Hello! I am back in NYC after a whirlwind couple of days in Dallas last week. It was really great to meet so many people from the industry in person. My biggest takeaway from Podcast Movement week is how much the podcast format has evolved (for better or worse). Video podcasts were the hot topic, with lots of discussions on how to pivot to video and whether it’s necessary to do so. As one exec told me, video is not for everyone! It’s much easier to produce professional-quality audio than video, and a lot of podcast genres don’t actually lend themselves to video. I will be curious to see if it’s as big of a topic next year — maybe by then, creators will have tried and abandoned the practice.

After a big newsy week last week, with Twitter soft launching its podcast function and a whole lot of ~~discourse around Ben Shapiro’s surprise appearance at Podcast Movement, it’s somewhat calmer this week. Everyone is in late-summer lazy mode, and I am not mad at it — except for James Van Der Beek, who is feeling litigious. Let’s get into it.

James Van Der Beek is suing Stitcher after podcast talks break down

James Van Der Beek is not happy about the demise of his podcast deal with SiriusXM’s Stitcher; the Dawson’s Creek star is suing the network for breach of contract. The Blast first reported the lawsuit, which was filed on Friday. The suit alleges that his deal would have been worth $700,000 minimum for 40 episodes, plus 50 percent of the net ad revenue.

“[Van Der Beek] had other offers and potential partners to choose from in order to develop this project,” the filing said. “However, relying on the contractual agreement reached with Defendants, Plaintiff stopped negotiating with other buyers and affirmatively rejected those other offers (as well as other acting opportunities).”

According to the filing, it does not appear that there was a formal contract. Van Der Beek is suing based on terms agreed upon over the phone and email. It is not clear what led to the deal’s breakdown, but I am sure that (hopefully juicy!) details will emerge as the case rolls on. SiriusXM declined to comment.

Van Der Beek’s revenge aside, I personally love being able to get a number on a run-of-the-mill celebrity podcast deal (even if they are becoming less common in the current economic climate).

Dateline launches subscription on Apple Podcasts

Dateline NBC, which did true crime before it was cool, is launching a subscription on Apple Podcasts. Dateline Premium, which costs $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year, gives subscribers ad-free listening, early access to new episodes, and exclusive bonus content.

It’s not a surprise that Dateline went with Apple for its premium service since its podcast does particularly well on the platform (it is currently ranked at number 10, as opposed to number 40 on Spotify). Last year, Apple launched podcast subscriptions (from which it takes a 30 percent cut in the first year), and they are becoming more common. The company reports that more than a quarter of the top 100 shows on the platform now offer subscriptions.

Fresh Pods

We’ve got a whole slew of new shows coming out of Podcast Movement, and I wanted to highlight some of the splashier ones:

• Video game designed Hideo Kojima, who has a pretty massive following, is Spotify’s latest podcast star. Brain Structure will be made available in English and Japanese and won’t be about gaming per se. The talk show will run the gamut from film and games to “art, philosophy, and the social landscape.”
• NPR is launching a new dual-language podcast as well. In partnership with Futuro Media, the studio that just won the audio Pulitzer for Suave, soccer-focused The Last Cup will debut later this fall ahead of the FIFA World Cup in English and Spanish. NPR host Jasmine Garsd will use soccer to explore themes like identity, race, and class.
• Crooked Media is making a leap into lifestyle content. Dare We Say, which debuted earlier this month, is hosted by Gen Z actresses Josie Totah, Alycia Pascual Peña, and Yasmine Hamady, who will dig into 20-something life, social media, LGBTQ issues, and a little bit of politics (it’s still Crooked, after all).
• Pushkin Industries and Sony Music’s Somethin’ Else are partnering for a highbrow, art-world take on true crime with Death of an Artist, which will debut on September 8th. The show is an exploration of the mysterious 1985 death of buzzy Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta. This is not for me, but I am sure it is for someone.
• Another true crime pod! (Again, not for me). Tenderfoot and iHeart have partnered on Le Monstre, a 10-episode series on Belgian serial killer Marc Dutroux. The first two episodes are out now.
• Björk having a podcast is not all that surprising, but I will admit that I did not expect it to be sponsored by Mailchimp. She really does zig when you think she’s gonna zag. Björk: Sonic Symbolism will be out Thursday.

