Podcast news roundup: 29 October 2026

Nine days, 20 to 28 October 2026, and the thread through them is ownership. Spotify switched on Memberships and named its cut. Netflix hired someone whose job is to buy podcasts. Podnews counted 1,778 shows on Spreaker that belong to someone else, and one podcaster found a clone of his own voice publishing episodes under his name. Who owns the show, who owns the audience, who takes money off the top: that is this edition. The edit desk closes with the last sixty seconds of an episode, where more good work is thrown away than anywhere else on the timeline.

Is 10% the right price for Spotify Memberships?

It launched on 20 October, the date our 8 October edition pulled from a terms page, and this time there are terms worth reading. Per Spotify for Creators, Spotify keeps 10% and the creator keeps 90%. A show qualifies once it has over 100 consumption hours, 100 listeners or watchers, and 3 published episodes. Members get a badge when they comment, new members get a welcome clip, and creators can export member data, email addresses included, from members who choose to share it. There are multiple billing options and access tiers, email promotions and free trials.

Podnews, on 21 October, supplied the history: this is Podcast Subscriptions renamed, a product available since April 2021, launched free with a plan to charge 5%. The figure is now 10%. It is open to eligible podcasters hosting with Megaphone or Spotify for Creators.

My view: 10% is cheap for what it is, and I would still think hard before building a membership inside it. Cheap, because the alternative is running your own members' area and collecting cards yourself. Think hard, because the eligibility bar, the billing and the rules all live with Spotify, and the member relationship is yours only to the extent each member ticks a box to share their address. If you go in, use the welcome clip to ask every new member, in your own voice, to share their email with you.

One figure on why audio inside a membership is worth the trouble. Per Podnews on 27 October, Supporting Cast looked at membership programmes at online publications and found churn halved for subscribers who switched on the audio benefits. That is publications, not podcasts, so do not stretch it. It does match what I see from this side of the desk: a voice in someone's ears every week is harder to cancel than a newsletter.

Who wants your video, and who wants to make it for you?

Netflix has hired. The Hollywood Reporter on 26 October: Steve Wilson, formerly of Apple Podcasts, will lead podcast content acquisition at Netflix, starting as a consultant. Netflix confirmed it; Bloomberg had it first. Wilson spent 15 years at Apple, then went to QCODE as chief strategy officer, and recently left Daylight Media. Netflix's podcast push began with a Spotify partnership on video podcasts that required exclusivity on the platform; it has since licensed shows from iHeartMedia and Barstool and launched its own, The Pete Davidson Show among them. It has released no viewing figures. Podnews noted on 21 October that podcasts went unmentioned in Netflix's third-quarter shareholder letter, earnings call and investor video, in a quarter where revenue rose 12%, which Podnews calls the lowest growth in three years.

A company that says nothing about podcasts to investors has just hired someone to buy them. That is a buyer keeping its hand down. A British independent show is unlikely to sell into this market directly; the signal is that a third platform now treats a podcast as a television programme, judged on a big screen by people who have never heard of you.

Instagram is testing length. Per The Hollywood Reporter on 26 October, a test called Features lets select US creators, podcasters and comedians among them, upload horizontal videos of up to 90 minutes, from Monday 26 October. Podnews added on 27 October that it has been quietly running in Brazil. Horizontal is the interesting word. Instagram has spent years telling everyone to turn the phone upright; a 90-minute landscape upload admits a full episode does not fit that frame. If it reaches the UK, the master you already cut for YouTube is the file.

Riverside released agents on 27 October, four of them, named Producer, Editor, Clipper and Marketer, directed by the creator, available that day on web and mobile across all Riverside plans, some capabilities following plan tier. No pricing in the release. I have not sat with them, so I will not tell you what they can do. I will tell you what the Editor job is from this chair. It is deciding that the second answer was the better one, that the funniest line kills the point after it, that the honest moment at minute 41 belongs at minute 3, and that twelve good minutes have to go because the episode is stronger without them. An editor's main output is what is missing. Software that cuts the ums will get faster every year. Whether it should cut the story is a different question.

Has your feed been copied yet?

Podnews published an investigation on 27 October: 1,778 pirated podcasts copied into Spreaker. Copying works from a free account. Publishers affected include PodcastOne, Vox Media, Goalhanger and SiriusXM. Spreaker's statement says it does not condone uploading content you lack the rights to, that it takes action on violations, and that its RSS importer honours the podcast:locked tag. In a companion piece the same day, Podnews described Lisa Lacy's podcast being copied, with the copy charting five days later.

The lesson is wider than Spreaker. A free account and your public feed address are all it takes, and an importer that honours podcast:locked only protects you if the tag is set. Log into your host today and turn the feed lock on. Then search your show's name on the big directories once a month.

