Spotify's strategy explained the latest from podnews.net with
Magellan AI. We think it's a lot larger of a medium that most
people give it credit for. Spotify released its quarter
four 23 results. Total revenue grew 16% year on year to $3.9
billion. All the company's figures met or exceeded
expectations, with the company now having 602 million monthly
users. The company lost $81 million in the quarter, a better
figure that was flagged in December. Spotify's podcasting
business was close to breaking even. In quarter four, Daniel
Eck said in an earnings call, he also outlined the change of
strategy away from exclusivity. While some of these exclusivity
deals worked, generally it wasn't aligned with what the
creator wanted. The creator wants to have broader audience,
and I feel like with these new deals that we've been making for
most of 2023, we are in a position where we're actually
better aligned with the creator. We can both deliver the growth
rate and we're equally incentivized to drive audience
growth and, of course, then also drive revenue growth because we
both share in that upside. Today, Spotify is, in many
cases, the number one podcasting player already. So, exclusivity
makes sense when you're the smaller playing, trying to gain
scale. When you're the bigger player, the additional value of
the exclusivity is far smaller than it is about being aligned.
And it feels also that from a value's point of view, this is
better aligned with who we are at Spotify too. As Spotify
appears to have newly discovered, the open RSS feed
is, says entrepreneur Anil Dash in a blog post, the kind of
technology that's supposed to be impossible, open, empowering
tech that's not owned by any one company and that allows people
to have ownership over their work and their relationship with
their audience. It's a good read, we'll link to that today
from our show notes and our newsletter at podnews.net, while
Ernie Smith at TDM suggests there's something to be learned
from RSS's podcast success by the rest of the media too. Apple
has released a new developer beta of iOS 17.4, which will
bring transcripts to podcast listeners. John Spurlock
mentions that he still hasn't seen a single transcript
utilized from the podcast's transcript tag even for shows
that have them. Another fundraise by another audio AI
company, Audio Stack has raised two and a half million pounds,
that's 3.2 million US dollars. The company makes AI voiced
audio ads. The majority of top ranked podcasts have guests,
says new research into podcasts from Pew Research. The
organization found more than 11 ,000 guest appearances in the
top 430 or so podcasts, though true crime shows buck the trend
with almost none of those shows having regular guests. Joe
Rogan's guests are most likely to also appear elsewhere. What
works and what doesn't in podcast marketing, the podcast
marketing academy wants to hear from you and has more than 9,000
dollars in prizes to entice you to take part. Podcast hosting
company Osher has launched its podcast search optimization
control panel. The tool is aimed to ensure its podcasts reach the
number one slot in Apple podcast and Spotify search results.
Podcast growth agency Bumper has publicly launched an internal
research tool called podcast xray. It shows details like
publishing trends and hosting data. We link to the podcast
weekly review where you can very clearly see a switch from
publishing on Thursday to publishing on Friday. As one
example, we'll also link from our own podcast pages in due
course and the publisher podcast awards are now open for entries.
And in podcast news, two blokes talking electric cars. The EV
podcast is brand new today from Australia's most trusted tech
commentators, Stephen Phanek and Trevor Long, their combined
expertise will deliver insightful discussions in depth
reviews and candid commentary they say. And when director,
actor, critic and historian Peter Bogdanovich passed away in
2022, he was working on one handshake away, a podcast
interviewing some of the biggest film directors working today.
His ex-wife, Louise Stratton stepped in to serve as narrator
and co-host with three-time Academy Award-winning director
Guillermo del Toro filling in as host for the final three
episodes. It's new today from Odyssey and Stack. Trailers for
selected shows are in our podcast called New Podcast
Trailers and we're sponsored by Magellan AI. Increase your
return on ad spend with Magellan AI's audio campaign optimization
tools. You can learn more, find the link at podnews.net slash
latest. And that's the latest from our newsletter to read all
the stories and subscribe we're at podnews.net