Sounds Profitable

This week on The Download: Premium Podcasting on Apple just got easier, Media Monitors slips up on methodology, and Podfest Africa’s annual study is here. Publishing content to a premium subscription feed on Apple Podcasts is about to become far less painful. This Tuesday Techcrunch’s Sarah Perez https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/16/apple-podcasts-gains-storage-clean-up-tools-support-for-annual-subscriptions-and-a-new-distribution-system/ in a rundown of Apple’s new announcements. Quoting the article: “Starting this fall, a select number of hosting providers will support the Delegated Delivery system, including Acast, ART19, Blubrry, Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Omny Studio and RSS.com. Apple says these providers represent around 80% of listening for premium content on Apple Podcasts, and more services will be added over time.”  Additionally: “The feature will be available at no additional cost to all creators through Apple Podcasts Connect and creators won’t need a membership to the Apple Podcasts Program to publish their free shows — only to publish premium content.” Prior to the introduction of the delegated delivery offerings, uploading a premium file to Apple for one’s monthly subscribers was an arduous and time-consuming process. Now the process will be smoother, at least for those on hosting platforms included in Apple’s rollout.  https://twitter.com/ashleyrcarman/status/1526221885259784192 noted the divide possibly forming between providers when comparing who supports the new Apple feature and who is partnered with Spotify’s similar premium service. The tweet read: “Spotify works with third parties to support its subscription offering, too. The only overlap is Acast, at least according to the initial partner list. [I’m] curious if this means there's now additional stratification in [the] podcast world: team Spotify or team Apple.” In what is pleasantly becoming a weekly segment on The Download, we bring news of podcasting flourishing on a global scale. Last month Podfest Africa published the 79 page report titled https://www.podcasting.africa/discovery-tour-data-edition-report The study is built off research collected in part with in-depth interviews with podcast producers and industry stakeholders, reviewing existing literature on relevant topics, and a survey of 370 podcast listeners across the study’s target areas of Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. Unsurprisingly, podcasting seems to be doing well. “These results build on existing evidence of the rapid growth of podcast usage in allt hree countries and the evidence that South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria are the most developed podcasting markets on the African continent.” A quick rundown of some interesting statistics provided: on average over 50% of respondents were women. With all results aggregated the idea podcast episode length across the three represented countries is 30 to 40 minutes. Spotify has a significant advantage over its competitors for distribution in the three countries studied for apps most used to listen to podcasts, clocking in at 35.1%. Apple comes in at a close second with 18.1% of the market share. Google Podcasts, YouTube, Anchor, and Afripods make up the rest of the top contenders.  In its key takeaway section, the study makes a point of stressing that their findings suggest - unsurprisingly - audiences want content influenced by local creators and local companies.  “A key growth opportunity identified is educating media companies to not rely on Western expertise for guidance on podcast production but instead to generate key insights through research from the African continent.” Continuing the trend of podcast news favoring Tuesdays, for some reason, Alyssa Meyers of Marketing Brew publishedhttps://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/2022/05/17/here-s-what-you-missed-at-the-2022-iab-podcast-upfront?mid=4afb33bb7ffe284d840660fb3604ff60 Quoting the article: “If you couldn’t make it last week (or if you were already burnt out from NewFronts), we tuned in and rounded up some of the most important announcements and themes of this year’s event, which positioned pods as ‘mainstream, prominent, and influential.’” Meyer’s reporting condenses a substantial amount of IAB content down to three main points plus a bonus regarding Disney - ever a fan of conglomerating - consolidating podcasting brands under one banner. The three common topics focused on diverse hosts and audiences, statistical dumps in the form of podcast trend reports, and quite a few mentions of brand safety.  That last point might perk up the ears of long-time Download listeners, as brand safety is a recurring topic in more places than the IAB UpFront. Even https://omny.fm/shows/the-download-from-sounds-profitable/us-podcasting-revenue-is-up-5-more-stories-for-may included coverage of a story involving ethics in adtech and its impact on brand safety.  This Monday Media Monitors published the results of a listeners survey conducted over two weeks in March, all bundled with the enticing headline https://www.mediamonitors.com/npr-slips-as-smaller-publishers-capitalize/ The findings begin with a ranking of the top ten publishers from the top 200 podcasts for the first quarter of 2022. The iHeartPodcast network comes in first place, followed by Spotify in second with Amazon Music and SiriusXM tied for third. NPR doesn’t place in the top ten publishers. Editor James Cridland adds vital context in https://podnews.net/update/habit-secret “To suggest that NPR isn’t in the top ten of US podcast publishers is obviously untrue; but helpful narrative for its competitor iHeartMedia. Coincidentally, iHeartMedia owns Media Monitors, a fact not disclosed.”  