Podfacts: An Industry Update
NBC News makes a big podcasting commitment
The world of podcasting continues to expand with a steady stream of major brands investing in the space. NBC News is the latest media giant making an ambitious push into the podcast market. They begin with two audio series on conspiracy theories, the British royalty and the legacy of Title IX in scholastic athletics planned in the next few months, more here.
LinkedIn launches podcast network
LinkedIn has launched a podcast network aimed at professional audiences. Hosting your podcast on LinkedIn may help your brand particularly if it’s a B2B brand. Leveraging Linkedin’s massive membership will help your podcast better target professional audiences than they might on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, for example. more here.
All LinkedIn Podcast Network shows will be available globally on LinkedIn by following the podcast hosts and subscribing to their weekly newsletters. These shows are not exclusive to the professional social media network — they can also be listened to on other podcast platforms, like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
How to join the LinkedIn Podcast Network. It seems that existing podcasts may be able to learn more about joining the LinkedIn Podcast Network by filling out this form.
Spotify continues to outpace Apple
Spotify’s spoken-word audio content is accelerating as Apple flatlines. Despite musicians like Canadian legends Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, followed by Crosby, Stills and Nash and musician and podcaster India Arie pulling their music from Spotify over the spread of misinformation, the podcast giant is growing. Industry analyst eMarketer shows how Spotify’s predicted podcast growth has outpaced the creator of the ‘podcast’ – Apple. The gap between Spotify podcast growth and Apple’s will be a wide chasm in five years, more here.
Twitter is rumored to be building a podcast tab.
As social platforms look toward adding more features, Twitter, like LinkedIn is set to add and or expand its support of podcasts. Last year, Facebook launched a podcast feature for select creators, while Reddit just enabled recording for its audio-only Talks.
Twitter began branching out to audio when it first launched Spaces in 2020 and doubled down on audio with its acquisition of social podcast platform Breaker. Spaces has been an ongoing project for the platform, which recently started letting anyone create chatrooms and allowing all mobile users to record conversations.
Rishad Tobaccowala, author and futurist, famously stated, “The colonization of the eyes is over. Now it’s the colonization of the ears.”