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It is Monday, August 11th.

Lots of moving in the digital media landscape. So two topics today.

First, it's kind of the best and worst times in the podcast business. In some ways, the forum has never been more popular.

55% of people in the U.S. have consumed a podcast in the past month and 40% in the last week, according to Edison research.

Each measure is an all-time high.

Podcast revenue was up 26% in 2024. New hits like Amy Polar Show, Shannon Sharp, they keep launching. And the genre is increasingly video. YouTube accounted for more than 30% of the U.S.

podcast audience recently, and that number keeps

growing. Spotify and other platforms are increasingly offering video as well.

Yet on the other hand, last week, Amazon, they gutted their podcast unit Wondry, firing

110 people, folding it into Audible and putting people on a new creator services team

for celebrity shows, mostly focused

around video, basically acknowledging that heavily produced narrative podcasts aren't a great

business. Spotify is cutting back there too. They got rid of Gimlet Media and Parcast. The Ringer,

...