Accountability is key when presenting data like this.Media Monitors analyzed the top 200 podcasts mentioned by respondents in their survey, that conveniently shuffled the deck so their parent company place first while a legacy competitor was shuffled off the list entirely. It was then followed on Tuesday by https://www.edisonresearch.com/sxm-is-the-top-podcast-network-in-the-u-s-based-on-reach/. Edison’s findings show a fair difference in ranking, with SXM Media coming in first, Spotify in second, and iHeartRadio placing third. NPR rejoins the group and places fourth.  In the interest of full disclosure, the following quote from the press release is from Director of Research at Edison Research Gabriel Soto, who is also be co-host of The Download’s Spanish sibling show La Descarga.  “Edison Podcast Metrics is the only dataset that covers the entire U.S. podcast space. By surveying listeners and measuring their actual consumption, the data doesn’t depend on opt-ins from networks and isn’t subject to the various issues with counting downloads. These top networks offer a diverse range of shows that appeal broadly to listeners.” Methodology matters. Who owns the ranking company matters. Opt-in will always be incomplete and the techniques used to fill those gaps matter.  Another Tuesday article joins the episode with James Hercher’s AdExchanger piece https://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/brands-lean-on-new-attribution-tech-just-dont-call-it-mta-as-budgets-split-to-new-channels/?oly_enc_id=7865D1013734B0R  New models of attribution are coming for all of advertising, challenging the incumbent Multi Touch Attribution. Companies like Measured, Triple Whale, and Northbeam are all taking new approaches as old ones fail to deliver. The following quote contains a nested quote from Parachute’s VP of Growth Ian Yung. “One social media platform stuck out as an early win for Measured, according to Yung. Parachute was spending in the low six figures per month on the platform. “And they were obviously giving us reporting that it was very profitable.” Upon closer inspection, Measured found Parachute’s spending on the unnamed platform could be cut to zero and show no impact on sales. An all-too familiar adtech story. Quoting the article again: “Podcast advertising is another category that Parachute rethought once it had a measurement testing regime in place. Podcast attribution often banks on listeners redeeming a particular code, which under-credits the channel. “Podcasting is one [rarer] example where we have to take the reporting and increase what it has on our end to capture the true value,” Yung said.” Companies outside of podcasting are coming into the adtech space, and fast. It just so happens the podcasting industry has been operating steadily without widespread MTA adoption in the first place.  The Download is a production ofhttp://soundsprofitable.com/. Today's episode was hosted byhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/shreyaapurvsharma/ andhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelabedoya/, and the script was written by

Today on the show, Bryan Barletta speaks with Fatima Zaidi, founder and CEO of Quill inc., a full-service podcast agency that makes it easy for brands and publishers to create, launch and grow successful podcasts. Quill is launching a hosting service, Co-Host. After years of trying to work with existing hosting solutions, Quill found that their clients desired different and more complex KPIs, so, they decided to build a solution that could track them. Listen for: How and why Quill decided to build a new hosting platform in this seemingly saturated space How Quill has built a tech team after running a production company for a few yearsP.s. they’re still looking for a developer A discussion on the hype around VC and angel funding  Why we should celebrate bootstrapped companies A playbook on real-time beta testers   Here’s our favorite idea from this conversation: Fatima believes in the concept of “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” But she and her team still came to the decision that the existing solutions weren’t hitting all of the needs of their clients. Ultimately, they had to put their clients first. Links: Fatima Zaidi Quill The Download Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles SquadCast Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta Hosted by Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering and transcriptions by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The Download: US podcasting revenue is up, Google launches new way to collect data, and a new partnership aims to bring ethics to advertising. One of many podcasting social media staples is sharing platitudes about how the industry is always growing, always doing better. This Monday offered a wonderful moment where one gets empirical data to back them up. The United States podcast ad revenue market hit a billion dollars for the first time in 2021 and shows no sign of slowing down. Anthony Vargas writes for AdExchanger:  “At $1.4 billion – up 72% from roughly $840 million in 2020 – podcasting is now one of the fastest-growing digital media channels, and it’s growing twice as fast as the internet advertising market as a whole, according to a report on podcast ad revenue released by the IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers on Monday.”  