“I think you're right in calling out the overpaying and overinvesting,” CEO Daniel Ek said in response to an analyst question regarding podcasts on the company's Q1 earnings call in April.
If the industry’s first wave was characterized by high-flying M&A and development deals, this phase has podcasting hunkering down. But Spotify has been making it clear for a while now - both implicitly and explicitly - that its days of massive spending on podcasts are over.Īs discussed in Variety Intelligence Platform’s special report “ Talking Audio,” the podcast industry seems to be entering its “second wave” as digital advertising spend retreats and tech companies pare back investment on show development in search of profitability for investors.
Of course, it’s also not an ideal look for a company that saw its losses on podcasting increase in the past year and has sunk $1 billion-plus into building an in-demand podcast destination.
