Audiostreamer Spotify adds additional languages to its offering. There are a dozen new podcasts for the German-speaking area.
Spotify wants to expand further. At the company’s own online event “Stream On Virtual”, CEO Daniel Ek said the company wanted to open up 85 new markets in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and Europe. “After this rollout, we will reach more than a billion people around the world,” said Ek. His service will also be available in 36 new languages, including Romanian, Hindi and Swahili.
“Currently, Spotify is available in about half of the world, but there are still millions of musicians and billions of listeners who do not have access to Spotify,” the manager added. He would like to publish the details shortly.
In the new Spotify countries, users will be able to take out free and paid subscriptions. Almost the entire range will be available on both mobile devices and desktop web players. The company will work with partners to roll out Spotify to additional platforms in the coming months – including TVs, speakers, wearables and cars.
New podcasts
Users will be able to select and search from the Spotify worldwide catalog; however, there could be restrictions due to license rights. “Not all content is available everywhere. But we are continuously working with local rights holders and partners to add more local offerings to the catalog, ” Ek said at his online event .
Spotify’s new expansion strategy includes new podcasts, including twelve new titles in German. For example FOMO, a five-minute message format for a younger audience. Together with the weekly newspaper [i] Die Zeit [i], Spotify also produces the daily review of a decade under the title “On this day”. There are also new offers in English, including “Renegades”, a multi-part podcast with ex-President Barack Obama and old rocker Bruce Springsteen.
Doubts about strategy
There are also doubts about the industry giant’s podcast strategy. In the analyst magazine [i] Motley Fool [i] , financial expert Brett Schafer compares the podcast industry with streaming TV from ten years ago. “With on-demand audio, the listener stays online for several hours in a linear fashion; a trend that should continue for the next decade.” Whether Spotify is paying that content behind a pay barrier, advertising it, or both, the company can lead the way in monetizing the podcasting industry.
But first it has to win over most of the listeners. For this reason, investors should closely monitor the percentage of users engaging with podcast content on Spotify. And this process is tedious, which is why the investment is not necessarily worthwhile.
