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Spotify adds broadcast-to-podcast automation to its enterprise podcasting platform Megaphone
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 14 April 2023
Spotify has added tech it acquired via the 2021 purchase of an Australian company called Whooshkaa to Megaphone, its enterprise podcast platform aimed at media firms and higher level podcast makers. That tech makes it easier for radio broadcasters to automatically turn their existing content into on-demand podcasts.
Says the streaming firm, “at the end of 2021, Spotify announced the acquisition of Whooshkaa, an Australia-based podcast technology platform that let radio broadcasters turn their existing audio content into on-demand podcast content. Today, we are excited to share that this technology is now available for any publisher with a Megaphone account”.
“Megaphone is our podcasting platform for enterprise publishers and professional podcasters”, it goes on, “and it offers a comprehensive set of tools that helps them publish, measure, and monetise their podcast businesses”.
The new ‘broadcast-to-podcast’ functionality “gives broadcast publishers – whether they’re already in the podcast game or new to the medium – an easy-to-use tool that allows them to leverage existing content to reach new, younger audiences and extend their revenue potential”.
Emma Vaughn, Global Head Of Advertising Business Development & Partnerships at Spotify, adds: “Radio listening has been gradually shifting from over-the-air to streaming as consumers increasingly choose to listen through their digital devices. In fact, the time people spent listening to broadcast radio online in the US grew by 50% from 2019 to 2022”.
“The ease of use and automation are major benefits to this product”, she says of the new functionality now available in Megaphone. “After a simple, one-time set-up process in Megaphone, broadcast-to-podcast will automatically create new podcast episodes from previously broadcasted content, making it easier than ever for broadcast publishers to reach new audiences with their content”.
“It typically takes publishing teams approximately 30 to 60 minutes to manually convert each individual broadcast episode to a podcast”, she then explains. “This includes downloading the episode off the radio platform, removing the ad spots, placing ad markers, and uploading the episode to a podcast platform”.
“This amount of friction does not work at scale when converting hundreds of episodes per day across a network”, she points out, before concluding: “B2P helps automate this entire process for publishers”.
