Spotify - €200m from podcasts last year

• Spotify held a virtual Investors Day, with speakers from the company including Maya Prohovnik, above. The company said it brought in around €200m ($215m) in podcast revenue last year. Podcasting lost the company €103m ($110m), though is expected to turn a profit within two years.

  • Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman noted in an entertaining Twitter thread that Joe Rogan was missing from their presentation, and that the company has three more businesses to come (X, Y and Z).

• In her comments, Maya Prohovnik, who oversees Spotify’s creator tools across podcasting, described RSS as “outdated technology”, and said they have been able to replace it for their on-platform distribution. She also claimed that every new Anchor show brings 2.5 new monthly active users to the Spotify platform.

• Crooked Media and Adobe have partnered to add closed captions to their podcasts on video platforms.

• The Infinite Dial 2022 Australia will be announced at the end of this month in a free webinar. It’s the first new set of Infinite Dial data since the surprise drop for podcast consumption in the Infinite Dial US.

• Pod Break is an event for African podcasters to take a break, live with other podcast creatives in Chicago IL, USA, in early July, and learn from each other.

• Podtrics, the podcast host, has launched a feed importer in beta.

• Acast has signed the Second Captains Podcast, which they say is Ireland’s most popular show. AdLarge has signed an ad sales deal with the Ask Lisa podcast. TV-themed after-show podcast company CompanionCast has added two new shows to its roster.

• Victoriocity, a comedy drama podcast set in Even Greater London in 1887, is to become a book - in fact, two. You’ll be able to buy the hardback book in November 2023.

• Podcasts with a difference: the CERCA travel app includes podcast guides to places worldwide from London, Barcelona, and Iceland to Rome, and covers the food, music, history, and more. They use Spooler to keep their guides up to date.

• David Hooper has published 101 Podcast Episode Templates - paperback $6.99, or on Kindle for less than $1.

Thank you to Rococo Punch for becoming our latest gold supporter. An independent full-service podcast production company, Rococo Punch specialises in exquisite sound design and thoughtful content. We’re grateful to them for supporting our independent journalism. You should be like them.

Moves and hires - with Podjobs.net

• Bob Kane was at Canadian Music Week representing Libsyn AdvertiseCast. He’d worked at TPX and CBC.
• Lisa Waks is now SVP of Digital Partnerships and Business Development at Cumulus Podcast Network. She will lead Cumulus Podcast Network’s content acquisition strategy and content pipeline development. She was with TED Conferences.
• Triton Digital has made a number of promotions: Stephanie Donovan to Global Head of Revenue, Alex Fournier to CTO, Benjamin Masse to Chief Product Officer, and Molly Glover Gallatin to SVP of Marketing and Jelli Customer Experience.

Tips and tricks - with RedCircle

• Use slow-paced ads to communicate quality and benefits; fast-paced ads for features and prices. This scientific research from Bryant and Kookmin University is for video ads, but should be relevant for podcast ads, too.

• Talking about speed: here are four tips for listening to more podcasts, faster.

Podcast News - with Post Script Media

From Post Script Media: On the latest episode of The Carbon Copy: Nearly five years after Puerto Rico’s grid was destroyed by Hurricane Maria, can solar and batteries prevail? Or will the island lock in more fossil fuels? Canary Media reporter Maria Gallucci joins host Stephen Lacey to discuss her recent reporting trip to the island.

Eric Molinsky has just published the 200th edition of Imaginary Worlds. It’s a special, checking in with previous guests and hearing from listeners around the world. The show spans comic books, video games, novels, movies, TV shows and fan culture, examining how these artists create their worlds.

Mother Country Radicals is new from Crooked Media and Audacy - a highly personal, politically charged account of a counterculture group of young activists in pursuit of radical change through any means necessary, which included bombing the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, breaking comrades out of prison, and teaming up with Black militant groups to rob banks, all in an attempt to build a revolution in America. You can binge the entire series on the Audacy app.

Hypothetical: The Podcast is new from Dave, a British TV channel. An extension to the critically-acclaimed TV show, Josh Widdicombe and James Acaster must answer absurd hypothetical questions instead of asking them. In each episode they will be grilled by a comedian guest host and interrogated on their answers.

Look at What You’ve Done is new, with host Jordan Brookes interviewing some of the best comedians in the country about their entire lives, right from their birth and all the way to their death. Jordan grills his guests about everything in their life, including the parts that haven’t happened yet. Jordan Brookes won the Edinburgh Comedy Award from UK television channel Dave.

Vanishing Postcards is back for its second season - a documentary travelogue that invites listeners on a road trip exploring the hidden dives and histories found by exiting the interstates. The latest season finds host Evan Stern motoring west, cross country on Route 66.