Worse happened to Sanderson Jones. Per Podnews on 26 October, his podcast account was hacked, the host was switched, his voice was cloned, and new episodes kept publishing under his name. The scammer moved the show to RSS.com, where it earned $1,293. After the Hyperfixed show got involved, RSS.com paid that money to him and helped transfer the show back. Podnews notes its editor is an advisor to RSS.com; weigh that as you read.

The account that holds your feed is worth more than the files on your drive, and it deserves a password manager and two-factor sign-in before anything else you own online. The clone is the part that should bother you: episodes kept arriving and nobody wrote in. A show can be stolen and carry on. Keep a way to reach your audience that does not run through the feed. That is the email export argument again, from an uglier direction.

UK: Global Plus grows, and two nights for the awards

Global announced on 26 October that Global Plus is expanding with six new podcast subscriptions, on Global Player and YouTube. Pricing is from £2.99 a month or £29.99 a year for ad-free episodes, and from £4.99 a month or £49.99 a year for ad-free plus exclusive content. The shows include Full Disclosure with James O'Brien, The Crime Agents and The Sports Agents. Set that beside Spotify's 10%: a big UK publisher selling memberships on its own player and on YouTube, with a cheap ad-free tier and a dearer tier that adds material. The ladder works for an independent show too. Ad-free alone is a small ask; something nobody can get elsewhere earns the higher figure.

Awards: per Podnews on 26 October, the APAs shortlist is out, with the ceremony on Thursday 26 November, and there is a free evening of British Podcast Award winners at City St George's, University of London, on Tuesday 17 November. Go if you can.

In brief

Edison Research's latest US top 50 came out on 25 October via Podnews. The top five: 1 The Joe Rogan Experience, 2 Crime Junkie, 3 The Daily, 4 Call Her Daddy, 5 SmartLess. Bloomberg's Soundbite newsletter, 22 October, ran under the headline "Even Successful Podcasters Can Lose Audiences in New YouTube Era", about Dax Shepard falling out of that top 50; it is paywalled, so the headline is all you get from me, and the framing is the point.

Per Podnews on 20 October, Marc Maron's WTF, which ended in October 2025, put a 2011 episode with Norm Macdonald on YouTube in visual form, two hours long, "animated, by humans" in Maron's words, adding extra information and photographs from the recording without animating the main interview. That is the right instinct for archive audio: dress the talk, do not fake the room. It is what we do when a client hands us an episode to repurpose with no usable camera.

Per Podnews on 27 October, iOS 27.2 is out and Apple Podcasts' Up Next now shows "New Episodes" and "Continue Playing" in separate sections.

And one for the edit desk. Podnews reported on 20 October that Stephen Devincenzi of Simple English News Daily found Spotify's "skip ahead" button appearing for Premium listeners the moment his free newsletter was mentioned; Podnews first reported the ad-skipping tool in August. Note what got skipped: a host asking his own audience to sign up to something free.

The numbers

From the edit desk: how do you end an episode so the last minute does its job?

The skip button story is the whole problem in one line. The moment the host said "newsletter", the platform offered a way out and the listener took it. An ask that sits on its own after the conversation has visibly finished is the easiest thing in the episode to skip, button or no button. So the first job of an ending is to get the thing you want inside the conversation rather than bolted on after it.

What I see on the timeline, week after week. Endings stacked three deep: a wrap, a thought that reopens it, a second wrap. The "anything else you want to add?" loop, which gets a polite no, or a four-minute yes with no edit point in it. The ask buried in a chatty sign-off, so the one sentence that matters lands between "this has been lovely" and "see you next week" and nobody hears it. Music started over the guest's last word because the host was reaching for the outro. And the call to action read like a disclaimer, fast and flat.

Here is what works, with the words.

1. Put the ask before the final answer. "Before I let you go, one thing for everyone listening: the show is free, the newsletter is free, the link is in the notes. Right. Last question." The listener has not relaxed yet, so they hear it.
2. Make the last question a real one. "What do you know now that you wish you had known at the start?" Then give them room.
3. Never ask "anything else?" If you think something is left, ask for it by name.
4. End on their line. When the guest lands the sentence, say thank you and their name, and stop. Hold two seconds before the music, so the outro goes under the thanks, never over the answer.
5. One ending. If a better one turns up after you have wrapped, tell me which you prefer and I will cut the other.
6. Watch the last minute back before you send it. If you would skip it, so will they.

Why this week: a platform is now handing your listeners a button at the exact second you ask them for something. The fix is an ending people want to stay for.

What are you going to lock down before the next episode goes out?

The feed, and it takes five minutes. Then the account that holds it. After that, if a membership is on your list, decide what the higher tier gets that the free feed does not, because Global's ladder shows where the money sits. And rewrite your last sixty seconds against the list above. If the cutting itself is the part you would rather hand to a person who has done it well over a thousand times, the full episode edit is from £280. We bill every four weeks, there is no minimum, no VAT is added, and we keep revising until you are happy. Our note on the recording mistakes an editor cannot fix covers the other end of the episode. Tell us what you are making and we will come back to you. Back next Thursday.