Will TikTok Music become the leading platform for podcasts?

I’m not sure how I feel about the rumored Working Girl revival that Selena Gomez is working on. The original is simply too personal to me as the daughter of a Staten Islander who worked on Wall Street in the 1980s.

Let the river flow, then: Audacy and Snap attempt to be more like TikTok, TikTok wants to be more like Spotify, and Spotify tries to charge you more for a play button.

The new podcast discovery app from Audacy borrows a strategy from TikTok

According to Moonbeam’s creator, Paul English, podcast discovery app Audacy has bought the company. The biggest difficulty facing the business has been discovered, which Moonbeam tackles by behaving more like a social network than a standard podcast player.

“We developed a feature called ‘Beam’ that started playing an episode immediately. If you didn’t like it, you swiped up and we would then play another show,” English wrote in a blog post. “This approach was very much inspired by TikTok, the best video discovery app.”

The top production companies Pineapple Street Studios and Cadence13 were previously bought by Audacy, which also offers a podcasting and radio streaming app. It is unknown from Audacy if Moonbeam will continue to function independently or whether its features will be included in the Audacy app.

The Boston Globe was not given information on the acquisition’s terms in English, and Audacy did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Hot Pod. Maybe Audacy will provide more information on Friday at its results presentation.

A play button is the most recent premium feature of Spotify

Now that the app has distinct play and shuffle buttons, only premium customers may use it. The change is likely to welcome since Spotify’s shuffle default has been a pain for musicians and really serious playlist creators worldwide. Adele persuaded the firm to include a special play button for albums last year by stating, “We don’t construct albums with so much care and effort into our track selection for nothing.”

While Chris Welch, a colleague at Verge, makes the point that an app-wide play button that is only available to premium customers is a strange decision, I really like the shuffle. It sounds a little absurd, but here we are, he said, saying Spotify is now leveraging buttons and its user interface to distinguish between the service’s free and premium options.

The investment binge by Acast is coming to an end

With the announcement of its $34 million purchase of podcast database Podchaser last month and a three-year ad sales agreement with WTF with Marc Maron in May, Swedish podcast distribution and advertising business Acast have recently made some significant strides into the American market. Acast will stop its spending binge since the downturn is hurting ad income, officials said at their mid-year investor presentation on Tuesday.

On a conference call with investors, Acast’s CFO, Emily Villatte, said that the firm would “lower that pace of investment.” As seen by Acast’s reported 72 percent growth in North America in Q2, which is roughly 2.5 times its growth rate in Europe, it seems that the company’s expansion plan may already be paying off. Additionally, it is rapidly adding podcasts, which already total 66,000 episodes, up from 40,000 at the end of 2021.

However, despite the addition of new events and technologies, the corporation was nonetheless compelled to cut its forecast for yearly revenue growth through 2025 from 60 percent to 40–45 percent due to the softening ad market. As a result of the news, Acast’s stock is down roughly 5%, which may be a red flag for the sector as a whole. A strong ad market was a prerequisite for the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s prediction that the industry will be worth $4 billion by 2024. That amount could be unattainable if things continue in this direction.

Snap launches a fund for independent artists

Snap has had a difficult few of weeks, so the business is trying to court TikTok’s musicians. The Snapchat Sounds Creator Fund was introduced by the firm last week in collaboration with the independent music retailer DistroKid.

Top musicians who release their music on the platform via DistroKid will be enticed by incentives from Snap worth up to $100,000. Additionally, chosen artists will be featured in more prominent areas of the app, such as Snapchat Lens or Spotlight. Participants must be located in the US and be 16 years of age or older to qualify.

“We want to support the independent and emerging artists that are driving creation on Snapchat,” Ted Suh, global head of music partnerships at Snap, said in a statement. “By providing meaningful funding and creative support, our goal is for artists to feel empowered to continue creating and pursue a career in music.”

In 2020, Snap unveiled Sounds, a feature that lets users share music snippets. But thus far, it hasn’t had much of an influence on the music business. The most effective discovery tool for music is still TikTok, but things may not end there.

TikTok Music may be the next popular podcast app

Spotify’s parent company, ByteDance, could be coming for lunch. Insider was the first to notice that the Chinese business had submitted a “TikTok Music” application with the US Patent and Trademark Office in May. According to the application, the new app would feature podcasts and digital radio programming in addition to music and videos.

This would not be ByteDance’s first streamer if a TikTok Music app materializes. Resso, a product made accessible in India, Brazil, and Indonesia, was introduced in 2020. (aka, exactly where Spotify wants to expand). In June, Resso expanded its podcast collection as a result of a collaboration with Acast.

TikTok seems to be essentially unstoppable despite concerns from people like Sen. Mark Warner and Joe Rogan about its data policies. If it becomes a popular podcast platform and Rogan’s Spotify contract ends, he could reconsider.

All for today, thank you! You will hear from Jake the following Tuesdays since I will be in Scandinavia, the home of open-faced sandwiches and audio-tech fjords, on Friday. On the other side, see you.