SPOTIFY EYES
GIMLET MEDIA

Rumors are boiling over regarding Spotify's possible acquisition of premiere podcasting company Gimlet Media, and what this new investment—reported to be in the $200 million range—means for the streaming service.

Spotify has already wholeheartedly embraced podcasting as a content feature, which by all accounts is a smart move to buffer the challenging economics of music licensing for their 200m active user base. It's also a savvy tilt towards a burgeoning trend: an estimated 73 million people tuned in monthly to a podcast in 2018, up 2%, or nearly 1.8 million people, from 2017, according to Edison Research.

The massive adoption of smart speakers and connected cars along with the ubiquity of mobile devices is also powering the rapid overall growth of podcasting.

Perhaps cornering the market on marquee podcasting talent allows Spotify to stack popular features behind their paywall to lure new subscribers with a more robust offering of favorite shows. Gimlet is currently the producer of 25 podcasts that are downloaded 12m times a month, with their most notable podcasts being Reply All and StartUp.

Spotify and Pandora are the #1 and #2 apps, respectively, that offer podcasts. With Sirius XM's acquisition of Pandora last year, are these companies squaring off to create the world's best podcast discovery engines? And how does the expansion of ad revenues figure into the overall decision?