Spotify acquires podcast discovery platform Podz

Spotify has announced that it has acquired Podz, a startup whose technology creates preview clips of podcasts.

“We believe that Podz’ technology will complement and accelerate Spotify’s focused efforts to drive discovery, deliver listeners the right content at the right time, and accelerate growth of the category worldwide,“ the company said in a statement. 

Automating the process of finding key moments from episodes using machine learning trained on over 100,000 hours of audio, Podz raised $2.5 million in pre-seed funding from several investors before its acquisition by Spotify. 

“This capability, combined with Spotify’s 2.6 million podcasts on the platform, learnings from our work in music discovery, and current investments in podcast recommendation, will take podcast discovery to the next level—making it easier for listeners to find the content they want to listen to, and for creators to be discovered and build a fan base.” Spotify added. 

The company said it plans to integrate Podz’ technology into the Spotify experience, and listeners should start seeing results before the end of the year.  

The acquisition follows Spotify’s launch of the paid podcast subscriptions in the U.S. It allows podcast creators, regardless of their audience size, to sign up for the access to paid subscriptions without platform fees, keeping 100% of their subscription revenue, until 2024

Back in November, Spotify had announced the acquisition of US-based podcast advertising & publishing firm Megaphone for $235 million to let the content creators monetize their work in several ways. 

Continuing to consolidate its position in the podcast market, Spotify is also preparing to compete in the social audio side.This week, Spotify launched its Clubhouse rival Spotify Greenroom, a new social audio app that allows users to participate or host live audio rooms and optionally turn those conversations into podcasts.

Back in March, it had announced it was acquiring Betty Labs, the company behind the live audio app Locker Room.