Sponsored by Lean & Loaf. Trusted by iHeart, Netflix, and HBO, we edit the top video podcasts in the world. And we can edit yours, too. Exclusive: The iHeartRadio app's forthcoming support for video podcasting will use the power of open RSS. Podcast publishers will not need to upload to another creator portal; and won't lose any revenue from the advertising in their shows. We also learn that it'll support the alternateEnclosure feature, meaning that podcasters can use audio and video in the same open RSS feed - making it easier to discover shows. We've a full Q&A with the iHeartRadio app team. Registration is now open for the PRX and AudioUK 2026 Podcast Creator Summit in London. The free summit will be held at Apple's London offices at Battersea Power Station on Feb 6. Space is limited - hop to it! Sounds Profitable will make its new head of comms, Molly DeMellier, available to help its partners for communications and PR, Tom Webster announced in the trade association's weekly email. He also highlights that experimentation is good - as long as we don't ruin what already works. From Jan 1, Podnews is no longer directly connected to the Sounds Profitable group of companies. Full disclosures > > > Read more of today’s podcast industry news stories on the Podnews website: and get our free daily newsletter.Classifieds - your job or ad hereAudyllic - CA's SB 576 Video loundness solution — California SB 576 extends loudness rules to video podcasts. Audyllic and their automated watch folder solution

Sponsored by Lean & Loaf. Joining a gym is hard. Hiring Lean & Loaf is easy. They edit video for your podcasts while you loaf. See for yourself. Spotify announced dynamically inserted video sponsorships are due for launch in April, allowing creators to add and remove sponsorships. Scheduling and measurement will also be offered. It'll work with both Megaphone and Spotify for Creators - and others (see below). This a feature that YouTube announced in September - but YouTube's feature will only be available for "a small group of creators" early this year, and the company has yet to announce a date for a full rollout. Spotify announced a distribution API for video - allowing users to publish and monetise video content on Spotify direct from participating hosting platforms. Acast, Libsyn, Podigee, Audioboom and Omny Studio are the launch partners. Dynamic video sponsorship management will be available through these partners too. The launch date for this is "soon". FlightCast used a pre-release API at launch in October. It's, of course, dependent on integration with launch partners. (Who'll be first?) Spotify made a significant change to its Spotify Partners Program, which offers a share of Premium video revenue and advertising - by lowering its eligibility requirements. Now, you're eligible if you host on Spotify for Creators, have 1,000 Spotify audience members over the past 30 days (the figure was 2,000); you need 2,000 Spotify hours consumed over the last 30 days (the figure was 10,000); and just three published episodes (that's down from 12). This is already live - if you

Sponsored by Lean & Loaf. Joining a gym is hard. Hiring Lean & Loaf is easy. They edit video for your podcasts while you loaf. See for yourself. Two days ago, we covered a company that is copying podcasts to remove the ads, and then selling access. Glenn Rubenstein at Adopter Media covers the story, suggesting it raises a question of why tools like this may gain traction. "PodcastAdBlock didn't appear because people don't want to hear ads. It appeared because some shows are starting to cross an invisible line with their listeners," and suggests a path forward that podcast networks can make to improve the listener experience. (It's one reason why we run our "Having a bad DAI" feature, where we highlight ways we can improve - try the bottom of Jan 2 for an example). We learn today that PodcastAdBlock's "24/7 support" email address is now bouncing back. Exclusive: Sounds Profitable has hired its first-ever Head of Communications, Molly DeMellier. She will oversee all global communications functions, including media relations and marketing, for Sounds Profitable and Podcast Movement. She previously worked with Sundaze PR and Acast. From Jan 1, Podnews is no longer directly connected to the Sounds Profitable group of companies. Full disclosures First look: CBC has launched its Winter 2026 slate of podcasts. Many of the broadcaster's biggest shows have new seasons planned, including Uncover, Personally and Someone Knows Something. > > > Read more of today’s podcast industry news stories on the Podnews website: and get