Growth has developed so quickly just the US market’s 2021 revenue matched podcasting’s global 2020 revenue. Vargas attributes a bulk of this growth to the increase of dynamic ad insertion leading to better ad placement. Regardless, things are looking good on the business side of podcasting.  This Tuesday Rain News’ Brad Hill reported on the Q1 earnings call of audio distribution platform Audacy. CEO David Field cited strong growth in digital revenue but as far as The Download is concerned, we’re interested in their reported 37% podcast revenue increase  Audacy’s apps offer a generational divide-bridging service, offering a place to access both terrestrial radio stations and on-demand audio in the form of podcasts in the same place. And it appears Audacy is aiming to take advantage of their broad audience. Brad Hill reports from the earnings call:  “A key forward-looking emphasis of the call was the Audacy Digital Audience Network, a scale-and-reach initiative which was launched during the quarter. Field described it as ‘an addressable and aggregate of over 60 million listeners across our app, streaming content and podcast lineup, enabling precision targeting at scale, coupled with real-time optimization and reporting.’” Up next: a bit of nostalgia looking back at the world that allowed podcasting to exist. Last Thursday Ben Thompson of Stratechery posted an interview with Tony Fadell, the designer known as the father of the iPod.  On the off chance there are members of The Download’s audience who aren’t old enough to rent a car: the very word podcast is a portmanteau of iPod and broadcast, originally created specifically as a way to share spoken word to Apple’s wildly successful MP3 player via their iTunes digital media platform. With Wednesday’s announcement that Apple has officially discontinued the iPod Touch, a vestigial remnant of the iPod brand, it’s a good time to be nostalgic for the early days of the industry and reflect on how much has changed.  Thompson’s interview with Fadell gleefully partakes of nostalgia, rehashing key moments from both Fadell’s career and that of the iPod’s development. Steve Jobs’ leadership style from Apple’s 2005 flash memory gambit, the interview evokes memories of a time when touch screens were still exotic futuristic technology.  Last Thursday Olivia Morley, writing for Adweek, covered the announcement of Havas Media Group partnering with the Institute of Advertising Ethics. According to Havas, they intend to offer an advertising ethics certification course to over 9,000 clients and employees.  A quote from the founding COO of IAE, as reported by Morley:  “‘Our industry, astoundingly, is virtually the only professional industry—unlike law, medicine, architecture, engineering, et cetera—that doesn’t have any sort of industry code of ethics or certification for ethics,’ said Andrew Susman, noting that this will now change.” As Susman said, the IAE has identified a marked lack of training and focus on ethics in advertising. This has a trickle-down effect on the podcasting industry, as we’ve seen before with various sticky situations companies and creatives alike create with brand safety or unintentional side effects of unethical systems.  “Ethics, according to Downing, can extend to many things. Some include issues of brand safety and ensuring that clients are not using discriminatory ad filters that impact minority creators. For example, putting “LGBTQ+” on a blocklist.” One needs only look at the tech industry’s laundry list of issues with their army of engineers with no ethical training creating wildly unethical digital ecosystems. A more ethical advertising industry, if it takes advantage of the IAE and whatever competitors might arise, is a better one.  Speaking of weird ethics: The Download is going to take a brief moment to report on someone reporting on our mothership Sounds Profitable. Tom Webster is leaving Edison Research to join Sounds Profitable as a partner. Webster goes into detail on his motivations and goals for the new position in Tuesday’s edition of his newsletter I Hear Things. Quoting Tom: “On June 1st, I am joining Sounds Profitable as Partner, teaming up with Bryan Barletta to help build something to make the podcasting space better for everyone. As a part of that, I Hear Things and its companion podcast will then be under the umbrella of Sounds Profitable, where I’ll be a regular contributor.” Webster aims to pursue his and Sounds Profitable founder Bryan Barletta’s common goal of making podcasting better. Being a veteran of research and presentations, he’s broken it down into an easily-digestible four pillars: insightful content, industry-leading research, unmissable events, and peerless advisory services.  Welcome aboard, Tom. This Wednesday Google announced a new service titled My Ad Center during their annual I/O event. Greg Finn covered the announcement for Search Engine Land.  "All Google users will now have the ability to choose the brands and topics most germane to them that they want to see. This is much different than the Topics targeting within the Privacy Sandbox now being tested, as the inputs are dictated directly by the user.” At launch My Ad Center will only be compatible with Google’s search results, YouTube, and Google Discover. On its surface the service promises better transparency with users receiving more granular information as to why they’re being served a particular ad, and giving them the ability to fine-tune what topics they would prefer Google cater to. Of course, that’s the corporate line. One of the recurring stories that’s changing the industry and keeps appearing on The Download is that of advertisers adjusting to stronger privacy on mobile devices and desktop browsers. People serving ads simply don’t have access to the hyper-specific data they once did, and conveniently Google has now put out a product designed to get users to give them similarly hyper-specific data points for free under the premise it’ll make their online existence better.  The Download is a production of Sounds Profitable. Today's episode was hosted by Shreya Sharma and Manuela Bedoya, and the script was written by Gavin Gaddis. Bryan Barletta and Evo Terra are the executive producers of The Download from Sounds Profitable. Evo Terra edited today's episode. Special thanks to our media host, Omny Studio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on the show, Bryan Barletta speaks with Shantae Howell, Creative Director for the Americas at Acast. They discuss branded podcast content: how and when to make it, what to consider, and what to expect  Listen for: The difference between branded podcasts, advertising on podcasts, and sponsoring podcasts. How Acast works with brands to make impactful branded podcasts. When your brand should consider getting into the audio game.   Here’s our favorite idea from this conversation: a branded podcast can have many different goals, whether it be brand awareness, customer acquisition, sharing customer stories, as a creative outlet for the company, and so much more. It’s important for the brand and the creative agency behind the soon-to-be branded podcast to be aligned in their missions for the show. Links: Shantae Howell Acast The Download Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles SquadCast Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta Hosted by Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering and transcriptions by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I Hear Things is joining Sounds Profitable. That's the tweet.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The Download: potential new IAB standards are revealed, advertisers reflect on a year of iOS-enforced privacy, and Facebook is losing the confidence of its customers.  Last Thursday Ryan Barwick, writing for MarketingBrew, published a look at some promising new standards https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/2022/04/28/publishers-are-labeling-their-audiences-to-make-it-easier-for-advertisers-to-target-them   With the evolution of online privacy advertising must change with it, and the IAB is experimenting with replacing existing data-collection structures with seller-defined audiences, or SDAs. Instead of adtech using tracking methods to use collected data to serve certain ads to certain users, publishers would use first-party data to decide how to categorize their own audience and take ads targeting those categories. Quoting the article:    “Using this data, SDAs would, theoretically, let publishers place their audiences into groups—whether by behavior or interest—which would then be shared with advertisers to help them run targeted programmatic ads. So far, there are roughly 1,600 available labels for publishers to choose from.”   Barwick and others at MarketingBrew have taken a liking to the hyper-specific example label of “potatoes/onions” as an example of how granular the SDA system would be if fully implemented.   Michael Nuzzo, Vice President and head of Hearst data solutions at Hearst Magazines is quoted from the IAB Tech Lab event in February: “It’s a very positive indication that publishers are gaining more control in the open web. We were only seen as supply. Now, we’re seen as supply, identity partners, as well as data providers, and that’s an exciting shift.” This signals a significant boon for podcasting. The IAB has created a world where podcast producers determine their audiences and present them to advertisers. An open world with power in the hands of producers is a good thing.   Last Thursday Digiday’s Kimeko McCoy published an article covering the thoughts of advertisers on the https://digiday.com/marketing/it-changed-the-way-people-perceived-digital-advertising-advertisers-reflect-on-ios-14-changes-a-year-later/   “In this last year, Apple’s crackdown on in-app tracking upended the digital advertising industry and crippled advertisers’ ability to know whether their mobile ads were working. It forced them to look elsewhere to spend their dollars.”   iOS 14, along with other similar privacy-boosting offerings from web browsers and Android devices, changed the game. Platforms reliant on the old buffet of collectable data have had issues adjusting, as we’ll cover in a Facebook-heavy story shortly.    “But those 12 months of acclimating to these shifts have made it clear to media buyers that Apple’s ATT is an attribution problem, not an advertising one. In other words, the effectiveness of advertising hasn’t gone away as a result of it being harder to track people. But it has become more difficult to know how effective those ads are.”   McCoy’s reporting paints a promising future. Every step the industry takes in this direction is a glowing endorsement for podcasting. While the rank-and-file are just now dealing with tricky attribution, this industry has been successfully serving ads with tricky end-game attribution for the better part of a decade.    