- all in one collaborative, AI-powered platform. Make your voice heard with Podcastle. Visit https://podnews.net/update/frickin-laser-beams for all the links, and to get our newsletter. A brand new microphone, the Lewitt Audio Ray, has been launched... with a laser. The microphone has what it calls “autofocus” for sound, tuning the voice depending on how close, or far away, the person is from the microphone. It’s a new and novel idea; our review says it could be an excellent guest microphone, or for use on camera ..read more

This is sponsored by Podcastle. Create, Edit, Publish, and Grow your podcast -- all in one collaborative, AI-powered platform. Make your voice heard with Podcastle. Visit https://podnews.net/update/cutler-launch-pave-studios for all the links, and to get our newsletter. Parcast founder Max Cutler has announced the launch of a new media company, Pave Studios. “Positioned across video, audio, books and entertainment”, the release appears careful not to use the word “podcast” (though the video does). Spotify bought Parcast in 2019 for more than $100mn; Cutler left Spotify in Feb 2023, the Parc ..read more

This is sponsored by Podcastle. Create, Edit, Publish, and Grow your podcast -- all in one collaborative, AI-powered platform. Make your voice heard with Podcastle. Visit https://podnews.net/update/millions-of-podcast-transcripts for all the links, and to get our newsletter. The Podcast Standards Project has announced that more than 2.5mn podcast episodes now feature creator-supplied transcripts using the open <podcast:transcript> standard. Those Podcasting 2.0 transcripts are visible in apps like Apple Podcasts, Podcast Addict, Fountain and Podcast Guru as well as many others. Doing ..read more

This is sponsored by Podcastle. Create, Edit, Publish, and Grow your podcast -- all in one collaborative, AI-powered platform. Make your voice heard with Podcastle. Visit https://podnews.net/update/audioboom-q124-revenue for all the links, and to get our newsletter. Podcast monetisation company Audioboom released its Q1/24 financial results. The figures show an 11% year-on-year growth in revenue, continued EBITDA profit, and eCPM (revenue per thousand listens) of a record $52.17. Things have changed - five years ago, the company’s eCPM was $23.77. Production tool Alitu now includes “magic ..read more

This is sponsored by Podcastle. Create, Edit, Publish, and Grow your podcast -- all in one collaborative, AI-powered platform. Make your voice heard with Podcastle. Visit https://podnews.net/update/hot-pod-hiatus for all the links, and to get our newsletter. Hot Pod, one of the longest-running newsletters about podcasting, is to suspend publishing. Lead reporter Ariel Shapiro has announced that her last week with its owner, The Verge, will be next week; Deputy Editor Jake Kastrenakes adds: “We won’t have a new writer in place by next week, so we’re planning to put Hot Pod on hiatus while we ..read more

This is sponsored by Podcastle. Create, Edit, Publish, and Grow your podcast -- all in one collaborative, AI-powered platform. Make your voice heard with Podcastle. Visit https://podnews.net/update/steven-bartlett-flight-studio for all the links, and to get our newsletter. Steven Barlett has launched Flight Studio, a podcast media and technology company. Flight Studio will be led and co-founded by Georgie Holt, Acast’s former Regional Managing Director for the Americas, and former US Head of Sales and Brand Partnerships, Christiana Brenton (both pictured above). The company launches with a n ..read more

A ..read more