Happy 1st birthday to us! What will Spotify do with its big M&A war chest, Castamatic 8 supports Value4Value and Lisa Laporte CEO of TWiT tells us how to run a successful podcast network.

 Listen to James Cridland and Sam Sethi   

GUEST:

• Lisa Laporte - CEO -  TWiT.tv
• Franco Solerio - Founder & Developer -  Castamatic

NEWS: 

• Copenhagen-based podcast production company Podimo has secured $78m of funding. The subscription company hosts more than 950 original shows and plans to move into new markets.
  
  
• $78m? Hold my beer - Verbit, a voice AI platform focusing on transcriptions, has raised $250m in funding
  
  
• Spotify CFO Paul Vogel says the company has $3.5bn in cash for acquisitions. Speaking at a conference in Boston MA, USA, he said: “Podcasting was this business that for 20 years didn’t change — it was a simple RSS feed — no way to do anything different”. (Paul - podcasts are 18 years old).
  
  
• Matt Deegan writes about making your audio business acquirable, looking into more detail into Spotify CFO Paul Vogel’s announcements.
  
  
• Netflix and Spotify have “come together” to launch a Netflix Hub on Spotify. It includes playlists for Netflix shows and additional audio.
  
  
• Podcasts in Samsung Free’s Listen Tab have launched in Europe. The podcast app is available exclusively to Samsung Galaxy owners, in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, France and Italy. You can add your podcast here.
  
  
• Chartable has launched SmartFeeds, a new tool that mirrors your RSS feed and makes it easier to switch podcast hosts and enable Chartable analytics.
  
  
• Bryan Barletta notes that shows with Apple Podcasts Subscriptions get the most promotion within the Apple Podcasts app.