This is The Download, the most important business news from the world of podcasting, I'm Bryan Barletta.And I'm Evo Terra. Today we're covering the entirety of the podcast acquisition and funding that happened in 2021. Let's get started.Libsyn, the public podcast hosting platform founded in 2004 had an incredibly active year. They started by
raising 25 million dollars and they definitely put it to work, buying
assets.libsyn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/LSYN-
Auxbus-PRFinal.pdf%255C"> podcast creation platform Auxbus,
subscription and membership platform Glow for 1.2 million dollars,
host and announcer read self-serve advertising marketplace Advertisecast for 30 million dollars, and
longtail podcast advertising marketplace PODGO. With the leadership team from Advertisecast taking a more active role, and
former board chairman and investor Brad Tirpak coming on as CEO, Libsyn has a chance to really upgrade their image if they can match the momentum of their competitors and integrate a non-trivial amount of companies into one of the oldest podcast platforms still active.
Audacy, started the year as Entercom, and after 53 years, rebranded. Kicking it of by
acquiring longtail self-serve ad marketplace Podcorn for $22.5m. Podcorn gives Audacy micro-influencer reach contrasting with their higher-profile owned and repped shows. For
$40m, they also bought “an exclusive, perpetual license of WideOrbit’s digital audio streaming and podcasting technology and related assets and operations. Audacy will continue to operate WO Streaming under the name AmperWave.” Today,
Audacy builds and hosts their radio broadcast to podcasts solution with Triton Digital’s Omny Studio, owned by close competitor iHeartMedia, while
hosting their Cadence13 and Pineapple Street Media shows on Spotify’s Megaphone. For a company
reporting around $16m in revenue per quarter from podcasting alone, expect to see them fully migrate to AmperWave and bulk up the public offering for the platform.While Global, the UK-based media & entertainment group and parent company of DAX Digital Ad Exchange does offer podcast hosting capabilities, their main appeal for publishers has been monetization opportunities. So acquiring
podcast hosting, analytics, and monetization platform Captivate, which is
IAB certified and has strong brand appeal for indie podcasts, shows Global's drive to be more accessible. Ad exchanges thrive on inventory, so the purchase of
Remixd, which “automatically converts text articles into audio files” provides Global a quick path to more ad supply. With Captivate off the table, hosting platform Buzzsprout, that serves over 100k podcasts, becomes even more appealing for a longtail inventory play.Earlier in the year,
iHeartMedia acquired audio ad technology company Triton Digital for 230 million dollars from E.W. Scripps, which
purchased Triton Digital for 150 million dollars in 2018 and
Omny Studio, part of Triton Digital, in 2019. Like Audacy,
iHeart currently uses Spotify’s Megaphone to host their podcasts. Getting all their assets to their own platform is clearly on the horizon for iHeart, especially with Triton Digital offering radio broadcast-to-podcast capabilities. Coupled with
iHeart’s acquisition of Voxnest/Spreaker in 2020 and the announcement of their ad marketplace in both
2020 and
2021, the only offering iHeart currently lacks to compete with their direct competitors, is an attribution product. Will they build it internally like Adswizz or will they acquire a solution?With
over 70% of podcasts on Spotify serving from their hosting platform Anchor, Spotify continues their plans of going wide on audio by
buying audiobook distributor Findaway and
podcast hosting platform Whooshkaa, which specializes in creating podcasts from radio broadcasts. Whooshkaa will be integrated into hosting platform
Megaphone, which Spotify purchased last November for 235 million dollars. While Spotify is unlikely to retain Audacy and iHeartMedia as clients, as both purchased their own radio broadcast-to-podcast technology this year, Spotify will continue to attract publishers looking for those features as part of a complete offering. With Whooshkaa acquired,
RedCircle is the last independent hosting platform with dynamic ad insertion and programmatic offerings. And
SGRecast from StreamGuys is the only independent company offering a broadcast-to-podcast technology. How long either will remain independent is a very good question.
Acast started the year by acquiring US podcast technology startup RadioPublic. Keeping inline with their creator-focused image, the main appeal was
“RadioPublic’s Listener Relationship Management platform, which allows podcasters to foster even deeper relationships with fans”, which played nice with the beta launch of Acast+, their subscription offering. Over the summer, Acast went public, which is it’s own kind of acquisition.And though it falls slightly outside of 2021, when
Podnews editor James Cridland announced Amazon’s late December 2020 acquisition of Wondery for around 300 million dollars, he made the prediction that ART19 would be the logical next acquisition. After all, former CEO of Wondery, Hernan Lopez was an investor in the platform and all Wondery shows were hosted on ART19. In June of this year,
the deal for Amazon to acquire ART19 was officially announced. Nice crystal ball, James.And if that wasn't enough, here's a quick rundown of some of the other deals from 2021: In the podcast player space, the
Breaker podcast app team joined Twitter while Maple Media acquired the app itself,
Daily Mail and General Trust or DMGT acquired discovery focused podcast app Entale, and
Automattic, owner of Tumblr and WordPress.com acquired the podcast app Pocket Casts. In the hosting platform space
Castos acquires another hosting platform, Podiant and
Sounder acquired audio discovery and analytics company Podnods. In the technology space
attribution company Podsights acquired linksharing company pod.link and
podcast database Podchaser acquired chart and ranking tool Podcharts and listener review tool Podrover. And in the content production space
Amaze Media Labs acquired podcast production company Jam Street Media.Finally, a lighting round of the funding deals that happened, to give you some insight into the money moving into the podcasting space.Production
Copenhagen-based Podimo raised $15.3m in February and $78m in November.
Audio Up Media raised and-audio-up-inc-enter-into-creative-and-strategic-agreement-to-develop-new-original-scripted-podcasts-and-audio-entertainment-concepts-301396824.html?utm_source=podnews.net&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=podnews.net:2021-10-12">$12m.
WaitWhat raised $12m.
Sounder raised $2.15m in March and $9.5m in December.
Casted raised $7m.
French-based Paradiso Media raised $5.9m.
Quake Media raised podcast-company-quake-raises-35-million-in-new-funding-round-e5ae8312-b2f8-49a2-83e0-34ee5c1cf9d7.html">$3.5m.
Equity Mates Media raised $900k.
UK-based Auddy raised $610k.Creator Tools
Verbit raised $157m.
Descript raised $30m.
Podcastle raised $7m.
Zencastr raised $4.6m.
Podchaser raised $4m.
Riverside raised fm-raises-2-5m-in-funding.html">$2.5m.Hosting & Monetization
Instreamatic raised $6.1m.
RedCircle raised $6m.
Podsights raised $4m.
Backtracks raised $1.6m.
Castos raised $756k.
Podmetrics and Podcast Network Asia raised $750k.You'll find links to everything we just covered in the episode details, and subscribe to The Download in your inbox so you never miss an episode.I'm Bryan BarlettaAnd I'm Evo Terra
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
