Audio Ink

Known as the home of the Original Quiet Storm, 96.3 WHUR in Washington D.C. is rolling out a new sister station with the format that can now be heard morning, noon, and night.  Formally WHUR-World, 96.3HD2 is now  “The Quiet Storm Station.”  

A top-tier streamer is adding a new level of audio to the up-and-coming social media app, BeReal. The companies have partnered to allow users to share what they're listening to on their BeReal posts by connecting accounts. The app is designed to defeat the "staged" aspect of social media.

Volkswagen is the latest manufacturer to offer SiriusXM's newest audio entertainment platform. The service will be offered in most 2021 model year vehicles.

Gail Berger will succeed Rodney Pickett as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Automotive Partnerships at SiriusXM. Berger joined SiriusXM in 2012 and most recently served as Senior Vice President of Automotive Remarketing.

In June, and for the fourth consecutive month, ESPN Audio broke its record for the number of podcast impressions with 47.6 million. That's an increase of 63% over the previous June (29.2 million) and it breaks the record set in May (41.2 million). From the ESPN Radio Talk lineup, the Dan LeBatard Show was number one with 5.9 million impressions.

iHeartRadio announced on Tuesday that it now has 120 million registered users after adding about 10 million listeners over the last few months. iHeart credits the recent growth to several new initiatives, including new music streaming features with AI technology, Amazon’s Echo Dot Kids Edition, and Southwest Airlines in-flight entertainment portal.

SiriusXM has launched a new Freakonomics Radio Network streaming channel. SXM says this is the first channel to be dedicated to a podcast.

iHeart announced Monday that iHeartRadio has officially surpassed 150 million registered users. The company also announced the iHeartRadio app has been downloaded over 3 billion times and iHeart believes a big reason for that is the popularity of podcasting. More HERE.

There was little change on the podcast sales side in the first month of 2024, as revealed by Triton Digital's US Podcast Ranker for January. Two NPR podcasts held spots in the top three most listened to series, while SiriusXM held steady in sales.

CBS Radio and Simon & Schuster have launched a new podcast called “The Paper Donkey Podcast” on the play.it network. The 45-minute podcast is a conversation between writers and editors about their work and will be posted every other Wednesday. It's the second podcast created by CBS Radio and Simon & Schuster.