On Monday AdExchanger’s James Hercher published “https://www.adexchanger.com/platforms/facebook-advertisers-are-itching-for-change-as-bugs-infest-its-attribution-tech/” The piece begins with an anecdotal story of a marketer beset with costly glitches in the aging platform’s adtech. Things don’t get much better for Meta from there. Quoting the article:   “Facebook is heads-down trying to fix the ad platform as gears and springs fly out of it like a cartoon pocket watch.”   Facebook faces huge troubles as its advertising empire built on a tracking pixel now has to operate in a world where said pixel can’t immediately report back data on a user browsing outside websites. Instead of instantaneous granular updates, Facebook adtech operates in batch updates once every few days.    “Facebook’s consistent response has been to be patient and, well, to slow down. In February, Facebook acknowledged that it was still underreporting attribution, but said it hadhttps://www.adexchanger.com/platforms/meta-claims-underreporting-for-ios-web-conversions-is-now-down-from-15-to-8/ from 15% to 8%. Says who?” Walled gardens, especially Facebook, are starting to show cracks in their foundations and are losing the faith of buyers as they struggle to course-correct for industry-wide changes. Facebook may have tapped out of the podcasting game entirely, but we still have Spotify. What has happened to the likes of Google and Meta could happen to Spotify in the future. Especially now that they’ve purchased some of the biggest names in podcast data attribution, setting themselves up as potential gatekeepers of proprietary data not wholly dissimilar to Facebook.    Speaking of attribution tech: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220505005421/en?utm_content=206948652. Exact details are thin on the ground in the press release but Veritonic is confident its new attribution solution - simply called Attribution - will be an advertiser’s best friend. A quote from Veritonic CEO Scott Simonelli:    “As advertising dollars increasingly flow into audio, brands need the assurance that only Veritonic’s end-to-end measurement and analytics can provide. Attribution is the perfect addition to our platform of audio research and measurement solutions, providing data-driven advertisers, brands, and agencies with the tools and insights they need to optimize their campaigns for greater ROI.”    The press release promises Attribution will do the basic ad-tech things one would expect, tracking potential customers when they land on a campaign’s bespoke URL until they leave or purchase the relevant item. It’s nothing too flashy or industry-shattering from a technology standpoint, but the important context to consider is that Veritonic became the first company to get to market since Spotify’s acquisition of Chartable and Podsights.    Spotify created a power vacuum in reliable third-party attribution. Now companies are stepping up to fill that gap.    With that, it’s time for our semi-regular roundup of articles that didn’t make it into today’s episode, but are still worth working into your weekend reading.    First: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-02/facebook-is-planning-to-leave-the-podcast-business-after-a-year   And, second: https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/2/23054003/anchor-co-founder-michael-mignano-leaves-spotify.   As always, the links to every article mentioned on an episode of The Download can be found in the episode details.    Finally, a quick roundup of the finance-related news this week that’s worth discussing, but not big enough to necessitate individual stories.. First up: James Hercer - in a rare three-time appearance in one episode of The Download - covers the Amazon earnings call last Friday.    https://www.adexchanger.com/commerce/amazon-sales-and-profits-slip-but-advertising-powers-along/   Following that we have Ted Gioia’s Sunday issue of The Honest Broker titled https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/spotify-shares-now-selling-at-less?s=r. While an aggressive headline, Gioia’s coverage takes care to point out the lower share price is likely due to Spotify’s growth not being as world-dominating as expected, posting a 25% gross profit margin.    ---   The Download is a production ofhttp://soundsprofitable.com/. Today's episode was hosted byhttps://twitter.com/gsoto777?s=21https://www.linkedin.com/in/shreyaapurvsharma/ andhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelabedoya/, and the script was written byhttps://twitter.com/GavGaddis. https://twitter.com/bryanbarletta andhttps://twitter.com/evoterra are the executive producers of The Download from Sounds Profitable. Special thanks tohttp://soundandstory.me/ for his audio prowess, and to our media host,https://omnystudio.com/.See https://omnystudio.com/listener

