Tencent to pay a mountain of cash for Ximalaya

Chinese podcasting company Ximalaya is reportedly to be acquired by Tencent Music for $2.4bn, reports Bloomberg. (Spotify bought Anchor for just $140mn). Ximalaya, which claimed more than 303mn monthly active users in 2023, spent $100mn on a US expansion in 2019 (though it may not have done); the company tried to float on the NYSE, but didn’t, and was going to float in Hong Kong, but hasn’t.

Himalaya’s highest-profile employee in the US was Peter Vincer, who made the headlines in Jun 2021 (though he denied the story); now called Notorious LLC, his company hasn’t posted on socials for the last five months (one of its last posts: a picture of Vincer dressed as Superman).

Spotify quietly launched a trending podcasts chart a few weeks ago: “designed to spotlight the shows that are getting people talking right now.” Available in many different countries, you can see it at the Spotify Podcast Charts website, or in JSON form.

It’s quite similar in intention to the Apple Podcast chart, which is also mostly based on trending information. And for bragging rights, it’ll be much better than the standard Spotify chart , since newly-launched shows should rocket to the top.

Podlibre has been launched - the project is to build an all-in-one, open-source, privacy-first desktop app to help make podcasts. Run by Benjamin Bellamy’s Ad Aures, it has funding from NLnet.