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The Podcast Academy, the professional podcast organization, has announced the nominees for its fifth annual Awards for Excellence in Audio (The Ambies). Hosted by comedian Tig Notaro, the Ambies will take place on Monday, March 31 at the McCormick Convention Center in Chicago. The ceremony will be livestreamed by Twitch from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. CT.
The ceremony will highlight 199 nominees across 28 categories with winners to be selected by voting members of The Podcast Academy — in addition to a Governors Award. Eligible new members will be able to vote to determine this year’s winners if applications are submitted by Feb. 20. Go to: www.thepodcastacademy.com/join-the-community.
Jon Stewart, Rainn Wilson and Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Wesley Morris are among the nominees for best podcast host or hosts. Bowen Yang, Jane Lynch and Tisha Campbell are among the nominees for best performance in audio fiction.
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“As we celebrate the fifth Annual Awards for Excellence in Audio, we are excited to announce this year’s nominees, whose work continues to push the boundaries of storytelling and innovation in the audio space,” Christy Mirabal, chairperson of The Podcast Academy, said in a statement. “This milestone year for the Podcast Academy is a reflection of the incredible growth and creativity within the podcasting community.”
“I’m so excited to host The Podcast Academy’s fifth Annual Awards for Excellence in Audio,” exclaimed Notaro. “It’s like being at the Oscars, only it’s celebrating those of us who are good at talking into a microphone while wearing sweatpants in our closets with pillows on our windows. Take that Meryl. And Meryl, while I have your attention, would you be a guest on my podcast?”
Here are the nominees for The 2025 Ambies in categories most relevant to the music and entertainment industry.
Podcast of the year
99% Invisible: Not Built for This
Beyond All Repair
Cement City
Dragon Age: Vows & Vengeance
Empire City: The Untold Origin Story of the NYPD
Faraway
Fire Escape
Hot White Heist 2
Hysterical
Throughline
Best podcast host or hosts
Diallo Riddle and Blake ‘LUXXURY’ Robin – One Song
Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach and Amanda Doyle – We Can Do Hard Things
Jon Stewart – The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Rainn Wilson – Radio Rental
Ronald Young Jr. – Weight for It
Sam Sanders – The Sam Sanders Show
Wesley Morris – The Wonder of Stevie
Best original score and music supervision
Dan Leone – Ripple
Daniel Lloyd-Evans, Louis Nanke-Mannell and Toby Matimong – Extrasensory
Deron Johnson – Dungeon Masters
Jonathan Pfarr, Carson Graham and Bobby Mota – Celebrity Pets
Peter Nashel, Ross Hopman, Gio Lobato, Dana Hom, Brad Fischer, Jordan Lieb, Lucas Villemur and Lindsay Dievert – Hammerless: A True Crime Podcast in a Fantasy World
Skyler Gerdeman, Martin Lynabel, Nicholas Alexander, Max O’Brien and Caroline Thornham – Kill List
Stro Elliot and Eric Gersen – Historical Records
Best production and sound design
Casandra Tinajero and Andrés Bahena – Nocturno: Tales From the Shadows
Jeremy S. Bloom – Hot White Heist 2
Kenny Kusiak and George Drabing Hicks – The Confessions of Anthony Raimondi
Michelle Macklem – Girl v. Horse
Realm – Narcosis
Sagafilm and Skybound Entertainment – Impact Winter Season 3
Ted Bonnitt – Hindsight: The Day Before
Best entertainment podcast
Infamous
Lemme Say This
Rattled & Shook
Scamfluencers
Split Screen: Kid Nation
The Road to Joni
The Wonder of Stevie
Best society and culture podcast
Hysterical
In Retrospect with Susie Banikarim and Jessica Bennett
Inheriting
Mind Your Own with Lupita Nyong’o
My Divo
Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Weight For It
Best podcast for kids
Culture Kids
Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmest
Historical Records
Mysteries About True Histories
PJ Library Presents: Beyond the Bookcase
Skylar & Bones – Funny Stories for Kids!
Wow in the World
Best Spanish language narrative podcast
¡No Vengan!
Greal: El Secreto de las Ocho Llaves
Hechos Reales
HUMO: Murder and Silence in El Salvador
No quieren que sepas
Pantallas & Mentiras [Screens & Lies]
Pétrea
Best sports podcast
30 for 30 Podcasts
Broomgate
Good Game with Sarah Spain
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Shadowball: The Rise of the Black Athlete
The Raven
The Rich Eisen Show
Best comedy podcast
Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend
Hot White Heist 2
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Scam Goddess
SmartLess
We’re Here to Help
Who Replaced Avril Lavigne? Joanne McNally Investigates
Best indie podcast
Sightings
The Insurgence: Sheriffs
The Man Who Calculated Death
The Nightingale of Iran
The People’s Recorder
The TMI Project Story Hour
What Happened in Skinner
Best indie podcast host or hosts
Dallas Taylor – Twenty Thousand Hertz
Deja Perkins and Purbita Saha – Bring Birds Back
Jill Jonassen – The Cost of Extremism
Kate McCoy and Kevin Corbett – Horrorwood: True Crime in Tinseltown
Lisa Phillips – From Now On
Lisa Woolfork – STITCH PLEASE
Susan Lambert Hatem and Sharon Johnson – 80s TV Ladies
Best interview podcast
American Masters: Creative Spark
Apple News in Conversation
Overlooked: Women’s Health Can’t Wait
Thanks Dad with Ego Nwodim
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
The Integrated Schools Podcast
Tomorrow’s Cure
Best performance in audio fiction
Bowen Yang, Cynthia Nixon, Shannon Woodward, Jane Lynch, Jesse James Keitel, Sarah Steele, Ian McKellen, Raul Esparza, Sara Ramírez, Joel Kim Booster, Bianca Del Rio, Cheyenne Jackson, Abbi Jacobson, Stephanie Beatriz, Katya Zamolodchikova, Trixie Mattel, Yvie Oddly, Jane Krakowski, Sandra Oh, and Tony Kushner – Hot White Heist 2
Caitlin Stasey, Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts, David Yow, Caroline Morahan, Guinevere Turner, Elizabeth Halpern, Travis Harmon, Brad Griffith, James Bacon, Jameson Cush, Jonathan Shockley and Ayla Glass – The Skies Are Watching
Fredi Bernstein, Cody Wilkins and Dana Domenick – The Box
Mikki Hernandez, Toby Meuli, Geri-Nikol Love, Rachel Kylian – Ominous Thrill
Ruth Righi – Winnie Taylor’s 4th & Inches
Sanaa Lathan – The Justice
Tisha Campbell – Snoriezzz
After taking over Genesis frontman duties for the gone-solo Peter Gabriel in the mid-’70s, drummer-singer Phil Collins had gradually built up his popularity, his industry renown and his pop songwriting prowess over the course of a decade. He’d become a solo star after breaking off from his group in the early-’80s, but continued to gather momentum with the band as well, and also emerged as a go-to collaborator for much of the era’s pop and rock aristocracy. By 1985, it would all come together in one year that saw Collins absolutely flood the zone with hit singles, big collaborations, bigger performances, headline-capturing pop culture moments and even an acting turn on TV’s hottest primetime drama.
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On this Vintage Pop Stardom episode of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast, we look back at Collins’ singular 1985, and examine how an unassuming, plain-looking drummer became one of the most ubiquitous pop stars of the MTV generation. Host Andrew Unterberger is joined by Chris Molanphy of Slate and the Hit Parade podcast to talk all things Phil Collins, as Molanphy shares his memories of becoming a devout (if occasionally slightly abashed) Phil fan as a teen, and Unterberger explains how an unofficial New York-celebrated holiday — one coming up very soon on the calendar — expanded his own love for Phil as a young adult.
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We then dive all the way into the deep end on Collins’ 1985, which started with hits, peaked with hits and ended with even more hits — but in between, also included a gig on Miami Vice as Phil the Shill, appearances on both coasts’ Live Aid festivities (including with a quasi-reunited Led Zeppelin), and an Oscars snub so galling it still rankles the nice-guy pop star to this day. And of course, we do get into those hits, including the agony and the ecstasy of “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” the possibly purloined groove and confusing (in more ways than one) title of “Sussudio,” and the underappreciated knife-in-the-gut divorce rock of “Separate Lives.” We end with the unlikely question: Was Phil Collins actually the Greatest Pop Star of 1985?
Check it out above — along with a YouTube playlist of some of the most memorable moments of Phil’s 1985, all of which are discussed in the podcast — and subscribe to the Greatest Pop Stars podcast on Apple Music or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts) for weekly discussions every Thursday about all things related to pop stardom!
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Rick Springfield has had a long enough career to accumulate a few stories. Ahead of the Feb. 14 release of Big Hits: Rick Springfield’s Greatest Hits, Volume 2, a collection of tracks from his 1999 album Karma to Automatic from 2023, Springfield told Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast about partnering with Sammy Hagar on Sammy’s Beach Bar Rum drinks (and writing the song “Party at the Beach Bar,” which appears on the new greatest hits album), his early musical influences (such as The Easybeats and guitarist Hank Marvin) and writing “The Man That Never Was,” a song from the Dave Grohl-led Sound City: Reel to Reel soundtrack, released in 2013, that also appears on the new collection.
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The hard-rocking “The Man That Never Was” started as a track recorded by Springfield and the members of Foo Fighters, he recalls. “Dave wanted everyone to kind of get together that was in the documentary and all write songs. So I got together with the Foo Fighters in the studio, and we put together this track that was a really good track. It was a riff that Dave originally came up with, and we kind of fleshed it out.” Grohl then handed Springfield a CD with the track they just recorded and said, “OK, now go write a song.”