Today on the show, Bryan Barletta speaks with Ma’ayan Plaut, who is the growth marketing manager at 3play media. They discuss what it means to create accessible and compliant podcast transcripts. Ma’ayan recently tweeted about the need for transcripts to include non-speech elements. Her tweet was instructive and contained practical information for podcast publishers. We expand upon her thread in this conversation, and go beyond it as well. We are moving towards a world in which we don’t simply consume podcasts by listening. Consumers will read podcast content, too; whether that’s because they prefer to read it or because they are d/Deaf or hard-of-hearing, or for a variety of other reasons. For those use-cases, and more, we need to find a way to make transcripts for available and accessible. Listen for: Statistics on how many people are consuming podcasts via transcripts How publishers can prioritize creating transcripts beyond just in the initial editing process Discussion as to which lawsuits have impacted this discussion How to dissect important legislation that regulates accessibility requirements for media creators   Here’s our favorite idea from this conversation: transcripts should be vetted by a human. Even if AI gets us halfway there, it’s important to have the final version looked over by a real human. Why? Names like Ma’ayan Plaut and even Arielle Nissenblatt very rarely get AI transcribed the right way. Links: Ma’ayan Plaut 3Play Media Paul F. Tompkins’ Tweet The Download Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles SquadCast Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta Hosted by Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering and transcriptions by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

ICYMI: Warner Music launches a podcast network, Spotify weathers the storm, and personnel changes at Edison Research. Warner Music Group is dipping its toes into podcasting with its first network: Interval Presents. The new network’s slate promises a variety of content lead by popular musicians and celebrities who work with WMG.    “The initiative marks the first major music label to follow in Sony Music’s lead; Sony entered the podcast arena five years ago in May, 2017.”   WMG Senior VP of Digital Strategy & Business Development Allan Coye has stepped into the role of General Manager of Interval Presents content. CDO and EVP of Business Development Oana Ruxandra set the tone for what Interval Presents intends to accomplish.    She says, “There’s a hunger for more inclusive and authentic podcast content and, with Allan leading the charge, we’re thrilled to launch an audio platform that will connect with this growing audience and spotlight a breadth of voices and perspectives.”   While this might initially look like simply another company jumping into the field of celebrity podcasts, that itself is enough to help grow the industry. With more celebrity-hosted podcasts comes a higher chance of graduating those who only listen to music into full-fledged podcast listeners who seek out content beyond their initial introduction, be it with a Jason Derulo-hosted fiction podcast or a Lupita Nyong’o series on African diaspora.   ---   This week Spotify’s Q1 numbers became the subject of much discussion as they became public. On Wednesday Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman published “Spotify Tumbles as Investors Question Podcast Investments.”    “Spotify Technology SA has spent more than a billion dollars in an effort to become the No. 1 name in podcasting, but investors’ patience is wearing thin on how much that will cost.”    Carman’s article paints a cloudy sky for the big green dot with investors getting antsy at the amount of money invested in podcasting intended for long-term growth over short-term returns, including a gross margin of 25.2% that falls short of the 30 to 40% target. That said, both paid subscriptions and unpaid ad-supported users are up despite locking out Russian users and much-publicized Joe Rogan backlash. Sarah Perez writes for a TechCrunch article on the same subject this Wednesday: “Despite losing 1.5 million users in Russia, Spotify’s premium subscribers grew 15% year-over-year in the first quarter to reach 182 million, largely in line with analyst estimates. Ad-supported users, meanwhile, grew 21% to reach 252 million.” The #deletespotify movement, sparked by a transphobic conversation in his latest Jordan Peterson interview, a history of COVID-19 disinformation, and a compilation of him saying a racial slur lead to musicians and podcasters alike pulling their content from Spotify or threatening to cancel contracts. As Sarah Perez reports:    “But app store data at the time indicated rival streaming apps were not getting a boost from this latest PR headache, as Spotify’s app had continued to see millions of weekly downloads — a significantly larger figure than its nearest rivals — even amid the #deletespotify campaign on social media.”   That lack of attention to rival apps likely stings especially hard for Neil Young, a figurehead of the Rogan backlash who pulled all of his music from Spotify in protest of Rogan’s COVID disinformation. Young, a vocal critic of low-quality MP3 streaming on services like Spotify, also happened to be releasing high-quality versions of his discography on Amazon Music shortly after the much-publicized stunt.    As with all things, Spotify’s growth remains a complicated beast. Subscribers are up, stock value is down, all while successfully weathering a weeks-long PR storm.   ---   Last Thursday Spotify dropped an article on their official blog announcing Spotify’s big entrance into video podcasting.    Quoting the article, “Last fall, Spotify began activating Video Podcasts for creators on a limited basis. Since then, we’ve found that podcasters love having the option to accompany their audio with visual components, and fans love having the opportunity to more deeply connect with the content.”   