From London, the latest from our daily newsletter at podnews.net with Red Circle. The team from Apple Podcasts spoke at the podcast show yesterday, the first ever time that Apple Podcasts has spoken at a podcast event. The talk by Jake Shapiro and Susie Warhurst was well-received by the audience, who learnt that 2024 was Apple Podcasts' best year ever for listeners, hours and premium podcast subscribers.
The chimneys at the iconic Battersea power station where Apple's UK operations are based turned Apple Podcasts purple in celebration of the podcast creator community this week. Apple unveiled some data from one of Goalhanger's shows, the rest is history, and that show has 45,000 paying subscribers using Apple Podcasts, and it was revealed that 57% of them are on the annual plan, which is helpful for retention.
Tony Paster, the co-founder of Goalhanger, was quoted as saying that the key advantage of Apple Podcasts subscriptions is how seamless the experience is for listeners. Apple Podcasts also shared the strength of UK podcasting, with many UK shows also achieving top 10 chart positions around the world, like Wondery and Novels' Kill List and Noises' Sherlock Holmes. Apple said that 88 of the top 100 UK shows are made in the UK.
And Apple Podcasts announced the latest additions to the Creators We Love programme, which includes five of the UK's most well-established podcasters. Selected by the Apple Podcasts editorial team, the five shows will be promoted both on and off the platform. Well, it's nearly 20 years since podcasts first went into iTunes, and Apple has been a good steward of open podcasting ever since.
Apple Podcasts has been criticised in the past for being overly secretive, but to see the Apple team being so open with creators at the podcast show was refreshing and well-received by all, and reinforced that Apple, of all of the big podcast platforms, is podcasting's friend. We hope to see more of that in the future. Elsewhere, vPod, a new creative studio tool for video podcasting, has been launched. It can turn any space into a flexible production environment.
Spanish-language podcast platform Evux has published a monetisation guide, described as a practical handbook with tips, resources, strategies and success stories to help creators earn money from their podcast audience. To date, the company says it's generated over €4 million in income for creators.
Audion announced that the company works with a perfume company, Lolita Lempicka, on an immersive audio campaign working with media agency Place2Be Media, and CrowdNetwork is to launch its first female athlete-owned podcast, Long Story Short, launches in June. In People News, BBC Studios has made a number of new hires in the audio division, with three new genre-based creative directors. And this podcast is sponsored by Red Circle. Don't, do not, under-deliver on your ad read.
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