Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/28/spotifys-barry-mccarthy-says-podcasts-are-growing-in-importance.html

Spotify’s CFO Barry McCarthy claims that Podcast will be as important to the company as streaming is for Netflix. This is new frontier for the music-only streaming company. Within the last year Spotify bought two major podcast distribution companies; Gimlet Media and Anchor . The company decided to spend $ 400-500 million to acquire podcast. Not only will listeners be able to listen to their favorite podcast on Spotify, but they will also be able to tune into Spotify original podcast.

This new shift for the company is possibly due to many musicians not wanting to have their music streamed on Spotify due to the streaming revenue issues for artist. The streaming service is already the most popular music streaming service, however after 13 years and over 96 million subscribers the company finally gets to make money with podcasting. According to The Verge  and Spotify’s financial review, this is the first time in the company’s history that the operating income, net income, and free cash flow were all positive.

Similar to my previous post about Google and Amazon, I believe that Spotify is trying to win the music streaming battle against all of the other streaming services. Spotify’s true competition is Apple Music. Both of the services come at the same $5.99 price (for students) and they both are  popular within the same age group. Now it’s only a matter of time to see which music streaming service prevails in the streaming world and which does not.