Podnews Weekly Review

Send James and Sam a message or voicemail

Sam gets out of his sick bed and joins James for a discussion of the latest podcast industry news.

• iHeartMedia sale rumours versus a financial reporting split for investors 
• Radio’s share of listening in the UK, US, and Canada versus podcasting’s smaller base 
• Duplicate podcast feeds and hosting accountability through an industry code of practice 
• Meta-hosted AI podcast production at scale and the risks of unpoliced synthetic content 
• Spoofed user agents, broken analytics, and Common Access Tokens as a practical signal 
• Podcast ad load growth, listener tolerance, and how it compares with radio ad minutes 
• AI-assisted video repackaging for YouTube and LinkedIn and what actually moves numbers 
• Unified creator dashboards, why downloads persist, and the missing “plays” debate 
• Membership bundles, newsletters, and using the Podcasting 2.0 funding tag for paid offers 
• Webby credits registry as an IMDB-like ledger for podcast and digital work 
• Industry moves including SiriusXM’s new CEO and the collapse of Message Heard 
• HLS video support, “video-first” marketing confusion, and why RSS video still matters 

Support the show

Connect With Us: 

• Email: [email protected]
• Fediverse: @[email protected] and @[email protected]
• Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support
• Get Podnews: podnews.net

Send James and Sam a message or voicemail

One podcast earned $311,000 in a month - using the revolutionary idea of... asking their listeners. We chat with Myke Hurley, and also learn more about the Health Podcast Library.

• liquid content research from France and Australia and what multi-platform listening means for creators 
• algorithmic recommendations and the reality behind the death of the follower 
• Instagram paying for creator content and why platform promises can flip fast 
• Triton’s AI-to-AI audio ad buy and how automation could change pricing and ad load 
• AI for coding and operations versus AI replacing creative work 
• Dan Kendall on Health Podcast Library, credibility in healthcare, playlists, and discovery beyond Apple and Spotify search 
• Myke Hurley on Relay, Kickstarter as pre-sold memberships, and why Designed In California raised $311,000 
• Netflix pushing into mobile clips and what it signals for media companies entering podcasting 
• Flightcast workflow that ports YouTube catalogues into Spotify monetisation 
• Safari blocking resolution infrastructure and the knock-on effects for ad targeting 
• Spreaker piracy copies, Podcast Index look-alike feeds, lock tag limits, and PodProtect monitoring 

Support the show

Connect With Us: 

• Email: [email protected]
• Fediverse: @[email protected] and @[email protected]
• Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support
• Get Podnews: podnews.net

Send James and Sam a message or voicemail

We dig into how podcast theft actually works, why one-click importing and monetization can turn into an engine for piracy, and what hosting platforms should change right now. We also look at where the creator economy is heading as newsletters, subscriptions, AI tools, and algorithmic discovery reshape how people find and fund audio.
• Spreaker’s import and monetisation flow enabling cloned podcasts and chart manipulation
• RSS.com handling of a hijacked show including ad revenue repayment and feed recovery
• PodProtect and the need for detection plus a hosting code of conduct
• Newsletter and membership convergence with Supercast adding newsletters
• Beehive’s monetisation suite including dynamic ad insertion, targeting, and ad-free subscriptions
• Instagram testing 90-minute horizontal video and what it means for podcasters
• Kate Cocker’s 3,000 consecutive daily episodes and how community drives content
• The business reality of ads in short-form daily podcasts and listener expectations
• The shift from followers to algorithms plus new discovery-first podcast apps
• Spotify’s AI agent questions, subscription risk, and the subscription model trend
• Progress on transcripts accessibility as SiriusXM lawsuit nears settlement
• Tooling updates including Buzzsprout’s admin app and Riverside’s AI agents

Support the show

Connect With Us: 

• Email: [email protected]
• Fediverse: @[email protected] and @[email protected]
• Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support
• Get Podnews: podnews.net

Send James and Sam a message or voicemail

Sam Sethi talks with Steven Goldstein about Liquid Content - and why our biggest threat is measurement that can't keep up with how the podcast world is changing.

Plus...

• Spotify memberships pricing tiers badges and email access for creators 
• why web-based purchasing matters for app store rules and funding links 
• ad skipping tools and the knock-on effect for podcast advertising 
• Apple Podcasts positioning HLS ads and the coming fight over fees 
• Substack and Beehive adding dynamic ad insertion for podcasts 
• liquid content across audio video newsletters and social clips 
• clip culture microdramas and what retention looks like now 
• “the download is dead” and the need for people plays and time 
• Netflix podcast hype versus what investors actually hear 
• smart glasses as another listening surface and why it changes nothing without better metrics 

Support the show

Connect With Us: 

• Email: [email protected]
• Fediverse: @[email protected] and @[email protected]
• Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support
• Get Podnews: podnews.net

Send James and Sam a message or voicemail

A personal “podcast robot” that knows what you care about, searches the live stream of new episodes, reads transcripts, and drops surprisingly good recommendations straight into your favourite app sounds like science fiction until you hear Adam Curry walk through what he built. We dig into his Podcast Index Robot, why an MCP server is basically a bridge between AI agents and real podcast data, and how this could finally tackle the podcast discovery problem that pushed so many creators toward YouTube.

