6 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Hot Pod

Hot Pod is The Verge’s premier audio industry newsletter, delivering news, analysis, and opinions on how the audio world is changing.

Hot Pod Summit is back at On Air Fest 2023Hot Pod Summit is back at On Air Fest 2023
Jacob Kastrenakes
Jacob Kastrenakes
Jacob Kastrenakes
Spotify’s got some news coming on March 8th.

The company has announced its next “Stream On” event, where it plans to share updates on “creator tools, features, and programming.” The last event, in 2021, was used to lay out Spotify’s business vision in podcasting, music, and other arenas.

As my colleague Chris Welch reminded me, “This is where they announced HiFi!” Here’s hoping it actually arrives this time.

The year of 1 trillion streamsThe year of 1 trillion streams
Ariel Shapiro
YouTube’s most important podcast playYouTube’s most important podcast play
Ariel Shapiro and Jacob Kastrenakes
Spotify now sells audiobooksSpotify now sells audiobooks
Ariel Shapiro
Jacob Kastrenakes
Jacob Kastrenakes
You can now listen to podcasts inside Twitter.

If you pay Twitter, at least. The latest feature to join the Twitter Blue subscription is early access to the redesigned Spaces tab on iOS, which includes support for tuning into podcasts.

I am not entirely convinced this will take off (short-form social network + long-form audio = 🤨), but I can see a compelling use case if Twitter eventually lets podcasters promote clips from their shows. My colleague Ariel Shapiro wrote about the launch last month: