Amazon Pay $80 Million For A Podcast… That’s Not Exclusively For Their Platforms

So, it has been well documented that podcasting is growing across the the board, in every way.

Listening numbers are up, completion rates for podcast episodes are up and — here is the big one — money in the sector is up.

Now I am sure that the podcast purists will come down on me like a ton of bricks for this one, but loads of money coming into the sector is a good thing… the hobbyists will be throwing their Chai Lattes at the screen right now, but I am serious. Money coming in means that the podcasting is taken more seriously, it is more professionalised and therefore the end product becomes better. Money in the podcast space is good for content makers and listeners alike.

There have been a lot headline grabbing purchases in recent months — mainly from Spotify — but a recently announced Amazon deal is very interesting because they have paid BIG money for the Uber-popular ‘SmartLess’ podcast but the most interesting thing is that, unlike most other deals, this is not a platform-exclusivity play i.e. this show will not exist solely on Amazon Music (or via Wondery+, which Amazon bought last year) but it will be exclusively available one week earlier than other podcast outlets.

The deal is supposedly worth $60m — $80m, so Wondery and Amazon are betting big on early access being something that consumers will pay for. They will also be handling the distribution, marketing and advertising sales for the show too, so there is a double win to be had with this deal — they can either drive numbers of subscribers to their $4.99 Wondery+ offering or they generate ad revenue… which is likely to be substantial (to say the least) considering the show is a Top 0.01% podcast globally.

I think it is safe to say that the audio gold rush is well and truly upon us my podcasting friends.