At the top of 2021, Spotify introduced the acquisition of Whooshkaa, an Australia-based podcast expertise platform that allow radio broadcasters flip their present audio content material into on-demand podcast content material. Today, we’re excited to share that this expertise is now out there for any writer with a Megaphone account. Megaphone is our podcasting platform for enterprise publishers {and professional} podcasters, and it affords a complete set of instruments that helps them publish, measure, and monetize their podcast companies.
This expertise, which we’re calling broadcast-to-podcast (B2P), offers broadcast publishers—whether or not they’re already within the podcast sport or new to the medium—an easy-to-use device that enables them to leverage present content material to achieve new, youthful audiences and prolong their income potential.
For the Record spoke to Emma Vaughn, Global Head of Advertising Business Development & Partnerships at Spotify, to be taught extra about this expertise and what it means for broadcast creators.
First, are you able to share how radio listening habits are altering?
Radio listening has been step by step shifting from over-the-air to streaming as shoppers more and more select to hear via their digital gadgets. In truth, the time folks spent listening to broadcast radio on-line within the U.S. grew by 50% from 2019 to 2022.
Similar to TV, busy shoppers need to take heed to their favourite audio content material on their very own schedule. This partly explains the great progress of the podcast business—creators, publishers, and platforms are responding to the demand from audiences. At the identical time, there are extra methods for folks to hear due to a excessive adoption of gadgets like sensible audio system, smartwatches, and extra.
Does this new B2P device require further effort or technical information to make use of?
No! The ease of use and automation are main advantages to this product. After a easy, one-time setup course of in Megaphone, broadcast-to-podcast will routinely create new podcast episodes from beforehand broadcasted content material, making it simpler than ever for broadcast publishers to achieve new audiences with their content material. It’s truthfully so cool.
It sometimes takes publishing groups roughly 30 to 60 minutes to manually convert every particular person broadcast episode to a podcast. This consists of downloading the episode off the radio platform, eradicating the advert spots, putting advert markers, and importing the episode to a podcast platform.
This quantity of friction doesn’t work at scale when changing lots of of episodes per day throughout a community. B2P helps automate this complete course of for publishers.