That’s all from me! Have a great holiday weekend, and I’ll see you next week.

Twitter is officially getting into podcasts. The app will launch a test version of Twitter Spaces today that includes podcasts, letting you listen to full shows through curated playlists based on your interests.

The redesigned Spaces tab opens with Stations, topic-based playlists combining podcast episodes pulled from RSS with Twitter’s social audio events and recordings. It functions like a Pandora station but for spoken word and is pretty different from the a la carte listening podcast consumers are used to on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Live and upcoming spaces are still in the tab, further down the page. The test will roll out to a random group of users across the world, initially only in English.

Image: Twitter

The more users listen, the more tailored the audio Stations will become. But Twitter isn’t starting from square one — the company is relying on what it already knows about its users’ interests to curate the playlists. It’ll draw from the interests of people they follow, as well. “What we’re really trying to capture here is as if it’s like another user recommending you something,” Twitter senior product manager Evan Jones, who focuses on audio, told Hot Pod.

Podcast discovery is notoriously difficult, limited either to top 100 charts, hand-picked selections on apps, or — more often than not — word of mouth. No platform has managed to crack it, yet.

It’s easy to imagine the promotional possibilities around being able to share and listen to podcasts in the same app, but it’s not quite there yet. The test does not yet have a clipping capability, and listening can only happen in the Spaces tab, not on the timeline. That being said, Spaces has a clipping feature that could be applied to podcasts at some point.

Image: Twitter

Twitter and podcasts could be a fruitful fit. Twitter Spaces, which launched in 2020 on the heels of Clubhouse’s pandemic success, already gives the app a foothold in audio. Jones said that, based on company data, 45 percent of Twitter users are also monthly podcast listeners (given how news-oriented Twitter is, that makes a lot of sense). Meanwhile, data uncovered by tech sleuths earlier this year revealed that Twitter was experimenting with a podcast tab.

That turned out to be partially true. “We were testing out different ideas,” Jones said. “As we were whittling down the stone, we came to this, but podcasts were always going to be part of Spaces.”

Jones would not say when users can expect an official launch, but he said the final version of the feature would be influenced by how people respond to the test. If you are one of the selected guinea pigs, feel free to hit me up about your experience!

The lawsuits are piling up for Pandora, which has been accused by comedians, including Lewis Black and Andrew Dice Clay, of streaming their works without the proper license. Now, George Lopez is joining the fray, seeking $5.5 million from the streamer.

Lopez filed suit on Tuesday, claiming that Pandora streamed two of his comedy albums, Right Now Right Now and Team Leader, without paying him royalties or obtaining the proper licenses from him. “[Pandora] decided it would infringe now to ensure it had this very valuable intellectual property on its platform to remain competitive, and deal with the consequences later,” the filing said. “Later is now.” A representative for Pandora’s parent company, SiriusXM, did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Like in the previous suits, Lopez’s lawyer (Richard Busch, who represents the other plaintiffs) argues that his work is entitled to two copyrights — one for the recording and one for the underlying literary work. The latter, known as publishing rights, is the norm with music but new for spoken-word works. The resolution of these cases could determine whether comedy and potentially other types of spoken-word content, like podcasting, are eligible for the same type of copyright.

The ongoing fight has prompted the streamers to play defense. Spotify (which is not currently being sued over the matter) removed comedy albums by the likes of John Mulaney and Tiffany Haddish after negotiations went south. Pandora, which is particularly vulnerable because of an ill-advised financial filing that openly said it streams comedy without a publishing license, is reportedly compelling comedians to waive their publishing rights altogether.

It’s a messy situation. Streamers obviously don’t want to have to pay royalties for spoken-word content, which has generally been cheaper for them to maintain than music. Comedians, meanwhile, want their legal and monetary due for their works but also rely on the promotion they get from streaming to get people to their shows. A resolution is likely a far way off, and industry heavyweights like George Lopez joining the fight will only further turn up the heat.

