Amazon buys SmartLess podcast for around $80m

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Amazon has bought the distribution and adsales rights for the SmartLess ▸ podcast for between $60-80 million. The show will not be exclusive, but will be published one week early on Amazon Music and Wondery+. The deal was through CAA.
- Amazon Podcasts has launched in Australia and New Zealand, nine months after launching in the US and UK. Here’s what it looks like, with at least 22 Aus/NZ podcasts highlighted.
- ART19, which has agreed to be acquired by Amazon, has done a deal with James Pietragallo and Jimmie Whisman to launch the Upside Down Digital Network. The deal was brokered through UTA.
The Netherlands now has its own podcast chart. The Netherlands Podcast Report, compiled by Triton Digital with NLO, shows daily podcast NRC Vandaag ▸ as the #1 show (from the NRC newspaper); and NPO, the public service broadcaster, as the clear #1 publisher. As ever, the ranker contains participating publishers only.
CampaignAsia shares impressive data claiming that 66% of internet users in the Asia Pacific region listen to a podcast on an average day. The data, from GWI, says 54.4% of Australian internet users listen every day to podcasts: Edison Research’s Infinite Dial data unveiled earlier this year quotes 37% of Australia’s population listen every month, and the Reuters Institute also recently shared data saying 31% listen every month too.

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NPR is now making its shows available on Deezer worldwide. The podcasts are in their own channel.
Podcast host Captivate has launched Captivate Growth Labs: described as “an actionable and continually expanding library of courses and workshops diving deep into all facets of podcast marketing, audience growth and monetization”. The community is free to all Captivate customers. Podnews’s Editor is an advisor.
What happens in Vegas will soon be podcast. BlueWire’s podcast studios are under construction at the Wynn, as part of a partnership with WynnBET. It’ll be adjacent to the casino floor, with two sets.
LetsCast․fm, a German podcast host, now has integration with Auphonic.
Radioline, the French audio app, has done a deal with an in-car app store to make podcasts available in-car. The company’s app store is used by 3m cars worldwide, including Volkswagen cars (where it’s known as VW Play).
Fusebox, an embedded player for podcast websites, is adding episode-level images (in an opt-in beta), and faster loading. It also now only loads audio once a listener hits the play button, complying with IAB rules.
News from the future: Clubhouse is to launch its own messaging service, called Backchannel. Facebook is developing an Augmented Reality hat.

Tips and tricks

7 Things I Did To Increase My Podcast Downloads To Over 1000 Per Month, from the host of The Cricket Library podcast ▸
How The Washington Post uses podcasts to drive subscriptions (for their print product)

Podcast News

SoundCloud has permanently banned Things You Should Ngo ▸, says the host, the controversial writer Andy Ngô. The last episode was uploaded more than a year ago. You can still listen on YouTube, he says.

What would you do if you received a postcard saying only “We are here. Come find us?” Split Valley ▸ is the result: a new immersive serialized radio mystery, which launched yesterday.

Podcasting Essentials ▸ has Podnews’s Editor, James Cridland, as its special guest this week. He’s talking about subscriptions and branded content on this podcast, produced by Melbourne VIC, Australia’s SoundCartel.

Future Thinking ▸, a podcast from trends intelligence agency Stylus, looks at where podcasting is headed in this week’s episode. Fans of aloof British accents will enjoy the appearance of our Editor, James Cridland.

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