From today’s press release: Acast, the world’s largest independent podcast company, has signed an agreement to acquire Podchaser, the world’s most comprehensive and authoritative podcast database. The planned acquisition brings together two champions of the open podcast ecosystem, strengthening and underlining Acast’s commitment to ensuring podcasts are accessible across all platforms.
Alongside Acast’s existing podcaster monetization capabilities, the deep integration of Podchaser and its data will deliver the industry’s richest set of authoritative, structured metadata. The two companies will also work to broaden and better this information, improving podcast data for the whole industry.
Podchaser, which will continue to operate as a separate brand and independent business, was founded in 2016 and is home to the leading global podcast database, covering more than 4.5 million podcasts and more than 1.7 billion data points — including hundreds of thousands of ratings and reviews, and the advertisers of the world’s top 5,000 podcasts. This unique, proprietary data — which will also remain open to all — spans and powers the entire open podcast ecosystem, and is used by listeners, podcasters, advertisers and industry professionals.
Through verified listener and podcaster contributions, Podchaser’s database makes it easy for listeners to discover new podcasts and find information about existing ones — across all listening apps — as well as providing trustworthy, transparent data for advertisers and marketing professionals to more efficiently find and reach engaged podcast audiences.
Ross Adams, Acast’s CEO, said: “As true champions of open podcasting, Acast and Podchaser combined will accelerate the innovation and democratization of the podcasting ecosystem for podcasters, listeners and advertisers everywhere. Together we will unlock the vast opportunity that we know exists for open podcasting to not just have parity with the data held by closed, paywalled platforms, but to leap forward and surpass them.”
Bradley Davis, CEO at Podchaser, commented: “Podchaser and Acast have a shared ethos around supercharging the open podcast ecosystem, to create the best tools possible for listeners, podcasters, and advertisers. Acast is not only a strong and reliable owner, but also a platform who, like us, works with all parts of the podcasting ecosystem, making them the perfect partner on our continued journey.”
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Acast is a Stockholm-based public company with a market cap today of $2.6 billion, based on quarterly revenues of around $300M and recent quarterly net losses in the $25M to $70M range. Financial details on the transaction (including terms of the $35M purchase price) here.
Enjoy a thirty-minute interview with Podchaser’s Bradley Davis on Matt Sonnenberg’s “Podcast Better” podcast (from April 2021) here.