Covers creators and streaming. Bylines at Simon Owens's Media Newsletter. Desk record: 67 signals cited since July 2026, 50 published. Updated November 3, 2026.
Indexed from published reporting. Not a medianexis staff byline. Any journalist can ask to be removed.
Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter reports that recipe blogger Nicole Hunn, who built Gluten Free on a Shoestring into a business with 130,000 email subscribers and six cookbooks, is now shifting toward direct-to-consumer products.
Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter reports that Beehiiv is launching dynamic ad insertion for podcasts, following Substack’s similar move, but adding programmatic advertising available immediately with no minimum download requirement, unlike Substack’s 2027 timeline.
Nov 2Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter reports that Instagram is pushing creators to upload longform video despite having no YouTube-style revenue-sharing program, betting exposure alone will lure YouTubers and podcasters already monetizing elsewhere.
Nov 2Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter reports that Amazon is adding unlimited audiobook listening to Kindle Unlimited, rebranding the service Kindle+, a response to inroads from Spotify and YouTube into Amazon’s long-dominant audiobook market.
Nov 2Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter reports that Nicole Hunn, who built Gluten Free on a Shoestring into a business with 130,000 email subscribers and six cookbooks, now relies on unpredictable Google and Facebook traffic for ad revenue.
Oct 29Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter reports that Caliber CEO Ramin Beheshti explained how the company, born from The News Movement, abandoned reliance on traditional sponsorships for a branded content agency model.
Oct 27Simon Owens highlights Business Insider’s report that Netflix has stopped discussing its video podcast push and may be reducing podcast visibility in its feed.
Oct 27Simon Owens writes that Spotify keeps posting strong earnings and user growth, yet its advertising business stays stuck. He argues audio ads can’t scale across platforms like display or video, and Spotify’s paying subscribers are largely ad-free anyway.
Oct 23Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter teases that Meta is paying the price for alienating media companies, part of a paid-subscriber roundup that also covers Substack’s new podcast ad tool and YouTube’s pressure on top creators.
Oct 23Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter reports that The Independent’s social-commerce revenue overtook its SEO-based commerce revenue for the first time in September, per CEO Christian Broughton.
Oct 22Simon Owens reports that Substack’s app is driving paid subscriptions for creators, a theme he explores alongside items on Disney scaling creator collaborations and LinkedIn’s creator revenue-share question.
Oct 22Simon Owens reports that NBA Take-Two Media CEO Andrew Perlmutter is rebuilding the NBA 2K esports league as a media company, shifting from team-based tournaments toward creator-led shows after the NBA and Take-Two found audiences preferred individual streamers over organized competitions.
Oct 22Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter reports that Simon Owens interviewed Amy Suto, a former Hollywood screenwriter who left the industry to build a paid Substack newsletter with more than 1,000 subscribers, a freelance job platform called Cozy Jobs, ghostwriting work, and self-published novels.
Oct 21Simon Owens reports that YouTube is developing an audiobook feature likely bound for Premium, mirroring Spotify’s successful audiobook push that has already eaten into Audible’s market share.
Oct 18Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter reports that a podcast episode with Jason Krebs probes whether Apple TV wants profitability or just subscriber halo effects, plus a separate paywalled item asking whether Netflix should open itself to user generated content.
Oct 16Simon Owens reports that the Financial Times says CNN hopes to reach $1 billion in digital subscription revenue by 2030, which Owens calculates would require 14 million paid subscribers in three years.
Oct 15Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter reports that Benji Woerly, a former touring drum technician for acts like Eminem and the Jonas Brothers, built The Soovins, an animated kids’ YouTube channel with over 138,000 subscribers.
Oct 10Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter reports that Benji Woerly, a former touring musician for acts like the Jonas Brothers and Eminem, built an animated YouTube channel called The Soovins with over 138,000 subscribers.
Oct 10Simon Owens reports that Meta will charge Facebook pages at least $49.99 a month to post more than two external links, a policy that exempts news publishers for now.
Oct 10Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter reports that Meta is moving ahead with a plan requiring companies to pay to post external links on Facebook pages, a policy that currently exempts publishers.
Oct 10Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter argues that Skydance faces a logistical mess in combining Paramount+ and HBO Max, since tens of millions of logins run through third parties like Amazon Prime that don’t share billing data.
Oct 8Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter reports that Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson has built a personal podcast, Most Interesting Thing, booking guests like OpenAI’s Sam Altman entirely outside the newsroom he oversees.
Oct 7Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter reports that Apple Podcasts has replaced its regional human-curated recommendation feed with an algorithm, citing Podnews, moving the app closer to how Spotify and YouTube surface shows to listeners.
Oct 4Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter reports that Daniel Scharff turned informal CPG meetups into Startup CPG, now a 40,000-member Slack community with roughly 70 events a year, podcasts, newsletters and over 100 sponsors.
Oct 1Simon Owens reports that Fox News is winning linear TV ratings while also building out digital-only media properties, a growing podcast network, and leveraging its ownership stakes in Tubi and Roku.
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