It's a strategy that relies on copious hours of cross-promotable programming.Īs Spotify's other podcast studio acquisitions, Parcast and The Ringer, have supercharged their output - each producing more than 200 hours of programming monthly per the internal documents - Gimlet remains committed to its curated storytelling, which is more labor intensive. Spotify's move into podcasting is about volume and exclusivity, sources told Insider: Lure millions of listeners with podcasts they can find only on Spotify and, in turn, sell advertising against that audience. This chart from a Spotify newsletter shows September 2020 consumption of its original and exclusive podcasts. Two-and-a-half years later, Gimlet is struggling to find its place within Spotify's podcast universe, according to internal data and interviews with 10 current and former staffers at Gimlet and Spotify. 'We want to invest and own the talk space. "It was a statement that they were open for business.
"In hindsight, it seems like what Spotify bought with $230 million was essentially the narrative," said Nick Quah, who writes industry newsletter Hot Pod. The deal, the largest up to that point for a podcast studio, ignited a frenzied two years of consolidation in which podcast businesses continued to command higher and higher prices.
Spotify paid a reported $230 million in February 2019 to acquire Gimlet, boasting that it had nabbed a "best-in-class podcast studio" known for prestige programming. Consumption of Gimlet shows rebounded the following month, another internal document showed, though the studio still claimed Spotify's lowest share of listening time.Ī Spotify spokeswoman said that Gimlet consumption has increased 25% since September, even with some popular shows publishing less frequently. Spotify attributed the drop to "listenership decay" after five popular Gimlet shows - including scripted thriller "Sandra" and true crime series "Conviction" - concluded their seasons. Though its flagship series "Reply All" had returned with new episodes, Gimlet was the lowest-performing podcast studio at Spotify in a month when consumption of the audio giant's original and exclusive podcasts grew 43% to 62.2 million hours. The podcast studio experienced a 7% drop in consumption of its shows that month even as podcasting overall at its parent company, Spotify, grew 11% by the same key metric, according to a company newsletter obtained by Insider. Last September, Gimlet Media found itself in the middle of a late-summer slump.
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