YouTube is embracing its position as the (unintentional) most-used podcast platform by launching a dedicated podcast page. As the lines between podcasting and YouTube blur, any step the company takes toward consolidating listening could pose a challenge for competitors Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

The page debuted in late July and is still in the rollout process, according to 9to5Google. It can be accessed only in the US at youtube.com/podcasts or through the Explore page (in-app or browser), where there is a new podcast tab. The new page features trending shows and channels that already have millions of subscribers, like The H3 Podcast or Logan Paul’s podcast, but otherwise does not exhibit a ton of curation.

The page is not nearly as sophisticated as rival podcast platforms, but that may not matter all that much. A study by Cumulus in May found that YouTube is already outperforming Apple Podcasts and Spotify, thanks to the rise of video podcasts and ease of use, so maybe it is smarter to stick to the format audiences already know.

YouTube’s presence in the podcasting space happened more by osmosis than as a deliberate strategy. Apple was the first tech giant to enter the space, launching podcasts in 2005. Spotify started aggressively pursuing podcasting in 2019 with studio and tech acquisitions and blockbuster deals with stars like Joe Rogan and Alex Cooper. Meanwhile, podcasts on YouTube just kind of happened because everything ends up on YouTube one way or another.

Podcasting is still small potatoes for YouTube. The streamer brought in $28.8 billion for its parent company, Google, in 2021. Meanwhile, the entire podcast industry just passed $1 billion last year, according to a study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. YouTube doesn’t really need to own podcasting, but the page is an indication that the company may put more resources into it anyway. The company did not immediately respond to request for comment on further podcast initiatives.

Surprise! I had a bit of a vacation detour, so I am back for a two-day stint before taking off again Thursday. The TL;DR of my trip is that Sweden is great — let’s all move there and take our four weeks of summer vacation and eat princess cake.

It is a slow week in the podcast world, but Jake has kindly helped me compile some news (just kidding, he did like 75 percent of it).

Also, I will be at Podcast Movement next week! Give me a shout if you’ll be there, too.

Report: the number of Latino monthly podcast listeners has decreased

After growing substantially in 2021, the number of Latino Americans that listen to podcasts has stalled, according to a new report from Edison Research and Libsyn. However, the findings also demonstrated a substantial demand for Spanish-language content.

In 2021, Edison and Libsyn reported that 36 percent of Latinos in the US listen to podcasts monthly, a massive 44 percent increase from the year prior. This year, that figure went down to 34 percent. Gabriel Soto, senior director of research at Edison, said this likely represents a normalization following the pandemic bump rather than evidence of a sustained decline. Edison reported a decrease in podcast listening overall at the beginning of the year, which normalized when researchers checked back in last month. It is possible that this dip, too, is temporary as post-pandemic habits evolve.

A bright spot, though, is that 59 percent of those surveyed said they have listened to a podcast before, up three points since 2021. It’s not as high as last year’s six-point increase, but it’s not nothing!

Better promotion of Spanish-language content could help grow listening among Latinos. One-third of respondents said they have listened to a Spanish-language podcast. Elsie Escobar, community manager at Libsyn and co-founder of She Podcasts, said that it isn’t always easy for US listeners to find podcasts in Spanish and that podcast platforms could follow Netflix’s model of promoting content in different languages. And it’s not limited to the shows themselves — a majority of survey participants said they prefer having ads in both English and Spanish.

The survey also asked respondents which Latino music artists they would most want to host a podcast. Shakira snagged the number one spot, with 44 percent approval, with Jennifer Lopez and Selena Gomez close behind. Manifest it, people!

Now, over to Jake (thanks, Jake!!).

