Spotify acquires Gimlet and Anchor to expand its podcast services

Spotify, the well established music streaming service now seeks to expand into podcasting. Yesterday, Spotify announced the acquisition of two podcast firms namely Gimlet and Anchor. Spotify also plans to spend close to $500m more on acquisitions this year.

The actual numbers for the acquisition are not revealed but Gimlet was reportedly acquired for around $200m. Gimlet is an award winning narrative podcast company with podcasts on a variety of topics. Anchor allows anyone to record, publish, and monetize podcasts with just a smartphone. This acquisition puts Spotify in the league of Apple and Google music who have also been investing in the world of podcasts. A podcast is an audio episode where people talk about something. The topics can range from education and politics to just fun talk shows.

Daniel Ek, Spotify co-founder, and CEO said: “These acquisitions will meaningfully accelerate our path to becoming the world’s leading audio platform, give users around the world access to the best podcast content, and improve the quality of our listening experience as well as enhance the Spotify brand. We are proud to welcome Gimlet and Anchor to the Spotify team, and we look forward to what we will accomplish together.”

The CEO explains in a blog post: “Users love having podcasts as a part of their Spotify experience. Our podcast users spend almost twice the time on the platform, and spend even more time listening to music.”

Spotify is known for its great music recommendations and intuitive user interface. It also has an expanding library with deals adding more music from labels like T-series. However, its losses have increased despite the increase in the number of subscribers. With these podcast acquisitions with more to come, Spotify seems poised to add more revenue and grow its business beyond music into a complete audio streaming service platform.