Sponsored by Lean & Loaf. Joining a gym is hard. Hiring Lean & Loaf is easy. They edit video for your podcasts while you loaf. See for yourself. In the UK, Global have acquired a majority stake in The Overlap, one of the world's most popular football and sports destinations with more than 38 million monthly views on YouTube. The Overlap was founded by footballer Gary Neville, and recently acquired broadcasting rights for the German Bundesliga. The news comes in a World Cup year, after the launch of Global Studios and Sport by Global last October, and Global's acquisition of The Fellas Studios. No terms were given. Exclusive: Imagine a podcast containing lots of deeply unimportant things. The 1922 Western Softwood Lumber Grading Rules, for example. Or, one containing the 1954 Singer Sewing Machine Manual. Deeply Unimportant has launched today from Dallas Kachan, a former Canadian national news anchor who now wants you to pay no attention at all to what he's talking about - to stop your brain from focusing on everything else that's happened today. The latest episode goes into 45 minutes of boring and unimportant detail about the CSC 1972 International Convention for Safe Containers - and long, all-night episodes, are available for premium subscribers. The Nigerian Podcast Index has been announced - a definitive, independent record of Nigerian podcasts, according to the founder, Tony Doe. > > > Read more of today’s podcast industry news stories on the Podnews website: and get our free daily newsletter.Classifieds - your job or ad herePodcast Growth & Monetization tips every Thursday! — Subscribe to the FREE Podcasting Business School newsletter and get fresh tips every Thursday fo

Sponsored by Lean & Loaf. Your New Year’s Resolutions: lose weight, grow your podcast, hire the best video podcast partner in the industry. Lean & Loaf can help with two of these. Exclusive: A website called PodcastAdBlock is using AI to copy popular podcasts and resell them without the ads. Shows from publishers like Spotify, NPR, the New York Times, Slate, iHeart, and New York Magazine are all promoted on the website. We've taken a full look at the product, and how much it might be costing us. In India, The Economic Times discovers that some guests pay a fee between US $15,000 and $30,000 to be interviewed on "some of India's most-watched podcasts", and these paid appearances are rarely disclosed to audiences. That's against the law in India (and against FTC rules in the US). Podscribe published its rankers for December 2025. Amazon was the biggest advertiser; Audacy has returned as a top ten publisher; and the top five podcasts remain unchanged. > > > Read more of today’s podcast industry news stories on the Podnews website: and get our free daily newsletter.Classifieds - your job or ad hereHistory Shorts Podcast — Daily bite-sized history stories and conversations with leading voices in history today - perfect for commutes, coffee breaks, or quick brain boosts. Subscribe now and make history your daily habit!🎉New Year - Get New Listeners with AudienceLift — AudienceLift - The only trusted source for

Sponsored by Lean & Loaf. Your New Year’s Resolutions: lose weight, grow your podcast, hire the best video podcast partner in the industry. Lean & Loaf can help with two of these. Listen Notes says that there were 198,488 new podcasts published in 2025. That figure was 198,280 in 2024, so is ever so slightly up year-on-year. The number of new podcast launches are actually much higher than that - the data refers to new podcast feeds rather than new podcasts: many new launches re-use existing feeds from older shows. And, Livewire says there were 13.2% more podcast episodes published last month than in the month of November. The data also shows Triton Digital's Omny Studio, an enterprise podcast host, has leapt from #9 to #6. StrawberryData is a new "MVP for podcast and media intelligence that I built to solve a personal curiosity: what are these shows actually saying?". Using semantic analysis, this new analytics engine shows what sort of things podcasts talk about; their ad loads; their words-per-minute, how many times they say the word "um" or "er", and even how many times they swear. Here's the page for Call Her Daddy as one example. It's an interesting tool looking for your feedback. > > > Read more of today’s podcast industry news stories on the Podnews website: and get our free daily newsletter.Classifieds - your job or ad hereTry Audyllic - Podcast sound — Your podcast sounds great, but not like radio. That’s because

