Weekly round-up: Yuge developments
Yallo podheads, was on a bit of a break last week. Anyway, there were no shortage of yuge developments this past week. Here’s issue #31.
Battle lines
Voxnest published some interesting data on the reach of Apple Podcasts vs Spotify. Here’s the data for the month of
Spotify watch
If you haven’t heard already, Spotify, a couple of weeks ago announced that it was acquiring Parcast, a podcast studio with 18 shows. Spotify didn’t announce the size of the deal but Financial Times ran a piece speculating that the number may be more than $100 million.
Anyway, Meghan Keaney Anderson, vice-president of marketing at HubSpot wrote an interesting post on what do these acquisitions by Spotify mean for marketers.
Take a bite
This is an interesting development. Investment platform Robinhood announced the acquisition of MarketSnacks, a media company that runs a popular financial newsletter and a podcast. MarketSnacks, now renamed as Robinhood Snacks offers short takes on the top financial stories of the day. Snacks Daily, The 15-minute podcast covers the top 3 stories of the day.
Here’s more on the a
MarketSnacks, a daily podcast
and newsletter, focuses solely on finance, featuring a funny photo and humorous analysis on three to four news items each morning. Now, the newsletter will re-brand to “Robinhood Snacks” and the podcast to “Snacks Daily” with exposure to the company’s existing user base of more than 6 million users as well as the general public. MarketSnacks co-founders Nick Martell and Jack Kramer will join Robinhood as managing editors of news and continue to produce the daily news offerings.
Gimlet Union
In a previous edition of the round-up, I had written about the efforts by Gimlet employees to unionize. Well, looks like the going might not be easy. Gimlet has refused to voluntarily recognize the union and has asked for a revote. This piece by Bryan Menegus has all the deets.
Earlier this week, Gimlet management “effectively declined” to recognize the union, Gimlet Union said in a tweet. It demanded
a the proposed group of staffers seeking collective representation hold another vote to see how manyfavor a union, but seeks to bar around 30 current members of the bargaining unit from this revote. According to Gimlet employees Eric Eddings and Rachel Ward, both members of the union organizing committee, these objections are based on the belief that this sect of staffers—which includes hosts, editors, and some senior producers—occupy leadership roles.
BBC vs Google
Recently, the BBC pulled all its podcasts from Google podcasts. Kieran Clifton, Director, BBC Distribution & Business Development in a blog post explaining the move, had this to say:
Last year, Google launched its own podcast app for Android users – they’ve also said they will launch a browser version for computers soon. Google has since begun to direct people who search for a BBC podcast into its own podcast service, rather than BBC Sounds or other third party services, which reduces people’s choice – an approach that the BBC is not comfortable with and has consistently expressed strong concerns about. We asked them to exclude the BBC from this specific feature but they have refused.
Since then, a few BBC shows have started appearing back on Google Podcasts. But as reporting by
This will be a really interesting fight and I’ll keep my eyes peeled. It’s not every day that two of the most important players in
In other BBC news, the broadcast giant published its Annual Plan. Here’s a post by James Purnell Director, Radio & Education with some highlights.
Protecting your property
If you are a podcaster, here’s something you will have to keep an eye out for. Some YouTube channels out there are posting podcasts on their channels, hoping to run ads against them I’m guessing. Helen Zalzman filed a copyright notice and had the episodes of The
From the ashes!
iHeartMedia which had filed for bankruptcy seems
Podcast about podcasts
Nick Quah spoke to Connie Chan and Sonal Choksi of a16z. That’s all the description I have to write 🙂
Bytes
Luminary is set to launch on April 23rd with a slate of 24 shows.
Growth of podcasting in Puerto Rico is reaching a turning point says Adonde Media.
Tom Lydon and James Cridland on the industry
Jemele Hill’s podcast is set to air on April 15th.
Pinna, the podcast network focussed on kids announced a new slate of podcasts.
There are now over 700,000 podcasts
Pandora to test interactive voice ads later this year – Techcrunch
Harvard Business Review (HBR) announced the launch of its podcast network “HBR Presents“.
