France-born music streaming service Deezer has reported a 250% growth in podcast usage on its platform over the last two years and is stepping up its capabilities in this space to make the most of what it’s describing as a podcast ‘boom’.
Deezer has entered into global partnerships with five podcasting companies including Libsyn, Ausha, Podomatic, Blubrry and Simplecast, in addition to adding ‘tech updates’ from existing partners Audioboom and Voxnest.
The company’s new global podcast partnerships cover everything from content to podcast recording, distribution and analytics.
Deezer has partnered with the following five companies:
Libsyn, a podcast publisher with a monthly audience of 116 million and more than 64,000 podcasts.
Ausha, which claims to be the first podcast hosting platform in France with over 800 podcasters and features like video clip editing, private podcasts and comprehensive statistics.
Podomatic, which provides podcast creators with “everything you need to start and grow a podcast,” including recording, publishing, distribution, and tracking.
Blubrry, which provides podcast hosting, stats and the PowerPress Podcasting Plugin.
Finally, Deezer has partnered with Simplecast, a podcast hosting, distribution and analytics platform that has reportedly doubled its amount of podcasts and subscriptions in the last year.
“It’s great to see a huge increase of music fans enjoying podcasts as part of their Deezer streaming experience.”
Frédéric Antelme, Deezer
Two of Deezer’s existing podcast partners, Audioboom, a global on-demand audio and podcasting distribution platform, and Voxnest’s Spreaker, a podcasting platform with over 50,000 monthly active creators, have also improved their ‘technical solution’ on Deezer.
From today (September 29), podcasters will be able to submit their show and make it available to Deezer subscribers instantly.
Deezer’s podcast push follows the huge investment in this sector (including an executive hiring spree) made by rival Spotify as part of its ‘Audio First’ content strategy revealed in February, which has included the acquisition of three podcast companies, Anchor and Gimlet Media (for $343 million) as well as Parcast.
While Deezer’s five new partnerships detailed above don’t come close to the level of resources Spotify is throwing at the format, they do indicate the growing significance of long-form original spoken word audio content for music streaming services generally.
According to Deezer, citing Global Webindex data, almost a quarter of internet users in Europe listened to a podcast in Q1 2019 (up 5% compared to Q2 2017), including 44% in MENA and 34% in Latam.
Deezer says that it has also experienced a similar boom and has seen its monthly podcast usage increase by 250%, including quadrupling the amount of podcast listening time, over the last two years.
Frédéric Antelme, VP of Content and Productions commented: “It’s great to see a huge increase of music fans enjoying podcasts as part of their Deezer streaming experience.
“Our goal is to help podcasters easily provide fans with the freshest shows from all over the world.
“We’re really excited to work with our new and existing partners to help more people than ever before discover podcast content.”
Deezer recently launched a new website and social media campaign to publicly champion a user-centric payment system (UCPS) and is planning to launch a pilot in France early next year – if it can get rightsholders onboard.
The music streaming service, which has 14 million monthly active users, is majority owned by Access Industries, the full owner of Warner Music Group.Music Business Worldwide