Sponsored by Lean & Loaf. Your New Year’s Resolutions: lose weight, grow your podcast, hire the best video podcast partner in the industry. Lean & Loaf can help with two of these. Happy New Year! Take a note to update your podcast feed's copyright notice to say "2026" rather than "2025" when you next publish an episode. (You don't have to use a date, but if it's there, you probably want it to be correct, and in our experience, most people forget it's there in the first place.) In November, Third Coast, which organises a podcast festival and competition, announced that it had transitioned to being a voluntary organisation, after financial pressure. It sent out an update yesterday, confirming that the competition will take place in 2026, and that the archive will be maintained. As you might expect, Podnews can't afford a Getty account for images. Nor, it seems, can Spotify - which published an episode of The Louis Theroux Podcast with a watermarked image from the Getty Images website. Spotify has since found the $375 for the picture they wanted. The company made US $1.5bn profit in Q3/25 alone. > > > Read more of today’s podcast industry news stories on the Podnews website: and get our free daily newsletter.Classifieds - your job or ad hereAudyllic.com Video + Audio Radio Quality — Why does radio sound different? Broadcast processing. Your podcast is missing that layer—even if perfectly produced. Audyllic adds Orban Optimod processing automatically. audylli

Sponsored by Magellan AI. Podcast and streaming audiences don't fully overlap. See the full analysis Where do Americans listen to audio the most? Not the car - but at home, with a sharp increase in at-home listening since the pandemic, says Edison Research. The company suggests a "new normal" of around 55% of all audio being consumed at home. Entries for the Women Podcasters Awards go up in price from tomorrow.  Fees for nominations and sponsorships for the international people’s choice awards event will go to regular pricing. The Age of Audio podcast documentary movie is showing at Podfest on Jan 16; and in the AFS Cinema in Austin TX on Jan 18, complete with a Q&A with the director. > > > Read more of today’s podcast industry news stories on the Podnews website: and get our free daily newsletter.Classifieds - your job or ad here🎯Are you getting new clients from your podcast?💰 — Subscribe to the FREE Podcasting Business School newsletter and get fresh tips every Thursday for podcast growth & listener to client conversion strategies. Join over 4,000+ Pod Pals on this list.Build your podcast website in 5 minutes — Podpage is the leading website plat

Sponsored by Magellan AI. How much did streaming and podcast audiences overlap in Q3? Explore the data Video podcasts have always been available via RSS, and right now there are at least 113,000 podcasts using video in this way. But how many podcast players actually play video podcasts? A new study from Podnews today shows that only 9% of downloads for a typical video podcast would actually show you the video on-screen when you hit play: and some large podcast apps just simply don't support video at all. Particularly, in our tests, we discovered that by default, video playback in Apple Podcasts is less than a tenth of an inch high on a large iPhone. Talks .co, a platform that connects podcasters and guests, has launched a new advanced search feature which makes it easier to uncover shows - including whether that show was recently updated or how long they've been podcasting. John Wordock publishes "26 questions about podcasting in 2026". He'll be at Podfest talking about how to build a YouTube channel. (Psst: if you're a Podnews newsletter subscriber, get money off Podfest tickets) > > > Read more of today’s podcast industry news stories on the Podnews website: and get our free daily newsletter.Classifieds - your job or ad hereBuild your 2026 strategy on actual engagement — Stop planning based on downloads. See which episodes and moments kept people engaged. Retention analytics across major platforms show what's working. Free forever for podcasts under 1k listeners/mo.Gold supporters:

Sponsored by Magellan AI. Where is podcast ad spend heading next? Join our quarterly spend webinar to see what’s changing. Sign up Fiona Sturges, writing for The Guardian, writes about "how podcasts’ rush to video is turning them into dreadful listens" - highlighting recent podcasts that contain content that only works in video, while producers "seemingly forget about their listeners". Roman Mars is among those who shared the piece on social media, commenting "I just think it’s so much cooler and more interesting to try to be the best audio show rather than the shittiest television show". Plenty of debate around this in the /r/podcasting subreddit. How long have you left it between seasons? How about 21 years? Back in early 2004 - even before Apple got involved in podcasts - My Pods Forecast was born - but sadly was also one of the first to podfade, even making it as an example of podfading in a book - Tricks of the Podcasting Masters, by Rob Walch and Mur Lafferty, in 2006. An excerpt from that book also highlights the, er, slightly unusual nature of the how this prediction show does the predictions. The good news is that the pods are unharmed, and My Pods Forecast returned over the weekend. The host of the show tells us: “So little about what podcasting means is

