Pandora’s “Serial” Deal is superb news For Podcast Nerds And internet Radio

It seems like any such no-brainer, it’s laborious to consider it didn’t occur five years ago: web radio carrier Pandora is shifting into podcasts. the 10-yr-previous firm mentioned it’s going to distribute the second season of the wildly in style podcast Serial when it debuts (the foremost date has but to be announced). Pandora listeners can start catching up on season one on November 24.

Pandora and the creators of Serial, a This American life authentic crime spin-off, will split earnings from ads placed by using Pandora, in keeping with the the big apple occasions.

advert income aside, the Serial staff is getting one undeniably large perk out of the deal: access to Pandora’s massive audience. The 12-episode first season of Serial was once a smash hit, breaking iTunes data, blowing prior forty million total downloads in its first two months, and propelling the artwork of podcasting closer to the mainstream than it has ever been prior to. In April 2015, the investigative nonfiction sequence changed into the primary podcast to win a Peabody Award.

As impressive as all of that sounds, podcasting has but to totally trap on with mainstream listeners. On reasonable, each episode of Serial‘s first season used to be heard just a few million occasions. When season two launches, it’ll be on hand to Pandora’s 78 million listeners, lots of whom seemingly have never subscribed to a podcast.

Pandora is not the one audio streaming firm to notice the potential of the podcasting craze. SoundCloud got into this recreation just a few years ago, and in could, Spotify introduced that it would begin streaming podcasts as neatly. These streaming corporations join the likes of Stitcher Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, and Apple’s Podcasts app in giving listeners a strategy to to find and subscribe to podcasts. Even Product Hunt is jumping on the bandwagon with the aid of launching a devoted podcast discovery discussion board.

All of those new distribution channels are bound to make certain that the primary season of Serial marked simply the start of podcasting’s upward thrust to mainstream prominence. With 78 million listeners tuning in from a wide range of gadgets, Pandora may finally end up being a huge increase no longer just for Serial however for podcasting as a medium. indeed, the company is already planning to make episodes of This American life available as neatly.

Podcasting is a logical next step for Pandora. For years, the company has slowly chipped away at terrestrial radio by using offering personalised, artist- and track-based totally internet radio stations, curated by way of a blend of human intelligence and knowledge science. but for a company determined to disrupt “radio” as we are aware of it, the shortage of any spoken-phrase, public-radio-model content looked like a evident omission.

From a strategic standpoint, this deal might hardly have come at a more opportune time for Pandora: in addition to the explosion of passion in podcasts, there may be additionally been a proliferation of Pandora-esque internet radio merchandise in up to date years. everybody from Apple and Google to Spotify and Rdio has copied Pandora’s core functionality, launching “radio” features carrying artist and track-based totally stations and up-or-down thumb voting mechanisms. whereas none of these bolted-on features has taken a considerable chew of out of Pandora’s numbers, the common availability of this type of web radio functionality puts more pressure on Pandora to make its carrier as comprehensive and helpful as that you can think of.

As a bonus, this move lets Pandora add a new supply of content and advert income with out the complexity, controversy, and high prices of licensing that come with streaming music to hundreds of thousands of individuals. If Pandora’s podcasting foray goes smartly—one thing so as to be determined in large part by way of how the podcast expertise is integrated into Pandora’s current apps—this might provide Pandora a new income with fatter margins. Like its contemporary acquisition of Ticketfly, it could actually lend a hand Pandora diversify income while it figures out how you can minimize the crippling costs of track licensing and keep off a growing military of big-name rivals.

within the track streaming industry, it can be uncommon to see a strategic move that satisfies shareholders, listeners, and creators alike. but if achieved properly—and if the podcasting hype holds up—Pandora’s podcast play could just do that.

associated: How “Serial” could bring big cash To Podcasts (ultimately!)