Libsyn beefs up its advertising reach with another acquisition

Libsyn’s been on a buying spree, and now the company is making moves to expand its reach in Europe. The company announced this morning that it’s reached a deal to acquire the podcast advertising and hosting firm Julep Media, which Libsyn says is “Germany’s largest independent platform for podcast advertising.” Julep will be combined with AdvertiseCast and help the service expand throughout Europe. A price for the deal wasn’t announced. Julep’s leadership team will stay on board for at least three years, and its CEO, Steffen Hopf, will take an expanded role in supporting AdvertiseCast’s international growth.

I’m less interested in the details of this specific deal, though, than I am in the broad strokes of what it points toward. Libsyn has been scooping up company after company in an effort to build a sizable presence in podcast advertising. The company bought AdvertiseCast in March 2021. That purchase — of a platform that offers self-serve ad buying — seems to have been the bedrock for much of what came next. Libsyn scooped up parts of Podgo, which connected advertisers and podcasters in November 2021; then, it bought Podcast Ad Reps, an ad sales company, in February 2022. Both were folded into AdvertiseCast. The number of podcasts on AdvertiseCast’s network has doubled since the original acquisition, so clearly something’s working.

QCode goes unscripted

QCode is expanding from high-touch, star-studded shows to unscripted talk series. The production company announced on Monday that it’s kicking off that effort with three series: a “comedic true crime podcast,” a relationship advice show, and an improv show. The company is also bringing some already established existing series to its network, including a science series about animal attacks and a pop culture show.

This is a pretty big shift for QCode and seems to signal a different approach to building IP. It’ll also pose a new challenge to getting people tuned into its series — these shows don’t star big names, whereas QCode’s scripted fiction includes actors like Brian Cox, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Gina Rodriguez. One QCode show has Matthew McConaughey playing a dog! Of course we’re going to listen!

Spotify turns comment sections into podcast sections

Spotify is testing a unique new approach to user comments: record them. As spotted by TechCrunch, the app has added the ability to respond to playlists inside the app with a recording, which will be posted as a podcast. You can even edit the clip and add music on top of it.

I’m not convinced this will make for the most coherent comment section, but I do love the possibilities here. I can imagine how this would be great for podcasts, allowing hosts to get listeners’ comments on an episode and maybe even work them into a later show. I’m just speculating for now, though. The feature seems to be extremely limited in scope at this point, and there’s no guarantee Spotify will roll it out more widely, let alone expand what it’s able to do. For now, the feature is available in Vietnam, and Spotify called it a “limited test.”

That’s all for today! See you all next week ahead of Podcast Movement (which is in Dallas in August!! I would like a word with whoever made that choice).

Hello again everyone — it’s been a while! Ariel’s on vacation for the next week-plus, which means I get to tap in again and do my best impression of your usual host. Today, I chat about Clubhouse’s big revamp, Panera adding a branded sound, and PRX Productions boosting its output through a new partnership.

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Clubhouse splits up

On Monday, I opened up Clubhouse to see if I could find any rooms worth tuning into. Right up top, the app suggested a room called “ Tech News around the World,” which seemed relevant enough to me, a technology reporter. But after that, things broke down right away. “Quick tip for getting more SAVES on your Pinterest pins!” didn’t seem to be playing well with anyone. (It had only 17 listeners.) “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY FAVORITE NEPHEW RAYMO ,” was surprisingly vibrant when I popped in but seemed to be poorly targeted to me, a person who does not know Raymo.

Clubhouse, it almost goes without saying, has experienced a major drop-off in interest since its heights during the coronavirus-induced lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. Downloads of the app have fallen 86 percent this year, the analytics firm Sensor Tower tells Hot Pod. The firm says Clubhouse was downloaded 4.2 million times between January and July of 2022, down from 29.4 million downloads during the same period in 2021. At the same time, Twitter Spaces — anecdotally, at least — has been eating Clubhouse’s lunch. I won’t argue that Twitter’s recommendations are that much better (they’re not!), but the company was able to swiftly rebuild Clubhouse’s core features inside its existing social network, siphoning off a lot of the app’s momentum.