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Springfield then continued working on the then-unnamed track with veteran bass player Matt Bissonette, most recently a member of Elton John’s band. Bissonette had the idea to write lyrics based on an actual story from World War II about an elaborate plan by British intelligence officers to trick the Germans about the Allied armies’ invasion of Sicily. (The operation was captured in 2010 book Operation Mincemeat, and made into a movie of the same name in 2021.) “We’re both great history buffs,” Springfield says.
Working with Grohl and company was tame compared to Springfield’s experience performing for U.S. troops during the Vietnam War in the late ‘60s. More than a decade before Springfield topped the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart with “Jessie’s Girl” — one of 21 appearances on the tally — he was performing with his first professional band when an American promoter hired the group to perform in Vietnam. He had no idea what was in store.
“It was a war zone,” he recalls. “I’d never been to one. And we played for the troops in the on the back of trucks just before they went up. You know, we’d get [flown on helicopters] into fire bases, which is where the grunts would operate from, and go out into the jungle and just start fighting. We’d play in those places, and we get rocketed and mortared, and they’d have to shut the show.”
At one point, the base came under fire when the band’s bass player was lying unconscious in a dentist’s chair, ready to get some teeth pulled. “They started saying, ‘That’s incoming, gentlemen, better get to the bunkers.’ So we didn’t know what to do,” Springfield says. “He was all hooked up, so we left him and went into the bunkers. And when we came back, he was still there. So it was all good, but he didn’t know he’d he’d been left to the the wiles of the Viet Cong.”
During a visit to a Navy encampment at Marble Mountain outside De Nang, U.S. forces came under attack. “You see tracers going off through the sky,” says Springfield. “I was throwing mortars. You couldn’t do this stuff now. First of all, it’s insane to do it. And secondly, you wouldn’t be allowed. But back then, it was the Wild West.”
Listen to the entire interview with Rick Springfield using the embedded Spotify player below, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music, Podbean or Everand.
Even though Kendrick Lamar has five No. 1s on the Billboard Hot 100 among 88 hits on the chart, there were still viewers who tuned in to the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show seemingly unaware of the depth of the rapper’s decade-plus catalog. So Lamar was smart to lean into his releases of 2024 — […]
It’s been a near-year-long road to the Big Game for Kendrick Lamar, whose 2024 crescendoed from March onward, to the point where the rapper — who had long seemed conflicted about the idea of crossover success — ended the year as our editorial staff’s pick for the year’s Greatest Pop Star. He’s picked up right […]
Sarah Barthel of Phantogram is glad the band got its start before short-form video apps became the de facto route to break new music. “It’s really hard for me to understand TikTok,” she tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast ahead of a headlining tour supporting the album Memory of a Day that runs through Feb. […]
We’re now over a month in 2025, and it’s been an absolutely packed beginning to the year in pop stardom. We’ve already gotten plenty big album drops, tour announcements, breakout hits and viral moments — and then of course, in the last week alone, we’ve gotten two major star-studded events in the FireAid benefit concert […]
While there were plenty of headlines from the 2025 Grammy Awards — Beyoncé finally wins album of the year! Chappell Roan wins best new artist! Kendrick Lamar wins record and song of the year for a Drake diss track! — there was also plenty of news that emerged around the show. Before Sunday night’s show, […]
The National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) announced on Tuesday (Feb. 4) that it would issue takedown notices to Spotify for 2,500 podcast episodes on the platform that allegedly contain “unlicensed musical works” from 19 NMPA member publishers.
“Spotify has thousands of unlicensed songs in its podcasts, which it has done nothing to remedy. This takedown action comes as no surprise, we have warned of this issue for some time,” says NMPA president and CEO David Israelite of the takedown notices. According to the NMPA, this is just the start of the takedown requests, and the demands will continue to roll out.
This is the latest of many retaliatory actions the NMPA has taken against Spotify since last March, when Spotify significantly cut payments to NMPA’s members for premium subscriptions. By adding audiobooks into its premium subscription tiers, Spotify argued it qualified for a discounted royalty rate, known as “bundle,” given it would now have to pay for books and music from the same price tag that was once just for music. Israelite said at the time that he would “declare war” on Spotify for this move, and launched a number of actions to fight back.
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This included sending cease and desist notices for podcast and video content on its platform that were allegedly infringing on music IP; a legislative proposal, asking for the overhaul of the statutory license; complaints to the FTC and nine state attorneys general; and more. Around the same time, the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) also fought back by filing a lawsuit against Spotify for the move to bundle premium subscriptions, calling it “unlawful.”
