A microphone for a podcast.
The podcast business is consolidating.
And battle lines are being drawn.
TV, radio, and print media have been consolidated for decades. The web and mobile are dominated by heavy hitters whose names everyone would recognize. But the newest big medium, podcasts, has been slow to consolidate.
No longer.
Today, Sirius XM bought Stitcher from Scripps for $325 million: $265 million guaranteed, and $60 million in earn-outs depending on performance this year and in 2021. Spotify, of course, signed Joe Rogan to an exclusive multi-year contract for $100 million just two months ago. And Sirius bought Pandora — the music and podcast platform — for $3 billion just a year ago.
There’s a good reason behind the gold rush.
Stitcher grew revenue at a compound annual growth rate of 52% from 2016 to 2019. The platform now has 350,000 podcasts, and 6.8 million episodes were published on Stitcher in 2019 alone. And beyond this one platform, the podcasting audience has grown to an estimated 104 million in the U.S. alone.
In 2008 just 9% of people listened to a podcast at least once a month. Now that number is 37%.
The deal has obvious benefits for Sirius. Sirius has dozens of talk radio shows which can now be promoted — and perhaps purchased — via the Stitcher podcasting platform. And it now has much more inventory of audio content to sell ads against.
According to Stitcher’s 2019 report, total hours heard in 2019 grew 49% while the average number of hours per user also grew to about 25 hours per person at the end of last year.
The purchase includes the podcasting platform, Stitcher’s ad network Midroll, and the company’s owned podcast networks such as Earwolf. Scripps originally bought Stitcher for $4.5 million in 2016, and Midroll for $55 million in 2015.
Remaining independent podcasting platforms include Breaker, Overcast, and RadioPublic. Pocket Casts is also still around. It’s owned by NPR and a variety of radio stations.
Larger players in the space include Google and Apple. Spotify and now SiriusXM are challenging them for leadership in podcasting.
