Some of Kvartal's podcasters
Kvartal

Lessons from Europe in paid subscriptions

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  • Sesamy, a monetisation tool for publishers, has released a case study showing how its tool has “partially paywalled” podcasts of Kvartal, a Swedish magazine, and other clients in the UK and and Italy. There is much to learn: buying a whole season in advance seems to work well (only 15% want to pay monthly); conversion-rate was, surprisingly, over 10% of subscribers; and 70% of users wanted to pay with Swish, a mobile payment system popular in Sweden, rather than using card payments.

    • For the magazine, more than 15% of new subscribers came via the podcasts, which kept a segment of the show for subscribers only. This is significantly higher than previous models. Kvartal’s CEO, Ludde Hellberg: “We have strong reason to believe that our premium podcasts are a far bigger driver of conversion to subscription than even these numbers indicate.”
  • The Australian Podcast Ranker for February was released by CRA and Triton Digital. LiSTNR is #1 for sales representation; ARN’s iHeartPodcast Network Australia is #1 publisher in terms of monthly listeners; the ABC is #1 in terms of total downloads.

    • Year-on-year, downloads for LiSTNR’s network are down 9%; for ARN’s iHeart, down 29% - Australia hasn’t been immune to Apple’s iOS 17 changes.
  • Podcast website creation tool Podcastpage has added an AI-powered writing assistant. It can be used for headlines, titles, or full blog posts.

  • If you’re an indie podcaster in Aotearoa and want help with representation and distribution, The NZ Podcast Summit’s final session is about how to approach NZ’s two big networks, rova and iHeartRadio. There are fourteen speakers this year; the event is in Auckland on May 11.

  • The backend powering the Goodpods podcast app is going to have a “big upgrade” shortly, according to the company. It’s not a public facing change, but will pave the way for new features.

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  • Realm signed an ad-sales partnership with kids and family podcast Story Pirates.

  • Tenderfoot TV announced a new slate. After the success of his Tenderfoot podcast “To Live and Die in LA,” Neil Strauss will launch Russian sexpionage series “To Die For,” produced in partnership with iHeartPodcasts, on Mar 26.

Moves and hires

  • Jonathan Aspinwall, who has been running BBC News podcasts, is to become the Executive Editor of Newsnight, the broadcaster’s analysis news show. No news yet on his replacement as Executive Producer of BBC News Podcasts.

Tips and tricks - with Memberful

  • John McDermott posts 5 Ways To Grow Your Podcast in 2024. One of the ideas - “date Taylor Swift” - appears to be slightly beyond our capabilities right now, although come to think of it, our Editor is relatively similar to Tom Hiddleston, albeit ten years older with rather more grey hair and without the impressive acting career. So there’s a chance, right?

  • Heard about Podcasting 2.0 but not sure what it is? Hopefully this will help.

Podcast News - with Airwave

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Companies mentioned above:
Airwave logoAirwaveiHeartRadio logoiHeartRadioLiSTNR logoLiSTNRRealm logoRealmSesamy logoSesamyTenderfoot TV logoTenderfoot TVThe Ambies logoThe AmbiesThe Ringer logoThe RingerTriton Digital logoTriton Digital

Podcast data for Mar 13

#1 in Apple Podcasts
US flag The Joe Rogan Experience (Joe Rogan)
CA flag The Joe Rogan Experience (Joe Rogan)

#1 in Spotify
US flag The Joe Rogan Experience (Joe Rogan)
CA flag The Joe Rogan Experience (Joe Rogan)

Over the last week, 213,838 podcasts published at least one new episode (up 0.1%). source

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