¶ Major Industry Mergers and Innovations
This is the download from Sounds Profitable, your daily source for the essential news in the business of podcasting. I'm Gavin Gavis. Here's what you need to know for today, Monday, April twenty-seventh. First up, iHeartMedia holds talks about a possible sale to Sirius XM. Bloomberg sources say the proposed deal would combine the country's biggest radio station owner with its biggest satellite radio service.
which would represent more than twelve billion dollars of combined annual sales and revenue. As of Friday, representatives for both iHeart and Sirius XM have declined to comment on the Bloomberg piece. Next up, SP analysis. US podcast consumption grows as industry embraces video. S P Global Market Intelligence Data.
shows US podcast listening grew ten percentage points from Q one twenty twenty five to Q one twenty twenty six, with nearly sixty percent of online adults reporting podcast listening in the past year. A number close to sounds profitable is the podcast landscape twenty twenty five findings, which totals sixty eight percent with respondents who have consumed a podcast audio or video in the past year.
While the podcast landscape encompasses video podcast respondents while S P's data specifies listeners, the percentage of podcast landscape respondents who say they are video only hovers around eight to nine percent. If you combine that with the SP figure, the percentage brings the total in line with Podcast Landscape's audio findings on how podcasting's audience is growing. Next up, Spotify rolls out fitness and claw integration.
This morning, Spotify launched new fitness offerings with both free and premium users having access to dozens of curative workout playlists and content from established wellness creators. The rollout partners with Peloton to give premium members ad free access to over one thousand four hundred on demand classes. Spotify is also integrated with Claude AI, allowing users to connect their accounts for personalized recommendations from their listening data.
iVooks makes its T V debut with a campaign highlighting its greatest strength, an endless podcast catalog. Spanish language podcast platform iVooks has launched a T V ad campaign developed by agency Drop and Vase for airing on MediaSet Espana channels. Pod News has provided an English captioned version of the ad and notes it may be the first formal TV ad for a podcast app they have seen, though Audible and Tune In have run TV spots before.
And for a final top story, Audion raises fifteen million dollars and expands to the US. The funding will support Audion's US expansion, including go to market operations, partnerships, and product development. Over on LinkedIn, Audion co-founder and CEO Arthur Larry reflects on the three Audion pillars: audio performance, Audion AI, and the convergence of audio and video, and expresses excitement about relocating to New York City.
¶ Latest Industry News and Awards
As for the rest of the news, variety covers this year's Peabody Award winners, including the three podcasts Divine Intervention, Scam Incorporated, and When We All Get to Heaven. Wonder Media Network co-founder and global SVP of business development at ACAST, Shira Atkins, took to LinkedIn on Friday to discuss Divine Interventions Win.
Podcast Business Journal has a new interview with headliner, co-founder, and CEO Neil Modi, discussing the company's eighth birthday and why it started in the first place. On Friday, Pod News covered an influx of spam podcasts being pushed to Apple Podcasts. Love on the Spectrum Star, Connor Tomlinson, has announced he is hosting a history themed podcast for PAVE Studios as part of a new slate of history content.
And a recent special episode of Media Roundtable shares the w audio of a South by Southwest discussion titled The Guaranteed Human in an Artificial World. Featuring iHeart Podcast President Will Pearson, Libsin CEO Brendan Monahan, good RX VP Growth Marketing, Richard Case, and Gladwell Mwangi, paid media enablement lead at Whole Foods Market.
That'll do it for today's episode. Reminder that everything I just talked about is included in the one link in your show notes, which will take you to today's episode post on sounds profitable dot com, where you can also subscribe to get the newsletter version. Sent direct to your inbox every day. Today's episode was written and produced by myself, Brian Barletta, Tom Webster, and Molly DeMillier. For Sounds Profitable, I'm Gavin Gaddis, and I'll see you tomorrow.