I wonder how much of this is led by the likes of paying $200 million to sign up Joe Rogan or $25 million for Harry and Megan. That's a big chunk of change. 9,000 employees too - 17% of the workforce out the door.
Seems like their headline gambles didn't work but googling suggests that the podcast listener market increased 10% in the last year so I think they'll probably try again.
I suspect this means that Spotify subscribers are listening to plenty of podcasts, but perhaps podcasts failed to bring new listeners into Spotify.
I'd say that gamble in particular worked. Not so sure others will though, audio books feels like it will be a dud.
Podcasting has also been called the slowest growing new medium in the history of new media. I can't imagine it's earning its keep, relative to those big initial payouts. Meanwhile, the shows that are brought into subscription-only world systematically fail to attract new listeners; it is hard to use podcast exclusives to grow market share. Especially the talking head variety, which exist in abundance outside the pay wall.
Will it pay off? Probably not. But is 25% a big share? Yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Music
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Play_Music
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify
The problem for Spotify is that they need a far bigger share of the market to be able to have negotiating power against the 3 record labels that they have to buy the music from. Apple/Alphabet/Amazon do not care as much because re-selling the music at cost or even as a loss leader is not a big deal to them.
But I agree that podcastings growth has been very slow. I think that there are a lot of factors influencing that. The biggest in my opinion is that listening to a podcast is more intimate than any other media (including broadcast radio) and that factor both slows uptake and decreases churn. Not a marketer though so just making that up.
I still think it was not a smart move...
Its like that blue haired streamer going from twitch to what ever the msft clone of it was.
Yes Spotify is super popular but I hear more and more people moving away from it to for example apple music or other services.
They don't focus on the core anymore that much.
For example they are super late on the lossless audio train.
Yes you can hear a difference from spotify and apple music. I tested it with all my colleagues in the office. You can clearly hear that apple music or tidal sounds better then the spotify versions.
And for those lossless is a massive difference.
Especially the ones with the Dolby Atmos (Spatial Audio) mixes. Even if you don’t have super high-res headphones, the difference in dynamic range is pretty obvious, and it makes songs just feel more alive.
I don’t have any stats to back this up but it seems that Apple Music has at least managed to somewhat buck the trend of the “loudness wars” with the masters they use. I wonder if this is actually published or written about anywhere…
I was once remaking some hiphop beats from there samples and you can hear the difference even more when you have a remade beat (its not 100% the same) you can hear what the compression has done to the sample.
I will venture that most people don't notice or care.
I recently ditched both Apple Music and Spotify and am using Youtube Music, which comes with Youtube Premium.
Sony xm4 as headphones.
Fwiw there is not a single scientific listening test ever where participants were able to tell the difference between high bitrate mp3 and wav. Not even in perfect studio conditions.
How much audience did they fail to convert? How much harder did that make building momentum?
9000 employees and couldn’t get playback to work…