PRX Acquires Soundrise, Spotify’s on Amazon DSP, & More

PRX Expands Podcast Sponsorship Capabilities with Strategic Acquisition of Soundrise

Soundrise has worked as the exclusive sales team for PRX’s catalog since 2017. Starting in January of 2026, the Soundrise team will be absorbed as an in-house PRX sales arm. Current CEO Harry Clark will continue working in an advisory capacity at Soundrise through the rest of 2025.

A Lot Just Happened With Spotify

The International Podcast Day ferret left several press releases in front of my door last night. First up: Variety covers the announcement Spotify is opening up their ad inventory to Amazon’s demand-side platform. The global strategic partnership makes Spotify streaming audio and video inventory available to Amazon DSP customers. Megaphone podcast publishers are also getting in on the ad action, with Spotify announcing that in mid-year 2026 Megaphone-hosted publishers will receive access to more monetization tools. Specifically, publishers will be able to traffic both direct-sold campaigns and private marketplace deals using Spotify ad tech. And finally, The Hollywood Reporter – in partnership with Spotify – is doing their first ever dedicated podcast Roundtable video, featuring top nominees from the Best Podcast category at the Golden Globes.

As independent, creator-owned media companies flourish, Rooster Teeth is looking to join the party by Alexander Lee

Lee gives an overview of the current iteration of Rooster Teeth’s post-Warner Bros. existence. With the brand and some IP purchased back by original founder Burnie Burns, Rooster Teeth joins a growing crowd of creator-led media publishers electing to fly solo. For example, one of the most popular TTRPG actual play podcasts, Critical Role, has made a point of staying independent. The daily talk show Good Mythical Morning rivals broadcast TV viewership yet parent company Mythical Entertainment remains a creator-owner island. Though, some of that rugged independence comes from old-heads remembering past mistakes. As Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw notes in a piece about Hollywood’s skittishness to invest in influencers/YouTube channels: executives remember the era when huge multichannel networks like Maker and Machinima seemed like slam-dunk purchases, only for some of those big names to fall apart. A hurdle for those creator-owned companies looking for investment and acquisition will be demonstrating the maturation of content creation as a business.

SoundStack Launches HLS for Podcast Publishers to Deliver, Monetize, and Measure Shows More Effectively

As followers of the Podcast Standards Project will remember, the current push for wide adoption in the podcast industry is that of HLS (HTTP Live Streaming). In short, HLS is an existing adaptive bitrate streaming protocol that breaks media into small segments, meaning podcast consumers can listen to or watch a video podcast episode without pre-downloading the entire file, as well as automatically-adjusting playback quality that tunes itself to their connection speed. SoundStack’s new HLS integration boasts the ability to get more accurate measurement based on how much content was delivered, the ability to integrate live content into podcasts, seamless transition between audio and video files, and more efficient ways to insert ads into files as they’re streamed. Podnews Daily is also getting in on supporting HLS.

Podcast Networks’ New Pitch: Hosts Are the Ultimate Influencers by Catilin Huston

Just as not every whiskey is a bourbon, but every bourbon is a whiskey, not every influencer is a podcast host… but podcast hosts are influencers. And IAB media center director Matt Shapo’s presentation of data at yesterday’s Podcast Upfront shows podcast ad spend growth is recognizing the power of podcast influencers. When surveys are run asking who the most influential content creators and influencers are today, podcasters tend to be at or near the top, according to Shapo.

As for the rest of the news…