Podcast Movement Evolutions 2026 Videos Live, Japan's Podcasting Audience, & More

This is The Download from Sounds Profitable, your daily source to the essential news in

the business of podcasting, I'm Gavin Gattas.

Here's what you need to know for today, Monday, March 30.

First up, podcast movement evolutions at South by Southwest 2026 sessions are now live.

Video recordings of presentations from this year's podcast movement evolutions are now

available on the official podcast movement YouTube channel.

The playlist features 25 videos spanning from 10-minute discovery sessions to full 50-minute

panels.

Up next, Otonal and the Asahi Shim Bun Company jointly release results of their survey

on podcast usage in Japan.

Otonal and the Asahi Shim Bun Company have released their annual survey of podcast

usage in Japan, conducted December 5th through 6th, 2025.

The survey targeted 10,000 respondents aged 15-69.

Key findings include 1 percentage point increase in national podcast consumption, that's 18.2 percent

overall from 2024.

When looking at specific demographics, the 15-19-year-olds reached a 40.5% usage rate,

that's a 6.4% percentage point increase year over year.

In addition, 20-29-year-olds reached 28.8% usage representing a 1.5% percentage point year

over year increase.

In comparison to respondents who don't consume podcasts, those who partake have a higher

ratio of corporate decision makers by comparison to seven major forms of media podcasting's

ratio of corporate decision makers ranked second place behind only newspaper readers.

Next up, HLS Video and Podcast, who's doing what?

John Spurlock has published a new ongoing research project on live wire labs, keeping tabs

on HTTP live streaming, HLS Video Podcasting.

As of his March 29th update, Spurlock identified 78 podcasts with HLS Video on Apple Podcast,

totaling 1,070 episodes.

The piece lists each podcast host with HLS Video, detailing Apple Podcasts and RSS support,

plus video formats, resolutions, codecs, and bitrates.

Since the project specifically is looking at media files, hosting platforms that have

promised HLS support in the future do not appear on the list.

Next up, what marketers should take away from IAB new fronts 2026?

Add results, media reports back from new fronts 2026 with key takeaways, including the

notion that the modern advertising industry has shifted to becoming always on.

New fronts being shifted to take place earlier in the year reflect a structural change to

how ads are bought and sold.

Old-school tentpole buys tied to traditional upfronts are fading as connected TV, CTV, and

creator-led media become ongoing investments, not one-offs.

Finally, Versaunt pursues a deal for Vox Media's podcast business.

Versaunt parent company of CNBC and MSNow is reportedly pursuing Vox Media's podcast network.

The deal would feed into CEO Mark Lazarus's stated goal of diversifying Versaunt's revenue,

so roughly one-third comes from sources other than pay TV in the next three to five years.

Vox Media's portfolio would also fit in with the audio efforts of Versaunt's existing

cable networks podcasting arms, including MSNow's video podcast productions, and recent

deal to broadcast crooked media clip compilations in a weekly 9pm Eastern Standard Time Saturday

slot.

As for the rest of the news, pod news report SoundStack has recertified as IEB podcast measurement

guidelines, version 2.2 compliant.

Jasmine Enberg and Kaya Yuriev at Scalable cover a reckoning for podcasting, as factors

like top shows booking big ticket guests lead to potentially overshadowed low-to-mid-tier

productions.

This includes a higher impact on women and minority-hosted podcasts.

Triton Digital has posted a Canada podcast rancor for February 2026, with the top six shows

holding steady from January.

Nova Entertainment has signed fast growing self-development podcast Do You Fing Mind?

Keeping my clean rating here to the Nova podcast network, joining other recent editions

like Relatables and Two Broke Chicks.

Acast has a write-up of an advertising week Europe session featuring Josh Woodhouse, managing

director of Acast, UK and Ireland, Gemma Abrahams, lead brand and partnership manager at

British Airways Holidays, and Wayne Davison, CRO at Little Dot Studios, discussing how brands

and creators make the most of podcasting in 2026.

Pave Studios True Crime Brand Crime House has announced weekly video episodes are coming

for two existing audio franchises, murder-true crime stories and conspiracy theories cult

and crimes.

These join the newly-emount series America's Most Infamous Crimes in Pave Studios' new

video expansion.

And finally, the podcast academy has elected a new board of governors and has updated the

full leadership page on their website so you can see who's there.

As usual, you can find links to everything I just talked about by clicking the one

link in your show notes which will take you to SoundsProfitable.com's post for today's

episode.

You can also subscribe to get the newsletter version of the download while you're

there.

Today's episode was written by myself and produced by myself, Brian Marletta, Molly

DeMilleer and Tom Webster.

For SoundsProfitable, I'm Gavin Gattis and I'll see you tomorrow.