¶ Intro / Opening
This is the download from Sounds Profitable, your daily source for the essential news in the business of podcasting. I'm Gavin Gaddis.
¶ Podcasting's Diversity and Audience Gap
Here's what you need to know for today, Wednesday, November 12th. First up, podcasting's diversity problem. 64% of hosts are male, 77% are white. USC study finds. A new report from Dr. Stacey L. Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. finds that of the top 100 podcasts in 2024, hosts were overwhelmingly white and male, 64% and 77% respectively. Stats don't change much when they start broadening the scope to the top 592 podcasts using Spotify and Edison Research charts.
a gap that could be impacting incoming audiences. If you look at part one of the podcast landscape from Sounds Profitable, 48% of respondents who were ever listening to podcasts were women, while 59% of the Never Listen to Podcast group We're women. On the race and ethnicity side, the average total monthly listening stats are actually brought down. on average, by white respondents who scored 52%, while Hispanic, Asian, and Black respondents scored at least 62%.
Looping back to the USC study, Dr. Smith argues podcasting's inherent pitch as a medium is its democratic nature. After all, anyone with a microphone can make a podcast, theoretically. As the format matures into mainstream acceptance, the opportunity to embrace the voices behind those microphones... ensuring they are as diverse as the audience consuming their podcasts presents itself to the podcasting industry.
¶ Music Licensing and Video Podcast ROI
Next up, music industry moves Spotify and NMPA to expand direct licensing audiovisual opportunities for indie publishers. Spotify and the National Music Publishers Association have launched an opt-in portal for NMPA members. In the portal, artists can access direct license agreements that give Spotify expanded audiovisual rights in the United States.
Independent music publishers and songwriters with the license will receive higher royalty payouts, while Spotify will be able to build video features that, quote, better connect artists and fans, end quote. The NMPA portal is open as of yesterday and will have onboarding through December 19th. Next up, audio versus video podcasting, the cost of attention.
Podcast Marketing Academy and Lower Street have partnered to publish a report built from a survey of 308 podcasters. From the detailed data shared by respondents such as audio downloads, YouTube downloads, and consumption metrics, The report assigns return on investment, ROI, to both video and audio podcasting in terms of audience attention. Podcasts that produce both video and audio average 3.6 times higher production cost.
Average annual revenue discounting two massive outlier podcasts in the overall data is 12 times higher for video podcasts than just audio. Though, in the half-hour video presentation accompanying the data, Podcast Marketing Academy founder Jeremy Enns does note that video podcasting inherently attracts brands and businesses that already have the cash and audience to make a video podcast profitable quickly, so that could skew the data.
¶ Netflix's Podcast Strategy & Platform Updates
Next up, Netflix wants 50 plus shows as part of its big podcast push, but winning creators from YouTube won't be easy. More details have come to light regarding the deals Netflix has been shopping around town in their pursuit of both existing podcasts license and creators to make Netflix new shows.
exclusively for the platform. According to Bloomberg sources, Netflix's feelers say they are aiming to have 50 to 75 video podcasts at launch in 2026, with one source saying Netflix aims to have as many as 200. concurrent shows over time. For our final top story, Threads beefs up podcast links. Meta's microblogging platform Threads has announced they are beta testing podcast previews.
that allow users to register a podcast with their account. Then, whenever they post a link to that podcast, it will stand out with a special preview underneath the post. Also, shout out to Bumper CTO Stephen Hallgren for posting about this test and bringing it to our attention. As for the rest of the news, Signal Hill Insights has a new piece breaking down four ways Brand Lift can secure ad campaign renewals.
Podcast One has published their Q2 fiscal 2026 financial results, including a 22% year-over-year increase in revenue and an adjusted EBITDA of $1.1 million USD, which is a 369%. year-over-year increase. Soundcast is expanding their international footprint with a new London office and Gregor Smith appointed as the new role of UK country manager.
The murder of a 50-year-old Maryland nurse named Sherry Crandell, the focus of season two of Gamut Podcast Network's show American Nightmares, has been solved. The family of the victims say the podcast helped motivate investigators to continue pursuing the case. Liam Bateman has joined Audio Ad Pro as Chief Technology Officer.
True Native Media has signed Reality Life with Kate Casey to their exclusive roster, and Stingray Group Incorporated has announced an agreement to acquire TuneIn in a deal valued up to $170 million USD. That does it for today's episode. As usual, there is a link in your show notes that will take you to today's episode post on our website, which has every single link I just talked about. Or you can go to soundsprofitable.com and on the front page, you can sign up for the newsletter version.
that will email all of the links to your inbox every dang day. The download is written and produced by myself, Brian Barletta and Tom Webster. For Sounds Profitable, I'm Gavin Gaddis and I'll talk to you again tomorrow.