We're sponsored by our friends at Buzzsprout.

Support the show

Connect With Us: 

• Email: [email protected]
• Fediverse: @[email protected] and @[email protected]
• Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support
• Get Podnews: podnews.net

Send James and Sam a message or voicemail

James is back from Europe; and we chat about why podcast ad spend is rising. Plus...

• Libsyn RSS namespace for ad slot availability and why it feels odd in public feeds 
• Goalhanger’s newsletter strategy as a membership product and audience data hub 
• smart TV growth for podcast consumption and why smart speakers still fail discovery 
• Canadian in car listening data plus listener resistance to AI hosts 
• AI agents clipping shows, MCP servers, and how micropayments could change access 
• blocking scrapers with WAF rules and the limits of user agent based controls 
• Spotify audiobooks expansion and the attention competition inside major apps 
• human written certification for books and the wider provenance problem 
• bot driven streaming fraud as a warning for future podcast monetisation 
• app and hosting updates including transcripts, video tools, and evolving person tags 

Become a monthly subscriber! weekly.podnews.net

Support the show

Connect With Us: 

• Email: [email protected]
• Fediverse: @[email protected] and @[email protected]
• Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support
• Get Podnews: podnews.net

Send James and Sam a message or voicemail

Sam and James talk about a new podcast interview with Inception Point AI; and Sam discusses with Dave Jones of Podcast Index about the future of podcasting.

• Patreon removing per creation memberships and what that breaks for seasonal creators
• Reddit RSS shutdown, public API restrictions, and the economics of selling data to AI companies
• Real-world costs of AI scrapers, bot traffic, and why caching is essential
• How Podping replaces constant polling with near real-time feed update pings
• Why the new Podping peer-to-peer gossip mesh reduces single points of failure
• How podping.cloud publishing works today and why token signup must become scalable
• The origin story of the Podcast Index and the case for an open directory
• A decentralised future where the index database can be rebuilt from distributed updates
• Why the Podcasting 2.0 namespace exists and how new RSS tags get adopted
• Live tag friction, host responsibilities, and what would make live podcasting simpler
• Micropayments reality check, regulation hurdles, and why stablecoins may be next
• The risk of over-marketing features versus letting builders discover and succeed organically

Support the show

Connect With Us: 

• Email: [email protected]
• Fediverse: @[email protected] and @[email protected]
• Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support
• Get Podnews: podnews.net

Send James and Sam a message or voicemail

Sam and James talk about a new interview with Inception Point AI; and Sam discusses with Dave Jones of Podcast Index about the future of podcasting.

• Patreon removing per creation memberships and what that breaks for seasonal creators
• Reddit RSS shutdown, public API restrictions, and the economics of selling data to AI companies
• Real-world costs of AI scrapers, bot traffic, and why caching is essential
• How Podping replaces constant polling with near real-time feed update pings
• Why the new Podping peer-to-peer gossip mesh reduces single points of failure
• How podping.cloud publishing works today and why token signup must become scalable
• The origin story of the Podcast Index and the case for an open directory
• A decentralised future where the index database can be rebuilt from distributed updates
• Why the Podcasting 2.0 namespace exists and how new RSS tags get adopted
• Live tag friction, host responsibilities, and what would make live podcasting simpler
• Micropayments reality check, regulation hurdles, and why stablecoins may be next
• The risk of over-marketing features versus letting builders discover and succeed organically

Support the show

Connect With Us: 

• Email: [email protected]
• Fediverse: @[email protected] and @[email protected]
• Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support
• Get Podnews: podnews.net

Send James and Sam a message or voicemail

Sam and James look at Podcast Week, and the highs (and lows) of the week in NYC. Plus, Sam catches up with SupaPass, to learn more about the membership platform.

If your podcast app supports it, we're in video this week.

Support the show

Connect With Us: 

• Email: [email protected]
• Fediverse: @[email protected] and @[email protected]
• Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support
• Get Podnews: podnews.net

Send James and Sam a message or voicemail

There's a really good reason why this show is just one minute thirty seconds long. Listen to find out!

We'll catch you next week. And Happy Birthday, Sam Sethi

Support the show

Connect With Us: 

• Email: [email protected]
• Fediverse: @[email protected] and @[email protected]
• Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support
• Get Podnews: podnews.net