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Spotify’s Daniel Ek Lays out the podcast plan — Annotated
This week Spotify announced the purchase of Bill Simmons’ The Ringer. They also held a Q4 conference call which pretty much lays out a roadmap for Spotify’s podcasting initiative and more broadly, the potential impact on the entire podcast ecosystem. Lets run through it using comments from CEO Daniel Ek on the earnings call.
EK: We’re very pleased with the overall growth of podcasting, with 200% year-over-year growth in engagement. And that’s a global phenomenon.
The growth certainly matches their effort onboarding thousands upon thousands of podcast titles along with the purchase just about one year ago of Gimlet, Parcast and Anchor. And now The Ringer, with its rich content portfolio including its popular web content.
- About Ringer
EK: “With the Ringer, we’re basically getting the new ESPN”
Bill Simmons must love that line considering the acrimonious departure from ESPN a few years back. This gives Spotify an instant-on in the significant sports category.
2. Podcast monetization is very much on the radar
EK: “I think it’s fair to say that we’re just very early in the monetization of podcasts overall. And as it relates to third-party content i.e. content that we’ve just licensed and put on the…
