Acast delivers $44.9mn to creators down under

• Since launch, Acast has paid over AUD $44.9mn (US $28.6mn) to creators in Australia and New Zealand, the company has revealed. It recently signed big-hitters Casefile True Crime and Toni and Ryan.

• Podscribe will reveal the Q4/2024 Performance Benchmarks report in a webinar tomorrow. Podscribe attendees will get the new data, from Podscribe, a week before everyone else. It’s free to sign up. (This time yesterday, we covered this story but got the name of the company wrong - not for the first time. Humble apologies: your editor is an idiot.)

• Magellan AI will also run a webinar on Thursday, with detail from that company’s Benchmark Report.

• The BBC is to close BBC Sounds, its “music, radio, podcasts” app, for international users. BBC podcasts, along with two radio stations (BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4), are now available on the BBC.com international website and BBC app. Access to the BBC’s other domestic radio stations will no longer be possible outside the UK.

• Two defamation lawsuits have been served after a podcast appearance by the Mayor of London. (Not that London - London in Kentucky.)

• iHeart is to launch a regional podcasting hub in Qatar. It made the announcement at Web Summit Qatar.

• Goalhanger has launched a new live event - its first without a podcast. The Rest Is Assassinations will feature Dominic Sandbrook and Anthony Scaramucci at the end of March in London’s Theatre Royal in Drury Lane.

• Transistor has posted a list of 23 podcast apps that have closed. Tip: don’t launch a “social podcast player”!

• Ziff Davis’s IGN Entertainment has launched Geek Media, a new podcast network. It will be represented by Realm.

• The Mercury podcast network is partnering with programmatic audio tool SoundCast.

Tips and tricks - with Pod Predictor by Coleman Insights

• Headliner has added captions for full-length projects - videos and audiograms. The tool produces a more engaging experience on YouTube than a standard static image; and helps promote clips of shows on social media, too.

Podcast News - with Memberful

Using Memberful: Connected is a weekly panel discussion on Apple and the impact of technology on our lives. With each co-host having a unique background — and accent — Connected provides a perspective that no other show can.

The Podnews Weekly Review is named as one of Hindenburg founder Nick Dunkerley’s top 10 shows this week, in his “Desert Island” shows. We’re alongside Radiolab and S-Town.

David Tennant Does a Podcast With… returns for a new “star-studded” season today. Guests will include Stanley Tucci, Russell T Davies, Jameela Jamil and Ben Schwartz; we’re told to expect honest chats, surprising revelations, and Tennant’s silky Scottish tones. It’s a Sony Music Entertainment and No Mystery Production.