- General
- November 10, 2020
- 5 minutes read
Spotify Buys Megaphone
Daniel Ek, CEO, Spotify. Photo credit: rsepulveda, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Music streaming company Spotify has announced that it’s reached a deal…
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| Daniel Ek, CEO, Spotify. Photo credit: rsepulveda, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 |
Music streaming company Spotify has announced that it’s reached a deal to acquire Megaphone, a popular podcast advertising and publishing platform. Spotify is reported to be paying $235 million to acquire Megaphone in a deal that’ll unlock the music streaming company’s recently launched ‘Streaming Ad Insertion’ technology for podcasts hosted on Megaphone.
Megaphone marks the latest in a series of podcast acquisitions by Spotify, after the Swedish music streaming company had spent nearly $600 million to acquire four podcast companies, namely Gimlet Media, Parcast, The Ringer, and Anchor.
Megaphone was launched in 2015 by The Slate Group, an online publishing company that’s known for popular publications such as Slate and ForeignPolicy.com. It hosts podcasts for a number of high-profile media brands including Buzzfeed, Vox, and The Wall Street Journal. Initially, Megaphone, which was formerly known as Panoply Media, produced podcasts for other companies before later shuttering its editorial efforts to focus on back-end services such as hosting and ad distribution.
Before now, Spotify already had an existing partnership with Megaphone and made use of its hosting services. Now having acquired the company, Spotify says it’ll better integrate with Megaphone with a focus on advertising tools for podcasters.
Spotify is riding the wave of a nascent podcasting market that’s projected for huge growth in the coming years. The company has already clinched a stronghold in the market by acquiring a network of podcast shows from companies as well as celebrities like Joe Rogan, which Spotify signed to an exclusive podcast deal worth $100 million.
Spotify is focused on building a library of podcasting content as well as back-end tools to host and monetize podcasts. After gaining dominance in the music streaming sector, the company has apparently seen the podcasting space as the next one to conquer. Spotify isn’t alone in looking to conquer the podcasting market and is vying with competitors such as Apple for market share.
Recently, Apple was reported to be looking to acquire Wondery, a popular podcast network, for a price of up to $400 million.
