Max Cutler launches PAVE Studios

• 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 Parcast brand was combined into Spotify Studios last year.

• UK media regulator Ofcom has released data on audio listening in the UK. The raw data is also available in full, and Adam Bowie has looked more closely into the data. He discovers that podcast listening is not growing overall in the country; but there has been a marked growth in younger listeners. Spotify, BBC Sounds and YouTube appear high in the list for podcast apps.

• In the US, the IAB has released the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report. Total internet ad revenue grew 7.3% in 2023. Internet audio, including podcasts, grew 18.9% to $7.2bn. We’ll learn the podcast revenue numbers on May 9.

• The New York Festivals Radio Awards announced the winners for 2024. We’ve linked here to the podcast winners; there are 23 Gold winners. Bloodlines, from CBC and BBC, won a Grand award; the BBC was awarded Broadcaster of the Year.

• The Australian Podcast Ranker for March was released. Hamish & Andy return to #1 for monthly listeners; the show’s first weekly episode this year was posted on Feb 28. (Notably, the show has moved away from titles like “Hamish & Andy 2023 Ep 240”, and instead is using more attention-grabbing titles like “2024 Ep 247 - The Amazing Hat Prank”). The ABC’s Conversations is #1 by total downloads.

  • One of the two big Australian commercial podcast publishers, ARN, is bidding to buy the other, its competitor SCA. “If the proposal goes ahead, we expect ARN would close its iHeart app and shift to LiSTNR as a single audio streaming platform,” says an analyst from Morgan Stanley.

• Audiobooks are a hit for Spotify - 25% of Spotify Premium users (in US,UK,AU) have “engaged” with audiobooks, the company tells us. In the US, new audiobook listeners are spending 2.5 hours longer in the app in the 14 days since starting a book; and cross-promoting a RuPaul book from an appearance by RuPaul on Call Her Daddy led to a 34% increase in consumption.

  • The company also points out it’s resulted in more revenue for publishers: “Without Spotify, royalties for independent authors would have increased to 23% from Q1 of '23 to Q1 of '24, but with Spotify’s addition of Audiobooks in Premium, independent authors have seen a 95% jump in their royalties.”

• People in Quebec call podcasts “balados”, according to the latest edition of Pod The North. In France, however, they’re all about “le podcast”.

Tips and tricks - with Memberful

• The Drum report on 5 of the best branded podcasts of all time and why they work. Shows from Trader Joe’s and Gucci make it in.

• What new podcast features are creators using? Our sister publication the Podcast Business Journal now has updated numbers from Podcast Index. Over 30,000 podcasts have “super-chapters”, the more detailed chapter format that Pocket Casts has just rolled out support for.

Podcast News - with New Podcast Trailers - the podcast

It’s even worse than it appears. Podnews has restored one of the original podcasts, Morning Coffee Notes from Dave Winer; and now you can listen on your modern podcast app. The show is a snapshot of tech history - Dave talks to Robert Scoble after MacWorld 2008, interviews Chris Brogan about posting 100 “tweets”, records the first podcast to be broadcast on KYOU, tries the Motorola Droid out for the first time: and sings.

Status: Untraced is new from Tenderfoot TV today - investigating the mysterious disappearance of adventurer and tech entrepreneur, Justin Alexander Shetler. The Parvati Valley is sometime referred to as “the valley of death,” infamous for a string of mysterious disappearances. Host Liam Luxon aims to find out what happened to Justin - is he still alive? Was he murdered? Was there an accident?

What Could Go Right? returns for a new season today. Produced by the Progress Network, the show dissects the central issues of our era – ranging from climate change to political divisiveness – and offers a weekly dose of optimistic ideas from smart people.