The Spotify exec who is ignoring video

And given that Spotify's been shouting about video since June of last year, we're curious as to The Ringer's reticence. It has been reported and refuted that Simmons will leave Spotify early next year. The Spotify app has also added a recent carousel, helping you remember what you've been listening to or watching - and does adding full video to a show make any difference to the algorithm in Spotify and YouTube?

We quietly made one of these shows in full video earlier in the week, and we uploaded the video version to both Spotify and YouTube. And here's what happened. YouTube? Nothing. No difference at all. On Spotify, however, we did see an increase in total plays, and interestingly the audio-only version the day after was also bigger than usual. Worthwhile mentioning that YouTube and Spotify both account for less than 0.5% of our podcast plays, so we're not talking big numbers.

So if anybody else wants to give it a go, that would be interesting, wouldn't it? Elsewhere, Narralize is a new tool that turns PDF content into concise audio summaries - translated too, if you want. Adweek claims that podcasts are increasingly a visual medium. The evidence given are figures from Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Pod Save America and Charlie Kirk. Well, here's some cheeky Friday holiday opinion.

THOSE shows might be increasingly visual, but take a look at The Daily from the New York Times, which in 2020 was doing 4 million downloads each episode as a podcast, likely more now, while on YouTube each episode is doing 25,000. All podcasts aren't Joe Rogan, after all - indeed, all podcasts can't be turned into video easily. S-Town? Serial? Death in Ice Valley?

And some further reading for you today, the podcast host has written "Your podcast won't go viral and that's a good thing" and Pod The North writes about corporate control of Canadian media after yet more job cuts at Rogers. We'll link to both of those and everything else we've talked about from our show notes and our newsletter at podnews.net.

And in podcast news in the Podnews Weekly Review today we chat with Jon Thoday from Avalon Entertainment, Nick Dunkerley from Hindenburg and a long and worthwhile (and skippable) discussion about the future of streaming payments for podcasting. That's not the weekend if there's no Podnews Weekly Review. You Are Error is new from games website Aftermath. Each episode interviews a different guest about something that either games or the people that play them frequently get wrong.

It starts with a game designer who speaks Arabic and the many lamentable attempts to write something that looks like Arabic in games. An architect and designer are on a journey to help their community understand the nuances of designing for the built environment, Sense of Space is on the Surround podcast network and launched in October. It's hosted by Ella Hazard and Faraz Shah who explore all the stuff we interact with as designers, architects and people.

And do you have a long flight this weekend or perhaps an excuse to go for a long walk and discover a new podcast instead of staying in the same building as that person a moment longer - New Podcast Trailers puts podcast trailers for new and interesting podcasts right where you want it - in your podcast player. You can follow new podcast trailers now and use it whenever you need to. And this podcast is sponsored by CoHost.

Uncover the seniority, departments, companies and industries your listeners work in using CoHost's B2B analytics feature to drive revenue. Book a demo today - you'll find the link in our show notes and we thank CoHost which is built by Quill for their support this month. And that's the latest from our newsletter. To read all the stories and subscribe, we're at podnews.net