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Lots of news to start the week with. Let’s get right into it: Spotify Live gets the axe, the Obamas strike another podcast deal, and iHeart signs a top wellness podcast.
Spotify Live is shutting down and what remains of live audio is scarce
In the latest sign that is live audio well and good on the way out, Music ally reports that Spotify is discontinuing its Spotify Live app. On the app, which still has a handful of chat rooms, users will be notified that the service will disappear at the end of the month.
“After a period of experimenting and learning about how Spotify users interact with live audio, we’ve made the decision to discontinue the Spotify Live app,” Spotify spokesperson Gayle Gaviola Moreau said in a statement to hot pod. She added that the company will continue to explore live streams in scenarios where it makes sense, such as artist-focused “listening parties.”
The post-pandemic hasn’t been good for live audio, which has blossomed with the rise of Clubhouse in the spring of 2020. Clubhouse peaked in mid-2021 as pandemic lockdowns and restrictions continued to hamper normal social interaction, with a massive $4 billion valuation . Since then, the number of monthly active users on Clubhouse has dropped by 82 percent, according to data from Sensor Tower.
While Clubhouse still stumbles, the companies that followed in his footsteps have largely abandoned their pursuits. Last year, Facebook collapsed its live audio rooms into its overall live chat feature. Reddit announced this last month shutting down Reddit Talk. Spotify, which built its live product by acquiring Betty Labs in 2021 for more than $60 million, went through multiple product rebrands and released high-profile podcast hosts to make the app shine. But the app was downloaded just 670,000 times, according to Sensor Tower (for comparison, Clubhouse had 35 million downloads in 2021 alone). Spotify began prioritizing its programming late last year, and given the layoffs and belt tightening at Spotify, it seemed inevitable that the app would fall by the wayside.
What remains of the live audio ecosystem, aside from Clubhouse, is Twitter and Amazon’s Amp. Twitter Spaces emerged as the most successful of the live products, but it’s on shaky ground. As a platform, Twitter was best suited for current conversations, and it was well on its way to building Spaces into an all-encompassing audio product, complete with playlists that mix podcasts with chat rooms. Then Elon Musk took over, the podcasts were thrown out and most of the Spaces team was fired. It may not go away, but Spaces clearly isn’t the priority as the company tries to salvage its valuation.
amplifier, despite the layoffs, could turn out to be more interesting. While it does have chat shows, it’s billed as a “live radio” app where would-be DJs can curate their own music stations and use the kind of social features that spawned the live audio boom. As for Spotify on “listening parties,” social audio may have some legs when it comes to music specifically, rather than just listening to people. And if not, Amazon will be fine anyway.
Whichever way you look at it, it’s hard to argue that live audio is still this vibrant. When Spotify, an audio-only company, sees no way out, it might be time to call live audio what it is: a (very costly) craze.
The Obama’s Higher Ground signs an advertising and distribution deal with Acast
After reportedly chafing Spotify’s podcast exclusivity model, the Obamas are moving toward wider distribution of their audio projects. The former first-time couple signed a multi-year first-look deal with Amazon’s Audible after their deal with Spotify expired last year. And now, thanks to Audible’s shorter exclusivity window, Higher Ground has signed a separate deal with Acast, which will distribute their podcasts across other platforms.
With the new arrangement, advertisers can now purchase spots through Acast on Higher Ground’s shows such as Renegades: Born in the USAthe boomer fever dream pod featuring conversations between the former president and Bruce Springsteen, The sum of uspresented by author and policy expert Heather McGhee, and audio docuseries The big hit show with Alex Pappademas.
Acast will also handle advertising and distribution for Higher Ground’s current and future projects originally produced for Audible. Last month, Higher Ground launched its first Audible podcast, Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast, which has a two-week exclusivity period for episodes on the platform. Once that window is over, episodes will be distributed by Acast to platforms like Apple and Spotify.
It seems the Obamas have struck a happy medium between reach and the kind of big podcast money that only comes with exclusive licensing. And for Acast, this is undoubtedly a win. The company already has signed a number of high-profile showsincluded WTF with Marc Maron And Anna Faris is not qualifiedand the Higher Ground deal will only add to the cache in the industry.
iDrawing heart Purposely with Jay Shetty
Look, the deals are still running! Megahit wellness podcast Purposely with Jay Shetty has signed with the iHeartPodcast network. Shetty, an author, life coach, and the chief purpose officer of the Calm app (can we please make it cool with the bullshit titles, frankly), launched the show in 2019. Since then, it’s become a mainstay in the top 25 shows on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Unlike some other audio giants, iHeart doesn’t play the exclusivity game. Appearing at Hot Pod Summit in February, Conal Byrne, CEO of iHeartMedia’s digital audio group, explained that the company has more to gain from distributing their shows as widely as possible than by luring people to the iHeart app (which according to one study by Cumulus and Signal Hill Insights represents only 3 percent of all podcast listening).
And while Shetty is already comfortably among the top podcasts, he might find it appealing that iHeart also has a huge broadcast network that can be used to hook up his show and attract even more listeners. “We have about 70 shows on the iHeart Podcast Network that generate over 1 million monthly downloads or more,” Byrne said at HPS. “The only reason we have that number is because of radio broadcasts.”
That’s all for today! See you next week.
Correction 5:05 PM ET: An earlier version of this article stated that Twitter no longer stores old Spaces recordings. The company has actually stopped storing broadcast recordings.
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