Spotify reveals more about its podcast plans in 2019

Besides having a party with posh food and Rita Ora, Spotify’s presence at the CES technology show in Las Vegas this week has seen podcasts loom large. We reported earlier this week on its announcement of a new, exclusive deal with journalist and broadcaster Jemele Hill to launch a new podcast on Spotify. Now the company has been talking to various outlets about its plans for podcasts in 2019. TechCrunch learned that the streaming service “has been selling its own advertisements in its original podcasts since mid-2018 year”, and was also told that hip-hop show The Joe Budden Podcast “had its highest streaming day ever after joining Spotify”. That’s a message Spotify will be keen to get out there: it runs against any assumptions that signing an exclusive deal with a single service would reduce the audience for podcasts that were previously available everywhere. The piece also suggests that Spotify is deciding how to handle the podcast-advertising side, in terms of digital ad-insertion technology: whether it builds in-house, or buys a company from outside. Another message that Spotify is doubling down on at CES: that (in the words of comms boss Dustee Jenkins) “people who listen to podcasts also consume more music”.

Source: Music Ally