Anytime someone asks Netflix Chairman Reed Hastings about his interest in a new area, be it news, sports, gaming or music, he demurs that he sees a huge opportunity in his existing business. will finally make a splash in something new. (They would presumably have to share it with podcasters, but give up a smaller percentage.) They’ve seen the failure of Luminary and know a standalone podcast app is a bad idea, but if you could offer a service at $12 a month that comes with all the goodness of Spotify AND podcasts without ads? They could argue the increase is only for podcasts and keep that money away from the music folks. Dollars shift from radio to online audio slowly and Spotify is still, at its core, a subscription company. Spotify says podcasting will be a big advertising business, but that’s a long-term play. The whole reason Spotify is investing in podcasts is to create a new business where record labels don’t collect a huge share of its sales. Spotify will find a way to charge you for podcasts. Both companies are starting to invest more in, in original series and marketing, and I'd expect that to continue. Nor has Amazon’s Audible, which has been talking about podcasts for more than a decade but is still seen as an app for audiobooks. But it’s done almost nothing to innovate over the last 15 years. While there are still a lot of skeptics when it comes to this strategy, that kind of jump tends to get the attention of technology giants that don’t like to miss the next big thing.Īpple, of course, didn’t miss it. Spotify’s value soared from about $27 billion at the start of the year to more than $60 billion today, based largely on its investment in podcasting.
Please respond with your own predictions, so that I may share them in the new year!Īpple + Amazon will make a much bigger push into podcasts (and audio in general). There are certain behaviors we will carry with us, and some changes that are irreversible. To that end, I am going to devote this newsletter to a few thoughts on the year ahead.
This is not to say we will live this way forever, but there is also no going backwards. But here we are, nine months after "Corona II," and my hometown is experiencing record case numbers. Each one captures a couple of weeks of my life.īecause life during the pandemic feels so limited, so fraught, so redundant and so unusual, we assume it's just a phase. Looking back through my playlists from March and April, I named one "Corona I" and another "Corona II." In case you can't tell, I am not exactly creative with these titles I often name playlists after a single moment, trip or event. "When things go back to normal." I've heard that phrase time and time again this year I've even used it myself.
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