Music Publishers Begin ‘Extensive’ Spotify Podcast Takedowns Over Licensing Violations by Jem Aswad
Starting February 4th, the National Music Publisher’s Association has begun filing thousands of takedown notices to Spotify regarding podcasts using unlicensed music from members of the group. The initial wave encompassed over 2,500 instances of identified infringing music. A Spotify rep told Variety the NMPA complained about unlicensed work in 2024 but never responded to Spotify’s request for details, calling this mass-takedown a press stunt. Stunt or not, it’s worth considering what Tom Webster said just about a year ago at CRS: Podcasting would have a massive music-discussion genre generating legitimate sales, just like YouTube’s burgeoning music content scene, if labels and podcasting can set aside differences, sit down at a table, and figure out licensing.
Spot Check – From AdExchanger’s Optimizing the News
Spotify has posted their first ever profitable year, but investors in the earnings call questioned why Spotify ad revenue isn’t keeping pace with audience growth. CFO Christian Luiga said their ad business needs time to grow, including the fact Spotify is shifting focus more to performance campaigns rather than brand campaigns. He anticipates more programmatic demand this year thanks to a partnership with The Trade Desk and a shift away from their previous direct sales strategy.
Signal noise is a recurring issue in connected TV and marketers want some change. A panel about what streaming can expect in 2025, held at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Annual Leadership Meeting last week, prompted attendees to discuss their current issues with CTV. One anonymous marketer highlighted a signal issue with a recent issue in which content providers, wanting more revenue, reclassified news content that’d been blacklisted by brands as “undisclosed” content so ads would run on it, which led to angry clients. Proposed standards to fix that and similar issues included industry standards on context signals, and an industry taxonomy to create universally-agreed language for describing content so TV providers aren’t labeling content purely on vibes.
What the McCrispy Can Tell Us About Podcasting: A Case Study from French Canada by Matt Hird
Most people don’t only eat Big Macs when they go to McDonald’s, and podcast audiences rarely listen to one show for years on end without getting bored. French Canadian podcasting is demonstrating that, as the 2024 edition of the Canadian Podcast Listener report shows a reversal of an upward trend in French language podcast listening. After three years of steady growth, listenership dropped 4%. Hird argues this is because while French Canadian podcasting is taking off, it’s still a small pond that’s not being fully served with enough options to convert someone who listens to a podcast into a regular podcast listener with a diverse diet that keeps them engaged with the format in general, not just one novel outlier they’ll get bored of over time.
As for the rest of the news…
- Business Insider covered YouTube’s Q4 earnings call yesterday, specifically focusing on YouTube emphasizing podcasting’s utility during the 2024 election cycle.
- The Podglomerate welcomes Tom Webster onto Podcast Perspectives for a new episode discussing his book The Audience is Listening, listener behavior, and developing podcast audiences.
- The Radcast Network has acquired The Shannon Joy Show
