#6 VC Firm Declares Podcasting a Hobby [June 2nd 2021]

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Apple Podcasters Will Need To Wait

• The planned end of May debut of Apple Podcast Subscriptions came and went without a rollout but rather an announcement
• Debut will now take place this month in June - The hang-up is technical glitches.
• Apple says it has been “delighted” by the response with “hundreds” of submissions from publishers worldwide.
• There have been widespread complaints by podcasters since last April of problems with Apple Podcasts Connects.
• In some cases, podcasts and episodes have gone missing, and in other cases podcasters have not been even able to sign-on to the system.
• Apple is also making “additional enhancements” to its new Library design in the coming weeks. The new version of iOS allows users to mark all episodes as played, recover old episodes, and remove downloads.
• Apple announced last month that it has expanded its affiliate services program to allow podcasters to profit whenever they recruit a listener to sign up for a subscription.
  • The program will give producers a 50% cut on the first paid month of every subscription membership. If the special link they send leads to the sale of a podcast subscription costing $10, the podcaster will earn a $5 commission.
• More details about Apple Podcast Subscriptions could come next week when Apple holds its annual Worldwide Developers Conference June 7.

VC Firm Declares Apple’s Podcasting a Hobby

• A new blog from LoupVentures titled “Podcasts Are Apple’s Hobby, Spotify’s Career” was an appropriate comparison of the two companies’ recent product announcements in the podcast space as Spotify has been pouring money into podcasts while Apple has been content to merely tread water.
• “Loup Ventures is a research-driven venture capital firm” and they felt that Podcasting had reached critical mass in America as an entertainment medium with “roughly 40% of Americans age 12 and older listening to podcasts monthly.”
• After helping mainstream podcasts through the iTunes store in 2005, Apple has done little with the medium since. Meanwhile, Spotify has aggressively pursued the podcast opportunity, investing hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire ad technology and exclusive content.
• Loups’s contention is that strategies for both companies make sense because “Apple’s future growth or profitability does not hinge on the success of its podcast marketplace” and “In order to achieve mid to high-30% gross margins, similar to Netflix, Spotify must add high-margin revenue, which is what makes podcasts attractive.”
• Apple podcasts appear to fall into the hobby category, primarily aimed at:
• Maintaining leadership in an important content category.
• Providing high-margin incremental Services revenue.
• Fails to onboard creators
• Podcast ad market is growing at more than 50% this year, at $1.3B in expected revenue it will likely be less than 1% the size of Apple’s total revenue this year.
• Conclusion: It makes little sense for Apple to make podcasts a central focus when it has growth opportunities in massive addressable markets, including AR and Mixed Reality
• Spotify podcasts are central to its long-term success, primarily aimed at:
• Increasing profitability, as podcasts offer the company better margins than music.
• For Spotify, which did about $9.5B in revenue in 2020, pushing the podcast ad market to $10B in annual revenue over the next decade and capturing 50% plus share would add $5B in annual revenue and be transformative for the company.
• According to a new market forecast, Spotify’s U.S. podcast listenership will surpass Apple Podcasts for the first time this year when 28.2 million U.S. users will listen to podcasts on Spotify at least monthly, compared with 28 million via Apple Podcasts.
• According to Forbes The 90-day moving average of Spotify’s podcast mentions rose by 67% year-over-year, whereas Apple’s rose by 45%. (Forbes)
• Annual podcast ad revenue is less than 5% the size of radio ad revenue and about 1.5% of TV advertising.
• The daily average amount of time spent listening to podcasts is about 10% the amount of time spent listening to radio and about 5% the amount of time spent watching TV.
• Therefore podcasts are under-monetized compared to radio by a factor of 2x, and TV by slightly more than 3x.

Triton Digital Releases the April 2021 Latin America Podcast Report

• Triton Digital, the global technology and services leader to the digital audio and podcast industry, announced earlier this week the release of the latest LATAM Podcast Report.
• The Latin America Podcast Report lists the Top 100 LATAM podcasts consumed by listeners who are located in Latin America.
• The Top 100 podcasts account for a whopping 28M downloads in total during this reporting period
• Top 3 Podcasts were:
• 1 - LOS40 MX - La Corneta from Prisa Radio with 832,378 downloads
• 2 - Leyendas Legendarias from Sonoro ATC with 708,589 downloads
• 3 - Titulares Deportivos from Grupo BluRadio with 303,112 downloads
• As we reported last week in regards to the growing space of Latin Podcasting Networking - IHeartMedia is set to launch a New Podcast Network called ‘My Cultura’ Elevating Latinx Voices and Stories
• A special limited podcast series with Lin-Manuel Miranda, hosted by Eva Longoria, launching next TUESDAY!!
• Latinos represent 18 percent of the U.S. population, or more than 60 million people, and they are listening to podcasts more than ever before.
• A quarter of Latinos aged 18 and up in the U.S. have listened to a podcast in the last month, according to an Edison Research report published June 30 in 2020.
• The report also found that the majority of Latinos started listening to podcasts within the last year.
• Spotify has invested in podcasts for Latin American markets, including Fausto and Se Regalan Dudas in Mexico and Café da Manhã in Brazil.