Sponsored by Magellan AI. 15 brands made big moves in podcast advertising this quarter. See Magellan AI's movers & shakers Spotify's video deal with Netflix will include a live version of The Bill Simmons Podcast, says The Hollywood Reporter. The Sunday episodes will be live starting Jan 11 - the show will stream live at 11.30pm ET (in the US only). The show has previously been live on YouTube, where it gets around 100,000 views per episode - Podscribe suggests the audio podcast gets almost three times as many downloads. It won't be available on YouTube in full from next year; the Netflix deal is exclusive. Live video podcasts are also available on open RSS. The feature is supported by a number of podcast hosts, and podcast players. Everything Everywhere Daily will hit episode 2,000 tomorrow. The daily podcast, which was launched in July 2020, has had over 55 million downloads (and more than 1.3mn in the last thirty days) and has remained a one-person operation, hosted by Gary Arndt, since its inception. On Dec 24, we covered Deloitte's study suggesting that podcasting is becoming more video-centric.

Sponsored by Magellan AI. Happy holidays from the team at Magellan AI In Germany, Hypecast - which makes software for corporate podcasts - looked back at its year, noting in an email that the company started 2025 saying "we will have to be laser-focused to not get distracted from all the things happening around us" - advice perhaps we could all gain from for next year. The company opened a podcast studio in Berlin in 2025, will expand to video next year, and gave us the present nobody else did: a decent picture for the top of today's newsletter! Fröhliche Weihnachten! Amplifi Media's Steven Goldstein suggests that 2026 is a new era in podcasting - the year of liquid content, "defined by how audiences behave—not by how the industry wishes they would". USA Today covers "how to find your next favorite podcast". "Look at the charts," try the recommendations", and "ask AI" are in their list; the example app used is Spotify. > > > Read more of today’s podcast industry news stories on the Podnews website: and get our free daily newsletter.Classifieds - your job or ad hereYour setup's better. Your data should be too. — You invested in quality gear. Add quality analytics that show real listener engagement across Apple & Spotify. Second-by-second. Free for podcasts under 1k listeners/mo.Gold supporters: Buzzsprout, Mowpod,

Sponsored by Magellan AI. Who's setting the pace in podcast ad spend? Get the full list and sign up for our webinar Deloitte suggests that global ad revenue for "podcasts and vodcasts" will reach $5bn in 2026, up 20% year-on-year. The report suggests that consumers will also gravitate towards video - suggesting that users who watch vodcasts consume 1.5x more content than those who just listen to podcasts. The benefit of "something for your ears when your eyes are busy" is perhaps a disadvantage for advertisers - 44% of vodcast watchers say they don't multitask when watching, compared with 29% of podcast listeners. The report came out last month, but was reported again yesterday. Hernan Lopez, the former CEO of Wondery, has had all charges against him dropped by the US DoJ, which is to dismiss a long-running bribery case against him. He has written about the legal process, which has taken six years. He has also spoken with Variety. The BBC posted year-end figures for its proprietary podcast and radio app, BBC Sounds. Podcast plays on the platform, which is only available in the UK, grew by 15%. The most listened-to podcast (based on plays) was Newscast. The corporation hasn't broken out any play numbers for its podcasts.

Sponsored by Magellan AI. Magellan AI insights helped True Native Media recover revenue, grow shows, and expand advertisers. Find out more The iHeartRadio app in the US is to support video podcasts in early 2026, the company has announced. "Creators will be able to upload their podcast episodes, including full-length video versions, through their standard RSS feeds for seamless distribution in iHeartRadio," the company says. This is properly open podcasting: video won't need to be hosted on iHeart itself. We've asked for technical details. Some of iHeart's own video podcasts won't, however, be in the iHeartRadio app in video, after the company signed an exclusivity deal with Netflix earlier this month. Meta's Threads social network is to launch podcast previews - a way to upload clips to the platform - in a bid to attract more creators. It launched podcast links from user profiles last month, though this still hasn't rolled out to all users. We've been here before, haven't we: Meta's Facebook announced podcast integration in April 2021; launched to invite-only podcasters in June 2021 but it only ever worked in the US; and they quickly lost interest, announcing its closure in May 2022. Look! A squirrel! Eric Nuzum predicts "the HBO of podcasting finally emerges" in 2026, which he describes as "someone refusing to settle for the version of podcasting we have now and insisti