On Sunday, Jan. 26, the Spotify bundling issue was brought back into the headlines when Universal Music Group announced a new direct deal with Spotify which included changes both to the recorded music and publishing royalty rates. This marked the first direct deal between Spotify and a publisher since the passage of the Music Modernization Act (MMA), and sources close to the deal say that the agreement included improved remuneration for UMG’s publishing company, Universal Music Publishing Group, and its songwriters.
Still, all other publishers, most of which are members of the NMPA, remain on the baseline bundle rate. The NMPA told Billboard at the time that the deal was “good news for the entire industry” and that “a rising tide lifts all boats, and this signals that Spotify is coming back to the table,” but the organization also added it had no plans to stop any of the actions it had already set in motion against Spotify, and neither did the MLC.
A few days later, on Jan. 29, the MLC’s lawsuit against Spotify was dismissed, with a federal judge saying that Spotify’s move to bundling was supported by “unambiguous” regulations. The judge is not giving the MLC a chance to refile and said the law is clear. Still, if the MLC wants to, it can challenge the ruling at the federal appeals court.
These takedown requests make it clear that the NMPA is not ready to bury the hatchet with Spotify. Among the 2,500 takedown requests are podcasts that allegedly contain unlicensed musical works from publishers like ABKCO, Anthem Entertainment, Big Machine Music, BMG, Concord Music Publishing, Downtown Music Publishing, Hipgnosis Songs Group, Kobalt, Mayimba Music, peermusic, Primary Wave Music, Reservoir, The Royalty Network, Inc., Sony Music Publishing, Spirit Music Group, Ultra Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, and Wixen Music Publishing.
Israelite adds: “Podcasts are a growing source of revenue for songwriters and publishers, and it is essential that podcasts provide lawfully produced entertainment. This is not hard to do, and Spotify knows, and has known, how to fix this problem for their users. We hope podcast hosts will stand up for their fellow creators and demand that Spotify do better. Spotify will stop at nothing to undervalue songwriters on behalf of its bottom line. Look no further than its recent bundling scheme and its ill-conceived appeal of songwriters’ rate increase in CRB III. We will not stop until the platform fixes its podcast problem, and all other areas where songwriters are not earning what they deserve.”
On February 8, 2015, nearly everyone in attendance at the Staples Center in Los Angeles expected the top prize at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards to go to Beyoncé. The pop and R&B superstar had changed the game 14 months earlier with the surprise drop of her self-titled album, topping the Billboard 200, drawing unanimous raves and dominating the culture for the entire year to follow. But when it came time for Prince to announce the winner for album of the year that night, a different solo “B” name was called – confusing many in the crowd and watching at home, infuriating one easily excited fellow superstar, and setting into motion many of the narratives that continue to define the Grammys a decade later.
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This week, on the Greatest Pop Stars podcast, we debut our Great Moments in Pop History series, looking at some of the pivotal moments throughout the decades that have come to define our perception of pop music, pop culture and pop stardom. On the precipice of the upcoming Grammys – airing this Sunday (Feb. 2), with one of the most loaded nominee classes in recent memory – we flash back to 10 years earlier, when one of 2025’s preeminent nominees (and the biggest overall winner in Grammy history) lost an album of the year race she was the heavy favorite to win, with Beck’s acclaimed-but-less-impactful Morning Phase instead taking home top honors. It’s a snub the Recording Academy still has not yet made good on, with Beyoncé being nominated and losing in the category twice in the years since.
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Host Andrew Unterberger is joined by Billboard executive digital director (and Pop Shop Podcast co-host) Katie Atkinson – who was in the building that memorable night – to recall everything there is to recall about the 2015 Grammys. We start with everything else of note that happened during those Grammys – like Sam Smith’s early-career-peak night of dominance, the cavalcade of pop megastars performing (but somehow playing zero of their signature hits) and an A-plus-list trio of legends united for one time only. We also run through some of our favorite less-starry performances of the night, including Hozier with a towering Annie Lennox, and Sia with both a wig and Kristen Wiig.
And then, we dig into the nitty gritty of Beck beating Beyoncé – and Kanye nearly crashing the stage in protest – and the impact it all ended up having on the Grammys’ next decade. We remember the double-shock of Beck’s longshot victory combined with Kanye’s oh-no-not-again fakeout, and give context for how bizarre it was (and remains) that Beck, of all people, became the face of Grammy-approved establishment rock. Then, of course, we set our sights on the 2025 awards – where Beyoncé is once again an album of the year nominee, for 2024’s Cowboy Carter – and ask: Is it finally time for the Queen to take home the crown? (And if she finally does this year, will it actually be… kinda weird?)
Check it out above — along with a YouTube playlist of some of the most memorable moments from the 2015 awards — and subscribe to the Greatest Pop Stars podcast on Apple Music or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts) for weekly discussions every Thursday about all things related to pop stardom!