A similar disconnect can be found in the company’s weaker premium growth outside of Europe and the Americas. It’s hard to say Spotify’s initial initiatives in this space have accomplished this task.” The narrative Spotify has spun over the last few years never made much sense the closer one examined the podcast or audio market, and maybe the market is finally picking up those hints.Ī 2020 report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC) suggested that podcasts would hit over a billion dollars of revenue by 2021, still a relatively small market compared to the tens of billions still spent on TV, radio, and internet advertising. The sheer novelty of radio won’t be duplicated because a tech company self-declares itself an audio company, there must be audio that not only reaches current users but inspires new ones.

That’s why a few lines I wrote last summer about the company’s podcast pivot rang in my head when seeing recent headlines around the company: “Podcasts remain relatively niche, not because people don’t want audio content, but because radio was introduced in a much less fragmented market of entertainment. My thoughts on Spotify don’t shift a lot, whether the stock is high, low, or whatever form of controversy may arrive with the company. Now let’s see why Spotify’s stock price hit record lows last week.

On another note, if anyone reading this knows of any interesting academic papers on the music business or online manipulation of audience numbers (i.e. I cannot understate just how important it is to have my copy editors, and so Mariana Carvalho will step up to be the sole copy editor for the time being. One of my copy editors, Taylor Curry, will be leaving, and I just wanted to say thank you to Taylor for his work.

Behind neil young spotify fraught with