Spotify receives Australian-based tech platform Whooshka

Spotify is amping up its podcast credentials with the acquisition of Australian-based tech platform Whooshka as the platform focuses on being an audio player not simply a music streamer.

Spotify needs more podcast-style content, and Whooshka’s technology will fit normally close by Spotify’s other podcasting tools and enable radio broadcasters to all the more effectively and straightaway transform their current audio content into a podcast. The Whooshka technology additionally offers podcasters an end-to-end platform to host, distribute, monetize and track on-demand audio.

Spotify global head of advertising business and platform Jay Richman said the streamer’s podcast technique started three years prior when the platform extended its central goal from music to audio and constructed and purchased various content studios.

“We licensed up some of the biggest shows on the planet. We acquired a company called Anchor that specializes in content creation, and we purchased another one, Megaphone, focused on monetization,” he said.

“Over the last year, we’ve been assembling all of these components into the first fully verticalized digital audio stack, bringing audio creation, distribution, consumption, monetization, all into one place, which allows us to innovate in this space in ways not possible before.”

The obtaining of Whooshka was the next step in this procedure, he clarified, permitting Spotify to all the more likely draw in radio broadcasters to podcasting, and Spotify.

The terms of the deal were not revealed, however, the Whooshka brand will stay being used in Australia in the short-term, with plans for Spotify to integrate its technology into Spotify’s Megaphone platform, which it obtained in November last year. The Whooshka brand will then, at that point, most likely disappear.

No redundancies are expected as a result of the acquisition, with Whooshka founder and CEO Robert Loewenthal to stay on board with Spotify.

“I’m really excited about this next step in my career. I’ve gone from working in traditional media to being a tech startup founder to now working in a global, technology, an innovative leading company,” he said.

On developing Whooshka since its launch toward the beginning of 2016, Mr. Loewenthal said he had wanted to assemble a platform that assisted podcasters with bringing in cash and saving time.

“I’ve always had a bias towards helping solve problems for larger publishers and radio broadcasters because of my background. Now technology has continued to evolve to a point where we include the ABC in Australia, the largest podcaster in this country, as a client,” he said.

“And once again, going back to that simple philosophy that we had to help all podcasters save time and make money and that that technology, when combined with Spotify’s global reach, [gives them the] ability to gain so much traction on the demand side from advertisers.”

Mr. Loewenthal is confident the Whooshka technology will assist Spotify acquires more podcast content from publishers around the world.

“They’ve done such a wonderful job at building up the demand from advertisers, so this acquisition really helps them in that regard,” he said.