It’s been clear for a while that Clubhouse needed to make some big changes to regain that early buzz — and now, the company is detailing how it plans to evolve. Last week, Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison laid out what the next era of Clubhouse will look like: instead of one open network containing a countless series of rooms you can pop into, the app will ask people to organize into groups (“houses”), and audio rooms will exist inside those groups that are only accessible to members. Each house can have “its own personality, culture and content moderation rules,” Davison wrote on Twitter.

Public rooms will still exist, but the goal is to divide people up so that it’s easier to find things of interest. “A single community just doesn’t work beyond a certain size,” Davison wrote.

This is an idea we’ve seen social networks return to time and again. Facebook had you add too many friends, so its Groups feature started taking off; Snapchat added “streaks” to encourage friends to message each other directly; Reddit is so vibrant in part because you can create a niche for just about anybody. This sort of approach is hard to pull off — you need enough users to fill those niches — but it can be really meaningful when it works.

For me, the bigger outstanding question is whether live audio rooms are fundamentally a format that people want to use for entertainment. Is the problem that Clubhouse got too big too fast? Or is the problem that we can all see our friends again and have other ways to fill our time? My suspicion is that live audio is sticking around; it’s fun and easy to spin up. But I’m not confident it’ll be at the scale of an entire app rather than a feature inside something else.

Davison posted an open sign-up sheet for anyone interested in testing the changes out. Clubhouse will be approving new houses “slowly,” the form says. There’s no specific ETA on when it’ll launch for everyone.

Exclusive: PRX Productions partners with Goat Rodeo to make more shows

PRX wants to make more podcasts — so it’s teaming up with another company to expand what either could handle on its own. PRX Productions announced today that it’s enlisted Goat Rodeo as a “trusted production partner,” allowing the division to “[increase] production capacity” as it seeks new shows to develop.

PRX Productions launched in 2020 and works with editorial and branded partner companies to develop podcasts. So far, that’s included names ranging from CBS News to Ben & Jerry’s. As of the end of 2021, it had worked with more than 20 partners and produced over 600 podcast episodes, according to PRX. Goat Rodeo does similar work, having partnered with The Met, Lawfare, and iHeartMedia to make shows in the past.

This is the first time PRX Productions has formed a partnership like this. PRX spokesperson David Cotrone tells Hot Pod the two production houses are in the process of integrating their workflow and that “into the future, producers will work on projects best suited with their expertise and experience.”

That all said, the two groups are remaining separate entities. As part of the agreement, PRX will also distribute some original shows for Goat Rodeo, and Cotrone says the partnership will allow the two production groups to “[support] one another as independent audio organizations.”

Panera gets a new logo… sound

Here’s one I missed a couple of weeks ago from Marketing Brew that just got recirculated by Inside Radio: Panera wants to be recognized solely through sound, so it partnered with a “sonic branding agency” called Made Music Studio to develop a quick jingle to accompany its brand name at the end of radio or podcast spots. There’s a level on which this sounds a little over the top to me — they say the name Panera in ads! We know what’s being advertised! But I have to admit that this type of advertising works. I can tell you exactly what the McDonald’s jingle sounds like, and I’d probably recognize it even if I didn’t pay attention to everything else the ad said.

So now: a Panera sound. It sounds like a quick burst of bright horns followed by an angelic “ooo.” Honestly, it’s a little ridiculous when you describe it. It mostly just sounds like a slightly annoying but very likely to get stuck in your head burst of pleasant tones. Here’s Marketing Brew:

​​The resulting three-second sonic logo is half instrumental—played by a trumpet, an alto sax, and a baritone sax, according to [Made Music Studio president Lauren] McGuire—and half vocals. There’s also a one-second version, a six-second version, and a long-form version that clocks in at just under a minute, which Panera might use for situations like “walk-up music [for] our CEO,” [Panera VP of brand building Drayton] Martin said.

And here’s a 15-second YouTube clip where you can hear it right at the end. The clip has been live since late June, so you might have even heard it by now. Time to get a Mediterranean Veggie.

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That’s all for today. Insiders, I’ll see you again on Thursday. Everyone else, catch you next week!

