Sounds Profitable

Today in the business of podcasting:

• Spotify has unveiled Memberships, letting creators offer exclusive content and community perks for a fee, with creators keeping 90% of earnings and shows needing 100 consumption hours, 100 listeners or viewers and three episodes to qualify.
• Bumper released a free tool for sharing YouTube engaged views with advertisers, after YouTube’s late-August change roughly doubled average podcast views without any audience growth.
• The Streaming Wars looks at Disney’s new company-wide partnership with Dude Perfect and what it says about paying for contracted revenue instead of speculative growth.
• The Signal Awards named their winners, with Good Hang with Amy Poehler taking gold and the listener’s choice prize for Best Host.
• Apple explained its Safari block on identity resolution companies, which affects LiveRamp, ID5, The Trade Desk’s UID 2.0, Permutive and Audigent.

To find links to these, and every article covered in today’s episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download’s newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

Today in the business of podcasting:

• Right Side Up and Sounds Profitable host a free webinar on October 28 about how AI chatbots are changing podcast ad discovery and measurement. It draws on new LLM data from The Podcast Landscape 2026.
• IAB Tech Lab finalizes its Podcast Technical Measurement Guidelines v2.3, which clarify download and ad-delivery measurement for audio and video podcasts. CoHost is the first hosting company certified under the new version.
• Spotify expands audiobooks from 22 markets to more than 180 by the end of 2026, after its Audiobooks+ add-on passed one million subscribers and $100 million in annual recurring revenue.
• Political ad spending for the 2025-26 cycle tops $10 billion as House races drive local demand. New Sounds Profitable research finds one in four likely voters who consume podcasts monthly could be swayed by a candidate’s podcast appearance.
• MIDiA Research counts nearly a billion monthly podcast platform users worldwide. YouTube leads with a 32% share, and YouTube and Spotify together hold half of the global market.
• The Golden Globes reveal the 30 podcasts eligible for Best Podcast at the 84th ceremony, with 11 new shows joining the list ahead of the December 7 nominations.

To find links to these, and every article covered in today’s episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download’s newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

This week in the business of podcasting:

• Tom Webster breaks out the politics chapter of The Podcast Landscape 2026, a survey of 5,473 U.S. adults, covering how the podcast audience leans and whether a politician’s podcast appearance could sway midterm voters.
• Amplifi Media’s Steve Goldstein shares takeaways from a live Gen Z focus group at Podcast Movement 2026, from “best-of-ing” through podcast clips to how young listeners search for shows and decide within 30 seconds.
• The Podcast Study 2026 finds only 8.6% of listeners would accept more ads to keep podcasts free. It points to host-read ads, VIP clubs, memberships and social media discovery as the next growth levers.
• A Wondery and SmithGeiger study of 3,000 U.S. adults finds 81% of creator fans trust their favorite host as much as, or more than, their close friends. It also shows why multi-episode brand partnerships and clips pay off.

To find links to these, and every article covered in this week’s episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download’s newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

Today in the business of podcasting:

• Tom Webster breaks out the political findings from The Podcast Landscape 2026, including how Americans feel about politicians as podcast guests and whether those appearances could sway midterm voters.
• A Wondery and SmithGeiger study of 3,000 U.S. adults finds 81% of creator fans trust their favorite host as much as, or more than, their close friends. It also shows why multi-episode brand partnerships and clips work.
• Netflix is cutting about 1,000 jobs as it expects roughly $3 billion in ad revenue this year and adds video podcasts and creator programming.
• A new Nielsen report finds radio reaches 92% of U.S. adults each month, and that adding podcasts lifts reach among adults 18 to 34 to 94%.
• Dentsu wants brands to treat entertainment, including microdramas, video podcasts and YouTube-native series, as a core budget line instead of an innovation experiment.

