by Gavin Gaddis
LAST CALL: This Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. EST, Sounds Profitable’s Tom Webster and Bryan Goldmark of Locked On will be debuting Trust and Attention: Why Sports Media Wins (and How Brands Prove It) in a live webinar. The report provides an expanded dive into the unique value of the sports podcast audience. Grab your virtual seat now!
Podcast News Daily covers the PRX 2025 report, including CEO Kerri Hoffman’s annual letter. Hoffman notes that even as federal funding cuts challenge public media, PRX is accelerating its transition toward “a digital-first infrastructure for a vibrant public media.” PRX’s podcast network Radiotopia launched 18 seasons and specials in 2025, totaling 47.3 million downloads across the network.
A new PodSEO blog analyzes 11 million top-5 keyword-target pairs from Apple Podcasts and Spotify on May 4, 2026. In the music world, a search term generally waterfalls from artist name, to album, to individual tracks. Podcasting services built on top of existing music infrastructure can have quirks based on how they treat podcast “albums” versus “tracks.” These quirks include preferences for shows with recently uploaded episodes and a tendency to weight keywords in show titles more heavily than individual episodes or creators. This weights keywords in show titles over episodes or creators, encouraging keyword-stuffed titles that exploit music search logic. PodSEO advises podcasters to experiment with taglines in show names and author fields — a tactic balancing keyword spam and helpful descriptions.
The iHeartMedia Q1 report includes a consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $93 million, down 11.4% year over year from Q1 2025’s $105 million. Podcast revenue rose 26.9% year over year to $147 million, beating guidance. Digital revenue, excluding podcasting, increased 12% year over year, reaching $180 million.
This week’s edition of Media, Built focuses on newsletter monetization and audience relationships. Raizes spotlights two newsletter stories from the past six months: Puck's acquisition of Air Mail and The Ankler's move from Substack to Passport. The former serves as an example of a company buying into the relationship Air Mail had fostered with its readers. Meanwhile, The Ankler left Substack's launchpad to own its audience relationships — via bundles, segmentation, and events.
…as for the rest of the news:
Podnews reports Nomono is about to have a “big system update that brings stability, performance, and security improvements.”
Former Paramount and NPR executive Ainsley Rossitto has joined beehiiv as Head of Podcasts.
Tinkercast co-founder Meredith Halpern-Ranzer has announced a new video podcast: Two Whats?! And A Wow!: People Who Wow Edition.
Podstock has released new benchmark data that finds a single Spotify video podcast stream, on average, generates 1.5 times more consumption time than a YouTube view of the same episode.
Alitu and The Podcast Host founder Colin Gray has a new blog announcing the completion of the company’s acquisition by AI software developer Rocketable.
Zeno Media has launched a major update to the ZenoRadio app that introduces in-car listening capabilities via Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility.
CreatorX is launching a monthly huddle dubbed Office Hours. The first edition, hosted by Matty Staudt and the CreatorX team, is slated for May 15 at 5:00 p.m. EST.
