The latest from podnews.net with CoHost's advanced audience demographics. In a move that could be targeted at Spotify, Amazon Music is adding the entire Audible audiobook catalogue to its app. Unlimited subscribers in the US, UK and Canada can now listen to one Audible title for free each month of any length, alongside more than 100 million songs in HD audio and a range of ad-free podcasts. Audible is the best-known brand for audiobooks and lays claim to be an early podcast company too.
This offer also includes the company's original productions. We've analysis in our newsletter, you can read that at podnews.net today. Acast has signed an exclusive ad sales deal with Casefile. It's a big deal. It's a show with 80 million listens. The show was with Audioboom. How bad is podfade, the phenomenon where podcasters stop podcasting?
Research by PodNews released today suggests that of the 24,000 podcasts started in January this year, 7,000 didn't make it after the end of February - that's 30%. 22% of shows started on Spotify for Creators in January didn't post a new episode since the end of February - that's below the average, as is Ausha at 20%, 18% for Megaphone, 12% for Podbean and 12% for Libsyn.
As you'd expect, podcast hosting companies with well-publicized free trials show the highest levels of podfade, including Spreaker, RSS and Hubhopper. Some podcast hosting companies delete free accounts when the free trial ends, so they won't appear on this data, and the top five companies, in case you're interested with new shows this January, were, in order, Spotify for creators, RSS, Buzzsprout, Spreaker and Acast, who between them, attracted 60% of new shows in that month.
Adobe podcast has released Enhanced Speech version 2, a 'enhancement' of the original technology. There's a free tier, we'll find out more later this week. The UK's Goalhanger has announced its latest launch: The Rest Is Classified will launch at the end of this month. It's hosted by a former CIA analyst and a national security journalist, and the show will uncover the murky and often misunderstood world of international espionage. It's to launch on podcast apps and YouTube.
New data shows that a significant portion of listeners take action after hearing a podcast ad. The most common actions include visiting a brand's website and making a purchase. The data is released as part of Veritonic's November 2024 podcast study, which is free and released today. Podtrac's top podcasts by country rankers have been updated for October. There's a link in our show notes and our newsletter at podnews.net.
Magellan AI has released its top podcast advertisers ranker for October. Amazon is number one, better help at number two, T-Mobile at number three, or is that T-Mobile? And the biggest movers this month were investment company Robinhood and AI company Anthropic. The page has details of a webinar as well. And also because we asked, Magellan AI have now started archiving these rankers, which is a jolly good thing.
And speech enhancement tool AICoustics has announced a partnership with Siv, a video and audio infrastructure company. And in podcast news, My Mate Bought A Toaster has joined the Audio Always Originals network. The show chats with celebrities about their Amazon purchase history and the stories behind some of the purchases there. The show is hosted by Tom Price. And in 1912, more than a thousand black residents were
forced out of Forsyth County in Georgia. From WABE and the Atlanta History Center, "1912, the Forsyth County expulsion and its aftermath" aims to correct the historical record and confront widely held myths about Forsyth County, and to highlight the generational impact that has persisted for over a century in the county. It launches today.
And this podcast is sponsored by CoHost: you can get in-depth insights into who your podcast audience is, including income, family members, social media habits, age, and more with CoHost's advanced audience demographics. Check a demo today, you'll find a link in our show notes, do click it - and that's the latest from our newsletter. To read all the stories and subscribe, we're at podnews.net.