Even Beyoncé is not immune to the cycle of outrage. Though her critically acclaimed latest album, Renaissance, has been out for less than a week, Beyoncé is already making changes to two of her songs after being called out on social media.

The singer got into a beef with Kelis for interpolating a portion of her 2003 hit “Milkshake” in “Energy” without giving her a heads-up. (Kelis is not a credited author on the song.) “I heard about this the same way everyone else did,” Kelis said in an Instagram comment. As of Wednesday, the interpolation had been removed.

The song “Heated” originally included lyrics featuring the same ableist slur that got Lizzo into hot water on Twitter only a few weeks ago. On Monday, only three days after the album’s release, it was reported that Beyoncé would swap out the word. As of Wednesday, the song’s lyric has been changed from “sp***in’ on that ass” to “blastin’ on that ass” on YouTube, Apple Music, and Spotify (though the written-out lyrics on Spotify still have the old version).

The Kelis situation is specific and likely more about her feud with Pharrell than it is about her relationship with Beyoncé. But the slur in “Heated” is part of a long industry tradition of retroactively editing songs. It’s almost a right of passage — an artist writes a lyric that ages poorly and is eventually tweaked or removed altogether. In the past, that process could take years, and the original versions would be preserved in physical albums or prior song downloads. The changed lyrics would only be evident in rereleases or when the song would be played at concerts. In the age of Twitter and Spotify, that response is as immediate as the backlash.

Once a track is changed and rereleased on streamers, that is the only version that will be in circulation beyond TikTok snippets and a handful of CDs and vinyl copies. Kanye West took advantage of that flexibility in 2016 with his updates to The Life of Pablo. Beyoncé, one of the industry’s savviest artists, knows that the quicker she moves on edits, the less likely it is anyone will remember it was changed in the first place.

The edits also prompted Monica Lewinsky to suggest her name be removed from Beyoncé’s 2013 song “Partition.” The Beyhive has been less amenable to that change.

Selena Gomez is reportedly developing a Working Girl reboot, and I don’t know how to feel about it. As the daughter of a Staten Island girl who worked on Wall Street in the ’80s, the original is just too close to my heart.

Anyway, let the river run — Audacy and Snap try to be more like TikTok, TikTok tries to be more like Spotify, and Spotify tries to make you pay extra for a play button.

Audacy’s new podcast discovery app takes a page out of TikTok’s playbook

Radio giant Audacy has acquired podcast discovery app Moonbeam, according to the app’s founder, Paul English. Discovery has been a massive challenge for the industry, and Moonbeam addresses it by operating less like a traditional podcast player and more like a social platform.

“We developed a feature called ‘Beam’ that started playing an episode immediately. If you didn’t like it, you swiped up and we would then play another show,” English wrote in a blog post. “This approach was very much inspired by TikTok, the best video discovery app.”

Audacy previously acquired top production outfits like Pineapple Street Studios and Cadence13 and has its own app for podcasts and radio streaming. Audacy hasn’t said whether Moonbeam will continue to operate as a standalone app or if its functionality will be folded into the Audacy app.

English declined to disclose the terms of the acquisition to The Boston Globe, and Audacy did not immediately return Hot Pod’s request for confirmation on the deal. Perhaps Audacy will provide the details during its earnings presentation on Friday.

Spotify’s latest premium feature is a play button

Premium subscribers will now have access to separate play and shuffle buttons throughout the app. Spotify’s shuffle default has been the bane of artists and extremely serious playlist makers everywhere, so the development is likely welcome. The company introduced a dedicated play button last year for albums with some persuasion from Adele, who said, “We don’t create albums with so much care and thought into our track listing for no reason.”

I am all about the shuffle, but my Verge colleague Chris Welch has a point that an app-wide play button only for premium subscribers is an odd choice. “It seems a bit ludicrous that Spotify is now using buttons and its user interface as a differentiator between the service’s free and paid offerings, but here we are,” he wrote.

