The company sending bills to podcast directories

• Exclusive: A copyright enforcement company is sending demands for money to podcast directories for reproducing thumbnail images from RSS feeds. Instead of contacting the podcaster or podcast host, as the law allows, they are coming after podcast directories like ours who rely on the open nature of RSS. At stake - a whole lot of money. This story is three months in the making - read it in full.

• On the day that Spotify announced 1,500 layoffs, Paul Vogel, Spotify’s CFO, sold more than $9.3mn of Spotify shares, an SEC filing suggests. The stock price climbed 7.5% on the day, following news of the layoffs. Vogel also sold $3.3mn in September.

• Podtrac released its rankers for November. Total global downloads for the top 20 publishers are down 15% month-on-month: “due largely to modified download behavior by iOS 17”, says the company. It measures participating publishers only.

• Adam Davidson, who launched Planet Money in 2008 and was founder and CEO of Three Uncanny Four, writes about The Rise and Fall of Podcasting. Podcasting has become mature, and the economics have fundamentally shifted, he argues; and looks at the costs of making a big show.

• RedCircle has launched a new vetting feature, allowing advertisers to send podcasters on the platform a questionnaire to discover which show is the right fit.

• Business of People magazine notes a designer podcasting boom, “surprising for a profession that’s heavily centered around visual aesthetics”.

Moves and hires

• John Donahue, SVP of Sales for Libsyn’s AdvertiseCast, has left the company. “For the moment, I’ve been given the gift of time and intend to use it wisely.” He’d been with the company since 2018.

Podcast News

The Media Roundtable features Dan Granger in conversation with Steve Goldstein, looking back at 2023 and asking whether it’s time to move past the RSS feed.

Doja Cat and Ice Spice are on the first edition of Close Friends Only with Instagram today. Expect crazy Instagram memes to content from creators they love: and they reveal a couple juicy secrets - all for their close friends. It’s produced by Sun-ny Side Up, in collaboration with The Unwell Network.