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Spotify spent $230 million on Gimlet, but leaked data shows the podcast studio has lagged behind others at the audio giant — www.businessinsider.com

Well, well, well, what do you know? Apparently you can't just throw a load of money at a problem and expect it to work - sometimes all those dollar bills cause the wheels to slip and clog up the engine. Business Insider reports that just such an occurrence has happened at Spotify with one of its star podcast studios Gimlet, the company behind the Reply All podcast in addition to several other successes.

The issue seems to be that Gimlet wasn't necessarily a great fit for Spotify. Its podcasts tend to be exhaustively researched (though not always) and take a long time to bed in with listeners. Its focus on long-term, high value audience members didn't necessarily satiate Spotify's hunger for huge listener numbers.

It also seems like the acquisition was more a statement of intent from Spotify than a fully fleshed out plan: 'Instead, Spotify largely left Gimlet alone — allowing it to keep its Brooklyn office and, per multiple sources, a separate Slack domain until a few months ago. Spotify "didn't know what they wanted the partnership to be," said one former staffer. "There wasn't a clear strategic vision around how the two companies would actually merge."'

Substack scoops up paid social app Cocoon's team — www.axios.com

Do newsletters need a social network aspect to them? Following Twitter's integration with Revue it seems that other newsletter platforms are following suit. Substack are betting on "consumers' willingness to pay for subscriptions and their dissatisfaction with Facebook and its big rivals".

Advertisers spend $2.6bn on misinformation websites, study finds — www.campaignlive.co.uk

One here from Campaign that should put the wind up advertisers - but also speaks to the opportunity for legit news sites: for every $2.16 spent on news websites in the US, $1 is spent on faux news sites that peddle misinformation.

What are the pros and cons of hybrid events? The Drum ran its first two — www.thedrum.com

Event-based companies have been so badly hurt by the pandemic - but they've used the opportunity to reinvent themselves. For The Drum, Olivia Atkins has taken a look at what the hybrid physical-digital event means for the future of those companies.

Podcast throwback:

Popbitch co-founder Camilla Wright on creating a niche in the celebrity gossip market — voices.media

This was a really fun one! Popbitch co-founder Camilla Wright tells us about the origins of the influential celebrity gossip site, whether celebs ever try to plant stories about themselves, and the romanticism of clandestine meetings in dark pubs.

Help us cover our costs with a Ko-Fi subscription — ko-fi.com

My microphone swivel arm has broken. When I record at the moment the mic leans precariously against the monitor, and threatens to fall directly on my precious fingers and joints. Woe is me. The new one is already on order - but if you feel like investing in Media Voices as both a free podcast and a media analysis business, please consider chucking some cash our way once in a while.