Acast’s investing spree is coming to an end

Swedish podcast distribution and advertising company Acast has made some big moves into the American market of late, announcing its $34 million acquisition of podcast database Podchaser last month and a three-year ad sales deal with WTF with Marc Maron in May. With the economy depressing ad revenue, Acast will cool off its spree, executives said during its mid-year investor presentation on Tuesday.

Emily Villatte, Acast’s CFO, said on a call with investors that the company will “slow that pace of investment.” But it seems that Acast’s expansion strategy may already be paying off, reporting 72 percent growth in North America in Q2, about 2.5 times its growth rate in Europe. It’s also adding podcasts at a clip, representing 66,000 shows, up from about 40,000 at the end of 2021.

But even with the addition of new shows and tools, the softened ad market forced the company to lower its guidance on annual sales growth through 2025 from 60 percent to 40–45 percent. Acast’s stock is down nearly 5 percent on the news, and it may be a warning sign for the industry overall. When the Interactive Advertising Bureau projected the market will be worth $4 billion by 2024, that was dependent on a healthy ad market. If things keep up, that figure could be out of reach.

Snap starts creator fund for indie artists

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for Snap, so the company is making a play for TikTok’s music artists. Last week, the company announced the Snapchat Sounds Creator Fund in partnership with DIY music distributor DistroKid.

Snap is offering tempting grants of up to $100,000 to top music creators who distribute their tunes on the platform via DistroKid. Plus, selected artists will be placed in more visible spots on the platform, like Snapchat Lens or in Spotlight. Eligible participants must be based in the US and aged 16 and over.

“We want to support the independent and emerging artists that are driving creation on Snapchat,” Ted Suh, global head of music partnerships at Snap, said in a statement. “By providing meaningful funding and creative support, our goal is for artists to feel empowered to continue creating and pursue a career in music.”

Snap introduced Sounds, which allows users to include music clips in their posts, in 2020. But its impact on the music industry has been pretty minimal so far. TikTok remains music’s single most influential discovery tool, and it may not stop there…

TikTok Music could be the next big podcast app

TikTok parent ByteDance may be coming for Spotify’s lunch. As first spotted by Insider, the Chinese company filed an application with the US Patent and Trademark Office for “TikTok Music” in May. In addition to music and videos, the filing says that the new app would also support podcasts and digital radio content.

If a TikTok Music app comes to fruition, this would not be ByteDance’s first streamer. In 2020, it launched Resso, which is available in India, Brazil, and Indonesia (aka, exactly where Spotify wants to expand). In June, Resso added podcasts to its library thanks to a partnership with Acast.

Despite warnings from the likes of Sen. Mark Warner and Joe Rogan about TikTok’s data practices, it seems basically unstoppable. Perhaps Rogan will change his tune if it becomes a major podcast platform and his Spotify contract expires.

That’s all for today! On Friday, I am heading to Scandinavia, the land of audio tech fjords and open-faced sandwiches, so you will hear from Jake the next couple of Tuesdays. See you on the other side.

In each episode of MrBallen, series host John Allen appears in the center of the frame, usually wearing a plaid shirt with a couple of buttons undone and a baseball cap turned backward, and slowly talks viewers through the events of a “strange, dark, and mysterious” true crime story. Episodes with titles like “What I saw in my room still haunts me” and “Real-life ‘ghost ship’ has a SECRET,” bring in more than 40 million monthly views — a massive volume that still is not enough to put Allen in the upper echelon of YouTube influencers. But in podcasting? He’s a star.

Steven Cohen, a longtime audio industry sales executive, was shocked when he dug into the stats for the podcast version of MrBallen, which launched in February. The show was “putting up numbers that, honestly, having come from a reasonably big network, I had never seen,” he told The Verge. The opportunity was big enough that Cohen decided to leave his role as vice president of Audacy-owned podcast network Cadence13 to join the independent true crime show.

Cohen, who joined the company as head of sales in May, said that July is on track to do the same. And yes, 7 million is less than 40 million. But 7 million monthly downloads get you a spot at the top of Spotify and Apple’s podcast charts and plum CPM rates with advertisers with which YouTube cannot compete.

