Vincenzo Camuccini, 1806, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Deals/Companies

• Entercom acquired Podcorn for $22.5M ($14.6 cash with a performance earnout).  Podcorn calls itself an “influencer marketplace” and provides a self-service platform for podcasters to connect directly to advertisers. Marketers can either self manage as well, or work directly with Podcorn employees.  Podcorn charges a 10% platform service fee.Podcorn is a relatively modest way for Entercom to bolt on some podcast ad tech on top of their previous content acquisitions.  The platform exploits the long tail – brands can find niche creators at scale and smaller creators can find advertisers.  

• Sweden based Acast, a podcast host with monetization and growth services, announced through a press release that it will “conduct a review of potential strategic and financial initiatives including…an initial public offering and listing of the company’s shares.” This Inside Radio piece has that story along with a slew of growth data from Acast.

• Podchaser acquired Podcharts (cross app chart tracker) and Podrover (review aggregator) rolling together companies that provide marketing and data services to podcast creators, and, of course, start with the popular prefix Pod.

• Inside radio reports on the strategic vision of iHeart’s senior management post Triton acquisition.

• The Amazon/Wondery deal closed and Hernan Lopez exited the company.  While Wondery is officially an Amazon Music play, it also carries value for Amazon’s Audible business and Amazon Studios – not to mention Echo/Alexa.

Products and Content

• Apple News:  Apple switches its labelling from “Subscribe” to “Follow” for podcasts.  Podnews broke the story and pointed out that several other significant players including Stitcher, Spotify, and Amazon (Music and Audible) already use Follow. Tom Webster of Edison cheers the notion that this change will clarify that these podcasts are free of charge, and will clear the way for the word “Subscribe” to apply to premium podcasts only.  I will attest to the importance of clear and simple labels — in the early 2000’s at Yahoo!, we changed a front page link from “Astrology” to “Horoscopes” and it drove the click rate through the roof!   

• Apple slimmed it’s smart speaker line up to just the $99 HomePod mini by discontinuing the weaker selling $299 HomePod (which according to reviews had great sound quality).  While the HomePod Mini is cheap compared to the HomePod, it is premium priced compared to comparable products from category leaders Amazon (Echo Dot) and Google (Nest Mini).  According to Edison’s 2021 Infinite Dial Report (see below) the HomePod line carries just 1% of the smart speaker market.

• Twitter Spaces audio chat rooms (aka Twitter’s Clubhouse) will launch broadly in April. Given the interest and connection graph already built into Twitter, many expect it will grow quickly and become the odds on category favorite despite Clubhouse’s head start with tens of millions of users.

• For some new content, check out Podcast Business Journal’s running list of New Podcasts. 

Research/Strategy

Edison Research / Triton Infinite Dial delivered highly anticipated market research news this week. You can watch the full presentation here, and see the Slides); 

The 2021 Infinite Dial is drawn from a statistically significant survey driven from 1,507 phone interviews conducted primarily in January of this year.

Highlights include:

• The Online Audio audience continues to grow:  68% of the US population, or 193 Million monthly consumers are online audio listeners;  91%, or 176M listen weekly for an average of 16 hours and 14 minutes per week; Both the weekly %/Monthly % and the time spent indicate significant engagement.

• Audio Services:  Pandora has 83% brand awareness while Spotify is second at 76%;  However, When asked if they currently ever use a service: Spotify drew 31% and Pandora just 18%.  I would love to see the Net Promoter Scores for Online Audio brands.

• Smart Speakers:  33% of Americans 12+ (94M people) own a smart speaker and its usually Alexa at 24% vs. Google Home at 13%; Apple HomePod rules the smart speaker roost in just 1% of households — but don’t discount the tens of millions of iPhone users talking with Siri every day.
  • A Majority (53%) of smart speaker households have two or more; and over a third (34%) have three or more.

• Podcasting:  78% of, or 222 Million, Americans say they know what podcasts are; 162M (57% in total, or 73% of those aware of podcasts), identify as listeners at some point.
  • Podcasts have 116M monthly listeners, reaching 41% the US population;
  • 80 Million Americans (28%) listen weekly. Weekly listeners average eight podcast episodes drawn from 5.1 shows each week. Weekly listeners comprise 69% of monthly listeners 
  • Since 2018, weekly listening behavior has grown at a CAGR of 18%: from 17M to 28M

End Notes

A couple of music podcast recommendations to close the letter. They embody the best of both documentary and evergreen podcasting:

• Final Sessions is a four episode documentary podcast leading up to the release of Harry Nilsson’s posthumous album Losst and Founnd. The Album and podcast were both released in November of 2019. If enjoy the series, you might also like the documentary film Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him)?

• A 2014 episode of the Unfictional Podcast from KCRW introduces us to Eden Ahbez who wrote the song Nature Boy. Nature Boy endures as one of the 20th Century’s most famous songs. You may recognize the definitive Nat King Cole version from 1948, or the version used in the film Moulin Rouge sung by David Bowie.