To find links to these, and every article covered in today’s episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download’s newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

Today in the business of podcasting:

• The Podcast Study 2026 from Strategic Solutions Research and Point-To-Point Marketing finds new revenue opportunities beyond the traditional podcast ad. Nearly half of the 1,205 U.S. podcast consumers surveyed would join a free VIP club, and 46.7% have bought merchandise or attended an event.
• At Podcast Movement 2026, Amplifi Media’s Steven Goldstein ran a focus group with Gen Z NYU students. They described watching whole podcasts through clips and deciding within 30 seconds whether to keep listening.
• Audioboom reports record Q3 2026 revenue of $23.8 million, up 17% year over year, with Showcase marketplace revenue up 20%. The company plans three to four acquisitions as podcast industry consolidation continues.
• Ad tech and data vendors are preparing for fallout from iOS 27, which made Safari block identity vendors like LiveRamp and The Trade Desk’s ad-serving domain. IAB Tech Lab’s Trusted Server concept is offered as a server-side workaround.

To find links to these, and every article covered in today’s episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download’s newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

This week Tom Webster looks at how podcast consumers feel about politics in podcasting as the midterms approach, drawing on the politics chapter of The Podcast Landscape 2026 and, for the first time, what moved since last year.

Tom gets into:

• How the podcast audience compares to the country by party and ideology
• Whether politicians belong on podcasts, and how weekly consumers and never-consumers differ
• How likely midterm voters say a podcast appearance would affect their vote
• What happened to political talk as a genre heading into the election

Read the full issue here.

Today in the business of podcasting:

• Podscribe’s Q3 benchmark report finds geography is the strongest targeting signal for podcast ad results, followed by a recent visit to the advertiser’s website and its Buyer Power Score.
• The Podcast Study 2026 finds only 8.6% of listeners would accept more ads to keep a podcast free, while 54.8% say shows already carry too many.
• Right Side Up’s Krystina Rubino shares how a podcast host halved her rate for a fertility brand, and why bespoke deals still run on one-to-one relationships.
• Media, Built’s Steve Raizes argues Spotify’s Joe Rogan renewal buys the right to sell him rather than an exclusive, and what that means for ad sales across platforms.
• ADOPTER Media’s Adam McNeil explains how a brand’s place on the adoption curve should shape how it buys podcast ads.

To find links to these, and every article covered in today’s episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download’s newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

Today in the business of podcasting:

• Apple Podcasts product manager Ted Hosmann explains how video podcasts work over HLS at the IETF’s HLS Interest Day. He says top shows have grown their audience more than 20% on average since adding video, and Apple has also quietly acqui-hired members of the team behind AI audio startup Huxe.
• Audible and NielsenIQ surveyed 18,000 spoken-word listeners across 11 countries. 34% say they listened to more audio than the year before, and 50% are open to AI-narrated content.
• Digiday reports that top creators like Alix Earle and Kevin Cooney are cutting their brand rosters and asking more of the partners they keep, including equity and product input.
• PQ Media says global product placement spending hit $37.16 billion in 2025, with music and audio the fastest-growing category thanks to placements in popular podcasts.
• RSS.com launches a free in-browser transcription tool built on OpenAI’s open-source Whisper model, so audio never leaves the user’s device.

To find links to these, and every article covered in today’s episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download’s newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

This week in the business of podcasting:

• Tom Webster says AI is the average machine, so podcasters should hand it routine work like show notes and ad operations and protect the host-read ad and the show itself.
• Audacy's Leah Reis-Dennis argues the old podcast advertising playbook is outdated, citing 22% lower cost per acquisition on mid-sized shows, the hybrid audio and video audience, and the trust behind host-read ads.
• Signal Hill Insights' Audio on the Move study finds AM/FM radio holds 46% of Canadian in-car listening and that 68% of Canadians dislike fully AI-generated podcasts.
• WARC forecasts global ad spend will grow 11.9% to $1.34 trillion in 2026, with growth slowing to 8.4% in 2027.

To find links to these, and every article covered in this week's episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download's newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

Today in the business of podcasting:

• Tom Webster says AI is the average machine, so hand it the routine podcasting work like show notes, transcripts and ad ops, and protect the human work of host-read ads and the show itself.
• WARC forecasts global ad spend will grow 11.9% to $1.34 trillion in 2026, with social, search and retail media taking 66.4% of spend and growth slowing to 8.4% in 2027.
• A new tool called Pod Is Life combines podcast charts from Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Castbox and Pocket Casts into one ranking, though the scores seem to reflect the biggest shows in each country.
• A federal appeals court has given the FCC until noon Friday to decide whether to uphold its lowest unit rate policy for political ads, ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

To find links to these, and every article covered in today's episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download's newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.