The show has a few things in its favor: the insatiable demand for true crime content; a preexisting fan base; and Allen’s radio voice. But MrBallen’s success is also indicative of the merge that is happening between YouTube and podcasting. YouTube is the No. 1 platform for podcasts (yes, above Spotify and Apple), according to a study by Cumulus, and with videos of podcast recordings now par for the course, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish what exactly is the difference between a podcast and a YouTube video.

Allen recognized the resemblance early on after launching the YouTube show in March 2020. “It’s a video podcast on YouTube. We don’t call it that, but that’s what it is,” he said. “I really had no idea how to scale a YouTube channel into anything else. I wanted to do a podcast but I just didn’t have the bandwidth.”

He brought on a business manager, Nick Witters, created a sustained YouTube audience, and expanded his staff. He finally got his podcast off the ground two years later, and it didn’t take long to garner millions of listens. It also gave the brand more visibility, even if the raw numbers in podcasting are less than what they see on YouTube.

But just because the bar is lower in podcasting does not mean it is any easier to break out. Podcast has a discovery problem, and the charts are still dominated by long-standing shows like The Joe Rogan Experience and My Favorite Murder. Newer hits tend to come from celebrities, like SmartLess with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett and The Always Sunny Podcast with Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton, and Rob McElhenney.

However, it’s not enough to be an audio star anymore. Apple Podcasts has hosted videos since 2005, with TED Talks Daily and Club Random with Bill Maher taking advantage of the functionality. Spotify has some of its biggest stars like Rogan and Call Her Daddy’s Alex Cooper post video podcasts, and the company recently announced it was expanding the video podcast feature to six additional countries, including France, Mexico, and Brazil. Audiences like having the video option, and Spotify and Apple have an interest in warding off YouTube. Plus, video clips are more shareable than audio clips — think Call Her Daddy’s viral “Unka Jahms” moment.

MrBallen, despite originating on YouTube, has not yet fused its video and audio operations. The podcast is still audio-only, and there are some differences between the episodes. The YouTube videos tend to be shorter and spookier, while the podcast episodes are more in-depth and cover true crime stories.

That divide will soon end. Cohen said that “we’d like to find a way to have all of those things meet in the middle.” On August 8th, MrBallen is launching a new YouTube channel specifically to feature videos of the podcast recordings.

And while other hit shows have spawned networks, like Pod Save America with Crooked Media and My Favorite Murder with Exactly Right, Allen and Cohen want to focus on the core product for now. “Before we expand, and possibly dilute what it is we’ve got, we want to be very, very careful,” said Cohen. “We are rocking this very gently to bed every night, making sure it sleeps well, wakes up renewed and refreshed the next day.”

On the heels of Spotify’s blockbuster audio drama Batman Unburied, the company is promoting Gimlet executive Mimi O’Donnell to head of scripted fiction at the streamer, according to an internal memo obtained by The Verge.

Batman Unburied notably unseated The Joe Rogan Experience when it debuted in May and appears to be a turning point for the streamer. While Spotify has already bulked up on licensing deals with hosts like Rogan and Call Her Daddy’s Alex Cooper, Batman will likely open the door for more Hollywood series.

Julie McNamara, Spotify’s head of talk studios, told staffers that O’Donnell will help produce the streamer’s next ambitious fiction programs, including an upcoming Jordan Peele project and the English adaptation of Caso 63 with Julianne Moore and Oscar Isaac.

In her six years as head of scripted fiction at Gimlet, O’Donnell produced star-studded series like Sandra with Alia Shawkat and Kristen Wiig and Motherhacker with Carrie Coon and Pedro Pascal, adding some showbiz flair to a network that was once best known for culture shows like Reply All.

O’Donnell will report to McNamara and the incoming managing director of Gimlet. Gimlet MD Lydia Polgreen announced in April that she is leaving the company and is returning as an opinion columnist at The New York Times, where the journalist spent nearly 15 years. A replacement has not yet been announced.