As of Thursday creators in the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK gained access to the feature, as well as a handful of new features to help the transition for video podcasters with backlogs. The new system requires a podcast be hosted on Spotify’s service Anchor, meaning any existing video podcasts interested in trying out the service will either need to make a Spotify spinoff feed or wholesale transfer from their existing service to take advantage of this new feature.    Once integrated into Spotify the video podcasting appears to function identical to simply watching a video podcast on YouTube, with those who prefer pure audio able to leave the app or lock their phone to background the video.    Video in podcasting challenges an open ecosystem to consider themselves creators, agnostic of any one medium, while also pushing them into siloed solutions. Podcast-first creators exploring video as a channel is powerful, even if the current options dead-end into proprietary solutions. Spotify’s requirement that a show must be hosted on their own service. Anyone currently producing videos with their podcasts have to weigh the pros and cons of porting everything over into Spotify’s silo purely to have one more place to upload the same video content already going up on YouTube and social media. There’s promise in the concept of podcasts-with-video, but current offerings are lacking as they all appear to exist to push an open podcasting world into producing siloed content.    ---   And finally, while we don't often cover personnel changes here on The Download, this one is important enough that we mention. Tom Webster has just today announced that he is leaving his position with Edison Research. But Tom and Edison will both still be with us in the podcasting industry. As Tom says in his newsletter, I Hear Things:   "My work with Edison is far from over, and we have established an agreement to partner on many things in the future."   So what will Tom be doing with his time? That's not been announced just yet, but again quoting from today's newsletter:   "I want to continue to work to establish a podcast industry: a place where established networks and independent podcasters alike have fair access to information, revenue, and opportunity. I think there are some structural issues in podcasting, and a some information arbitrage, as well. I want to work on both of these issues, and help to create the sandbox I wish to continue to play in for years to come.   I'm excited about what is next, and I'll have more to say on that in the next edition of I Hear Things, which isn't going away, by the way. Just as I am doubling down on podcasting, I am also going to be evolving I Hear Things into something very exciting, broad-reaching, and ultimately useful for podcasters of every stripe."   The podcast industry might be grateful for everything Tom has done at Edison Research to grow the platform, but I’m personally grateful for everything Tom has done for me. See what you may not know is that I have worked closely with Tom for five years at Edison Research. Now he’s said before that he wishes he could have been a better mentor, but to him I say: you did an incredible job. Clearly, your wisdom is invaluable and I’ve absorbed a lot, but it is your confidence in my abilities that has allowed me to face challenges I didn’t think I was capable of facing. Suggesting I take the lead on presenting research for the first time or asking for my advice as if I were the expert served as ammo to fight off my imposter syndrome. As you did for much of the podcast industry, you opened doors for me to bring my own passion projects to life, my own research on Latino and Black podcast audiences. You helped me evolve from a project coordinator to a Director of Research, and listen to me now, a host of a podcast. I don’t think there’s a better way to say that I’m forever grateful than on audio that will forever live in the world you’ve helped build. Thank you for everything.   ----   The Download is a production of Sounds Profitable. Today's episode was hosted by Gabriel Soto and Manuela Bedoya, and the script was written by Gavin Gaddis. Bryan Barletta and Evo Terra are the executive producers of The Download from Sounds Profitable. Special thanks to Ian Powell for his audio prowess

Ashley Carman's article on Spotify's earnings call: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-27/spotify-dodges-joe-rogan-controversy-forecasts-miss-estimates?sref=W6GJF3MSSupport I Hear Things! http://buymeacoffee.com/tomwebsterSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on the show, Bryan Barletta speaks with Conor McKenna, director at LUMA Partners. They discuss how adtech in podcasting applies to adtech in other adtech-led companies. Listen in to learn about: How we're still in the early days of building technology specifically made for podcasts How we need to build software that makes the process of buying and selling ads more seamless How we need better attribution technology because downloads aren't enough Why Conor recommends that publishers build out other content channels beyond podcasting Here’s our favorite idea from this conversation: Bryan and Conor don't agree about everything. And it makes for some interesting takeaways! Links: Conor McKenna LUMA Partners The Download Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles SquadCast Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta Hosted by Arielle Nissenblatt Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.