Sponsored by Magellan AI. Lost deals aren't always lost. True Native Media used insight to recover and renew real revenue. Learn how they did it Bloomberg's Ashley Carman reports a new number from YouTube's Steve McLendon, in a paid article: People watched 700 million hours of YouTube Podcasts on TV in October. It's claimed that this is "nearly double the amount of time a year ago", and it's "the new late-night TV". (In YouTube, a podcast is called a podcast if it's marked as such by the creator). It's a big number, so let's put it in context: in February this year, YouTube claimed over 1 billion hours of YouTube content is streamed on TVs every day (a figure from December 2024). 700 million hours a month means podcasts represent, at most, 2.3% of all TV streaming on YouTube. (Podcasts are 20% of all ad-funded audio). In the first half of 2025, Squid Game season 2 was globally watched for 840 million hours on Netflix - that's 140 million hours a month, or "a fifth of all YouTube TV streaming of podcasting". As for being the new late-night TV? Kimmel, Colbert, Fallon and The Daily Show in total attracted an average of 6.7 million viewers on broadcast TV in 2024, with 621 new episodes. That works out as 173 million hours each month (we're assuming that viewers stay for half an hour). But YouTube's 700 million is global at all hours of the

Sponsored by Magellan AI. Want the latest on spend shifts and how the industry's growing? The Q3 Quarterly Benchmark Report has it all. Grab the report Senior executives from the biggest companies in podcasting give their highlights of 2025, and their predictions for the year to come, in a special episode of the Podnews Weekly Review, published today. Ben Cave from Apple Podcasts underscores that podcasts are open by design; and teases us that the platform will "continue to innovate with new features". Buzzsprout's Jordan Blair highlights that we'll see an "absolute brick wall of AI fatigue"; Roman Wasenmüller from Spotify focuses on what he calls the authenticity and loyalty that has shaped podcasting; Shea Simpson from Amazon says that video will continue to evolve; Ellie from Pocket Casts wants to see more podcasters adopting new Podcasting 2.0 features; and slightly worryingly, Megan Lazovick from Edison Research threatens that the Infinite Dial presentation next year might be a musical. We hope she's joking. Tell us she's joking. The full set of guests are available wherever you get your podcasts. Netflix has signed a deal with Barstool Sports for three shows. The streamer will get exclusive access to the video from Pardon My Take, The Ryen Russillo Podcast, and Spittin’ Chiclets - the audio show continues everywhere. As with all these deals, this effectively removes access to video versions of these shows to everywhere outside the US; Netflix's podcasts will initially be only available within the US, and the company only vaguely promises "additional markets to follow". Only 27% of Netflix subscribers are in the US.

Sponsored by Magellan AI. Renewal and response signals helped Boll & Branch fine-tune campaigns and lift ROI. Get the full story with Magellan AI Why would anyone knowingly buy ads on a platform that works up to 25% worse? New research today from Oxford Road suggests that, in spite of the hype around YouTube, ads on YouTube shows are less effective than on audio-only podcasts. The data is based on more than a thousand campaigns - and shows that video comes at a heavy cost to advertisers, who might be better buying audio instead. The data is also covered in the Wall Street Journal today. Initial Group has acquired podcast and YouTube producer Silver Tribe Media. No terms were given; the company will be called Initial Digital. Silver Tribe’s clients include Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Studios, and Colin Cowherd’s The Volume, among others. Now, short-form video is coming to books. Audible is adding swipeable vertical videos in its app, including trailers, author interviews, and behind-the-scenes clips, for select publishers. Here's an example of what you might see. > > > Read more of today’s podcast industry news stories on the Podnews website: and get our free daily newsletter.Classifieds - your job or ad hereBroadcast Radio Auto-Process — Well-produced ≠ broadcast processed. Audyllic uses Orban Optimod to add the radio processing layer your podcast is missing. That's what keeps people listening. Try free: audyllic.comGood Podcasts Grow. Great Ones Scale — Even chart-toppers need smarter growth. Audience

