Spotify has acquired two other podcast companies as it continues its drive to dominate the world of spoken word content.
The music streaming service has announced that it will buy Chartable and Podsights, which are two of the largest podcast attribution and marketing companies, according to The Verge.
Chartable is a podcast analytics platform that allows publishers to "grow their podcast audience through promotional attribution tools and audience insights," while Podsights is an advertising reach measurement service that helps advertisers measure the performance of your podcast ads.
In a blog post, Spotify said the acquisitions will help companies that advertise through podcasts better measure ad performance and help publishers grow their audience and grow their businesses.
While these are Spotify's first acquisitions this year, they're the latest in a long line of spoken word purchases, and the company says it believes "the opportunity for digital audio and podcasting remains significant."
It's a strategy that appears to be paying off for Spotify. In 2020, it purchased the distribution rights to The Joe Rogan Experience, which quickly became the platform's most popular podcast, though that particular show has caused controversy on the streaming service in recent weeks.
Analysis: Is Spotify missing any tricks?
Spotify's heavy investment in the podcast space appears to be working to expand the streaming platform's reach, but we can't help but wonder: what about music?
Despite all the hype around podcasts on Spotify, there's still no word on its long-promised level of high-quality streaming, Spotify HiFi. The service was due to launch in 2021, bringing CD-quality lossless audio streaming to the company's extensive music catalog, delivering what Spotify said is one of the most requested new features by its subscribers.
In 2022, there is no sign of Spotify HiFi, and CEO Daniel Ek even admits he doesn't know when the service will launch.
Meanwhile, competing services like Apple Music and Amazon Music HD have been offering Hi-Res Audio streams since mid-2021 at no additional cost to their subscribers. Apple Music also introduced spatial audio streaming last year, which it says has been a huge success and allows listeners to listen to their favorite songs in immersive virtual surround sound.
Apple Music is also expected to launch a new service dedicated to classical music this year. Lines of code related to something called "Apple Classical" were recently discovered in the beta version of Apple Music for Android, suggesting that a release date might be near.
We already knew that Apple planned to release a standalone classical music app, after the company bought streaming service Primephonic in 2021, at which time Apple said it planned to offer Apple Music subscribers Primephonic playlists and exclusive audio content. .
If Apple Classical launches soon (and with an Apple event on March 8 in the charts, we may not have long to wait), subscribers will be able to search for classical music by repertoire and composer. The service could also alleviate some of the problems finding classical music on streaming services; Categorizing classical music is quite complicated and it can be difficult to find exactly what you are looking for on classical music streaming services.
With support for Lossless and Spatial Audio, and a new focus on curating music for specific genres, Apple is clearly focused on providing the best possible music listening experience for its subscribers.
Relying heavily on podcasts, Spotify remains the most popular music streaming platform in the world and is our favorite choice thanks to its excellent search function, simple design, and great playlists.
For its part, Spotify claims that listening to podcasts has not significantly reduced the time users spend on music. In a 2020 study, Spotify found that new podcast listeners spent 20% more time listening to music and "slightly" reduced the time they spent listening to music.
If these habits have continued into 2022, Spotify's push for podcasts will only encourage its users to spend more time on the platform, rather than trying to squeeze podcasts into their music listening time.
Still, if premium streams really are one of the most requested features by users, Spotify would do well to listen; otherwise, you could lose those subscribers to Apple, which offers its own library of podcasts.