iHeartMedia - still #1, with more podcast revenue

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Lots of people at a iHeartMedia branded gig

iHeartMedia’s podcast business brought in $69m during the first quarter - 12% of total revenue; its radio business brought in $416m. The company posted a net loss of $48.7m, though, for the quarter. Meanwhile, competitor Cumulus Media has rejected a hostile $1.2bn bid from a consortium wanting to take it private.
Podtrac’s Top US Podcast Publishers ranker for April is out. iHeartMedia is still “#1 for podcasts” and pulled further ahead of NPR in the period. Every publisher in the top ten saw a drop in global streams and downloads though, and total downloads were down 5% month-on-month (though April has 3% fewer days than March and the Easter weekend). The ranker lists participating publishers only.
Spotify is to close Spotify Stations, a lean-back music radio experience. The Pandora-like app launched in the US in 2019, but first launched in 2018, only in Australia, only on Android. Imagine!

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Gimlet’s union reports three layoffs at the company.
PRX has signed a new podcast partnership with content studio Project Brazen. The new slate of podcasts starts with a podcast following the war in Ukraine.
Business Insider posts “how much money a podcast with 60,000 weekly downloads earns each month”. The show is Make Your Damn Bed ▸, with Acast - host Julie Merica posts Acast’s earnings for the last six months.
Triton Digital has signed with Mirchi, India’s largest commercial radio brand, for podcast hosting and monetisation. The company is part of Times of India group (which publishes the largest-selling English-language daily newspaper in the world).
Acast has signed with Laylo, an audience engagement tool.

Moves and hires

Ben Calhoun will join the New York Times as Executive Producer of The Daily. He’d worked for This American Life, WBEZ Chicago, and Serial Productions.

Tips and tricks - with SoundStack

SoundStack, an innovative audio-as-a-service (AaaS) company, simplifies audio creation, monetization and distribution at scale. Talk to an expert.

Courtney Kocak published how to grow your show via Google Ads, Facebook and Twitter, interviewing Greg Kaffenberger.
Tae Haahr gives us 5 Ways to Make Podcasting Easier, including some useful tools.

Podcast News - with Lemonada Media

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In Podland News ▸ this week, Steve Jones from Crowd Network explains how the podcast publisher gets new listeners for its shows - and discusses its differing relationship with Apple and Spotify.

After five years, musical fiction podcast It Makes A Sound ▸ has achieved nearly a million downloads, and has spawned an original crowd-funded soundtrack album. A beloved story about a daughter and her mother, the new season launches this weekend, produced independently by creator Jacquelyn Landgraf.