Sponsored by Magellan AI. Boll & Branch stepped beyond their core audience and saw returns climb. See how they scaled with Magellan AI Netflix and iHeartMedia have announced an exclusive video partnership for top iHeartPodcasts. iHeart continues to retain audio-only rights and distribution; but the 14 announced shows will be removed from YouTube. Some of the shows that are not part of the deal include On Purpose with Jay Shetty with 16mn views over the past 30 days, but which isn't headed to Netflix. Nor is Club Shay Shay (20mn), Drink Champs (2.2mn), or Las Culturistas (3mn). One of iHeart's biggest shows is also obviously missing: Stuff You Should Know doesn't currently make video versions of its podcast. (There are more shows to be announced though.) How big is Netflix? In 2023, Podnews built a tool using Netflix's own data to help compare the size of Netflix shows to podcasts; our own Podnews Weekly Review is bigger than 1-in-5 of all the shows on Netflix, despite only getting 26,500 downloads a month. Good news from the UK: after a lobbying campaign by AudioUK, the UK Government has granted a seat on the Creative Industries Council to podcasting and audio, representing a significant recognition of the creative, cultural and economic value of podcasting and audio. It will allow the industry to engage directly with policymakers. The BBC's future funding model from 2028 is the subject of a green paper and

Sponsored by Magellan AI. Real spend signals helped Blue Wire close one of their biggest deals of the year. See how they did it Some of the best performing podcasts for advertisers are tried and trusted shows that have been established for more than five years. That's according to Oxford Road's ORBIT data, which draws on $1.6bn+ in ad campaigns. Top performing shows include The Tim Ferris Show, Young and Profiting with Hala Taha, and Crime Junkie - all of whom have been podcasting since before March 2020, and out-perform newer shows. The Washington Post knew that its AI-produced podcasts were going to be poor after internal tests but launched them anyway, reports Futurism. A piece in LAist quotes Gabriel Soto from Edison Research - 1 in 5 podcast consumers say they've listened to an AI-narrated podcast; but many prefer the human connection, he says. The new features in Apple Podcasts makes the app "finally good again", says HowToGeek. The automated chapter feature is "really slick", according to none other than Podcasting 2.0's Dave Jones, who says that he's now using Apple Podcasts for his work-related podcasts. (You get the new features by updating your device to v26.2 - chapters and timed links are also visible on Mac using 26.2 as well). > > > Read more of today’s podcast industry news stories on the Podnews website: and get our free daily newsletter.Clas

Sponsored by Magellan AI. When buyers asked for proof, Blue Wire delivered. Audience data backed their pitches and unlocked new partnerships. Discover their strategy 2025's best true crime podcasts have been announced by the true crime review podcast Crime Writers On. The podcast has reviewed more than a thousand true-crime and crime-adjacent podcasts. We publish the full list today. iOS podcast app Castro has blocked Inception Point AI podcasts from its app search results. In a blog post, Castro's Dustin Bluck says that Inception Point AI "seems to be keying on popular searches in order to flood search results and deceive users." Is the accusation fair? A search in Apple Podcasts for Charlie Kirk brings up four shows from Inception Point AI in the results - Charlie Kirk Biography Flash, Charlie Kirk, Charlie Kirk Death and Charlie Kirk Manhunt. The company's CEO, Jeanine Wright - who is a former legal attorney - has been clear about the company's SEO policy, saying in an interview for the Podnews Weekly Review podcast: "When people typed Charlie Kirk into Apple and Spotify, we were three of the top five shows - even beating out the Daily Mail." Only one of those shows makes any mention of AI in the audio; another claims it has "personal interviews" and "a team of expert researchers and journalists". As of checking today, Inception Point AI's biography channel contains 733 shows; the vast majority