The Frontier

James Cridland praises the Sounds Profitable Business Summit for its focused mix of attendees. The event hosted 400 participants, split equally between paid partners and advertising buyers.

James Cridland criticizes IAB audio director Jason Adamsky for failing to define standard podcast metrics on a recent industry show. Cridland notes standard downloads require at least 60 seconds of retrieved audio.

Tom Webster's Podcast Landscape 2026 study reveals YouTube, Spotify, and Netflix as the top platforms where listeners have consumed podcasts. James Cridland warns that these dominant platforms act as walled gardens without open RSS support.

Goalhanger's 2025 financial filings show the company generated £37 million in revenue and $7 million in profit. James Cridland highlights that advertising contributed 67 percent of earnings, while memberships brought in 25 percent.

Data presented at the Sounds Profitable summit indicates 45 percent of podcast listeners are willing to pay for subscription tiers that remove advertising.

Apple Podcasts will soon launch video subscriptions, enabling creators to deliver exclusive or ad-free video content to subscriber tiers across more than 170 countries.

Amazon Music has adopted open HLS video streaming using the alternate enclosure tag. James Cridland explains that Amazon restricts access by allow-listing specific hosting providers like Art19 and Triton Digital.

Juliana Meyer explains that SupaPass bypasses revenue shares, letting over 10,000 creators keep 100 percent of subscription revenues on custom-designed portals. Steve Ackerman states that owning first-party audience data is now the primary currency for creators.

Substack introduced a dedicated podcast tab to help users locate shows. The platform reports that creators publishing podcasts collectively earn over $200 million annually.

UK-based music distributor Horus has entered the podcasting market, offering RSS-based distribution to major platforms for £20 per year.

James Cridland argues that Bumper's private scoring system unfairly penalizes podcasts. The metric relies on closed playback APIs from Spotify and Apple, ignoring downloads from open third-party podcast apps.

Apple Podcasts has partnered with Apple Maps to launch curated spatial audio episodes tied to specific US city locations.