Spotify’s Podcast Aggregation Play
That’s why we announced today the strategic acquisitions of two podcasting companies, Gimlet and Anchor. These companies serve two different, distinct roles in the industry. Gimlet is one of the best content creators in the world, with unique, celebrated podcast shows like Homecoming, which was recently adapted into a critically acclaimed show on Amazon Prime, and the internet culture hit Reply All. And Anchor has completely reimagined the path to audio creation, enabling creation for the next generation of podcasters worldwide — 15 billion hours of content on the platform during Q4. These companies are best-in-class and together we will offer differentiated and original content. Gimlet and Anchor will position us to become the leading platform for podcast creators around the world and the leading producer of podcasts.
The shift in purpose from “music” to “audio” is, for now anyways, about podcasts. And, at least from a user perspective, it is a natural extension: playing music and playing podcasts entail downloading or streaming some sort of digital file, decoding it on a device, and playing it back through some sort of speaker. That one involved melodies and harmonies and the other primarily the spoken word (although there are plenty of music podcasts) is, from a technical perspective, a distinction without meaning.
From a value chain perspective, though, music and podcasts could not be more different[…]
[…]
This importance of centralization to an advertising business model is best seen by the fact that Spotify drove €542 million ($616 million) in advertising revenue last year, far outpacing all of podcasting, even though half of the company’s users didn’t hear any ads at all.
[…]
To that end, it is worth considering if this is good for the podcasting industry generally. After all, to return to the web analogy, the price of the Internet finally monetizing effectively was the shift of content to centralized platforms like Facebook.
See also: Accidental Tech Podcast, Core Intuition, Download, Exponent, Recode.
Update (2021-10-19): Marco Arment:
Gimlet, after the Spotify acquisition in 2019: “The shows that are out there now are going to continue to be available everywhere.”
Heavyweight, which was “out there” then, is now a Spotify exclusive.
Is anyone surprised?
