Welcome to The Audio Newsroom! Your go-to news platforms for the latest in the Podcast Industry. I am your host, Hala Taha, along with my co-hosts of the day Steve Olsher and Raven Blair Glover.

Don’t expect us to be going anywhere anytime soon!

Hear it first from the movers and shakers in the Podcast Industry, from executives on product updates to top podcasters on the latest trends and insights.

Hosted every Wednesday @ 3pm ET exclusively here in Clubpod - the biggest podcast club with over 63K members & followers! Recorded and replayed on our new podcast released every single Monday!

Today’s Stories

• The initial slate of podcasts, the social media platform says, will include "The Joe Budden Podcast," the hosts of "The LadyGang," Jess Hilarious of "Carefully Reckless," and Nicaila Matthews Okome of "Side Hustle Pro."
• Refresher:
  • In April, Facebook announced that it'll bring podcasts to the app as part of its initiative to bring social audio experiences.
  • Last week, Facebook published its terms of service for podcasters on the platform – The Verge's Ashley Carman called this a "relatively standard agreement," but pointed out the lack of clarity. PodLink's Nathan Gathright dove into them on a Twitter thread.
• Live Audio Rooms seems to be Facebook's response to Clubhouse, the audio-only social platform. Users can listen in on and join live conversations by various public figures and across a spectrum of topics.
• The hosts of Live Audio Rooms can invite up to 50 speakers and there's no limit on the number of listeners.
• As for podcasts, the app now allows listening to them while browsing Facebook, either on a mini-player or a full-screen player. The show keeps playing even with the phone display turned off.
• To get listed, you need an invite directly from Facebook: and they’ll only play in the US.
• “Later this summer, we’ll roll out additional features, like captions and the ability to create and share short clips of a podcast,” says Fidji Simo, Head of Facebook App.
• Ashley Carman at The Verge keeps breaking the podcast news with the update/reminder that Facebook will eventually add a feature to let users share clips.
  • Creators will have to opt in to allow clips of their shows to be made.
  • Ashley says that Facebook gave her the option to publish her show Why’d You Push That Button?.
  • The Verge story also comments on the fact that Facebook announced a product called “Soundbites” in April to create short shareable clips and she speculates that these two things will go together.

Spotify officially rolls out Green Room

• Spotify’s live social audio.
• The formal rebrand comes a few months after the Swedish platform acquired Betty Labs, which operated a sports-centric Clubhouse competitor called Locker Room.
• The rollout includes a whole new look for Green Room — which still exists as a separate standalone app, though I’m guessing it will be absorbed into the main Spotify platform at some point in the future — as well as an expanded presence on both iOS and Android in over 135 markets globally.
• Spotify also had another smaller announcement last week: The company has acquired the horrifically named Podz, a startup that’s seemingly premised on using machine learning to create podcast-preview clips that listeners could use for the purposes of better discovery. A relatively quiet acqui-hire, it seems.

Apple Podcast Subscriptions Are Here!

• Apple announced that the much-delayed rollout of their previously announced Apple Podcast Subscriptions service is now available worldwide and listeners can purchases subscriptions to their favorite channels where new shows and early access to new seasons are available.
• The announcement also listed a large variety of shows and formats that are now available from companies like the LA Times and Pushkin Industries, NPR, and the Washington

Welcome to The Audio Newsroom! Your go-to news platforms for the latest in the Podcast Industry. I am your host, Hala Taha, along with my co-hosts of the day Steve Olsher and Raven Blair Glover.

This is our 4th week and don’t expect us to be going anywhere anytime soon!

Hear it first from the movers and shakers in the Podcast Industry, from executives on product updates to top podcasters on the latest trends and insights.

Hosted every Wednesday @ 3pm ET exclusively here in Clubpod - the biggest podcast club with over 60K members & followers! Recorded and replayed on our new podcast released every single Monday!

Libsyn Completes Its Acquisition of AdvertiseCast, the Podcast Advertising Company, for $30M.

• In March, Libsyn planned to raise $25M in new equity commitments for the acquisition of podcast advertising company Advertisecast.
• Currently, the $30M was paid $18M in cash, $10M in newly issued Libsyn shares, and $2M in the form of an earn-out
• including $8m from Libsyn Director Eric Shahinian’s Camac Partners
• Camac now owns 12.2% - and $1m from Chairman Bradley Tirpak.
• Libsyn President Laurie Sims said that "AdvertiseCast is a perfect fit with Libsyn's strategy to provide independent podcasters robust tools."
• Earlier this year, Libsyn acquired Glow, a podcast monetization startup. The company plans to use Glow's podcast membership programs and technology to provide monetization options for the 75,000+ podcasts on its platform.
• They’ve also agreed a new bank loan agreement. The company is currently without a CFO, after it was found to have underpaid $3.2 million in taxes over the past five years.
• Richard Heyse, the CFO of Libsyn, had resigned as the company gave the stock market an update on their incorrect financial reports. Libsyn underpaid a number of different taxes between 2015 and 2020: mistakes worth around $3.7m in unpaid tax and fines. The incorrect returns have also put Libsyn out of compliance with a number of bank loans.
• Libsyn’s previous CFO, John Busshaus, also resigned in October 2019 and is currently taking the company to court for wrongful termination: claims that Libsyn denies.

Linktree and Spring Team Up to Give Creators More Social Commerce Tools

• Spring, the merch ecommerce company formerly known as TeeSpring, and link-in-bio service Linktree have announced a new agreement that allows digital creators to host virtual storefronts within their social profiles.
• The integration will allow social influencers to create storefronts that link from their profile
• The partnership will basically allow fans to purchase items–which can range from physical products like T-shirts or hats to NFTs and other digital goods–directly from the page without having to follow a secondary link to the creator’s store.
• Linktree claims to have more than 14 million users including major brands like Red Bull, ASOS and Facebook, while Spring boasts around 450,000 verified creators. The combination of the two companies could help make social commerce easier for the growing creator economy.

According to a Forbes Contributor: “The Drop-In Audio App Clubhouse Is Dying. It Was Fun While It Lasted”

• John Brandon held a Clubhouse chat recently, inviting people to chat about productivity. It’s the subject of a new book he’s writing
• In the app, he started inviting people when he was testing Clubhouse which led to many people joining in on the conversation, but now most people have turned off notifications or ignore them as they join other rooms.
• He also noticed a few users could always rely on to join a chat were not even members anymore.
• When he posted about the Clubhouse room on my Twitter feed, all he could hear were crickets (not sure what that means)
• “It’s been replaced by something more worthwhile: meeting with real people.”
• Other reasons:
  • You still can’t record a chat.
  • They only recently added Android access.
  • The invite system starts penalizing you right away if you invite too many people