While Spotify currently dominates the globe on the music streaming front, the Swedish company has made it clear it wants to overtake Apple and conquer the realm of podcasts too, and its latest money move has arrived in the form of new Spotify Original and Exclusive podcasts for Australia.
This time last year, the streaming giant dropped US$200 million to help secure its podcasting future, acquiring the likes of Gimlet Media and claiming it would like to become “both the premier producer of podcasts and the leading platform for podcast creators”.
Podcasting is well and truly on the rise Down Under, with the number of weekly podcast listeners in the country increasing 50% over the last three years, bringing it up to 5.7 million active listeners (or 22% of the Australian population).
Australian launch
Two of the exclusive podcasts that have just landed for Australian listeners include season 2 of Extremes by Vice, as well as Generation Betoota from the team behind the satirical news website, The Betoota Advocate.
The second season of Vice’s Extremes will continue exploring the incredible stories of individuals who have survived against insane odds, while Generation Betoota will apply the special flavour of satire the Advocate is known for to a weekly youth-news podcast, “featuring stories young people care about, using the language they’re fluent in”.
Sound Up is a program Spotify first ran in 2018, which sought to raise the voices of First Nations Australians by offering applicants the opportunity to receive podcasting advice, equipment, and a grant that would enable their idea to reach market.
The streaming company has announced that Sound Up will be returning again in 2020 for Australia, and that one of the grant recipients of 2018’s program, Rowdie Walden, will be launching his podcast as a Spotify Original in May this year.
Walden’s project, Search Engine Sex, tackles some of the sex-related questions that are most commonly searched for online, providing advice, answers and practical information to potentially awkward situations.
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