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A high bar for growth, defying expectations, and more from Spotify to investors

In Spotify’s Q4 earnings call with investors, the word “podcast” was not spoken in the prepared remarks. Only when an investor asked about it in the Q&A portion did the company address its podcast business by name. In reply, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek numbered four ways in which value has been added to Spotify’s advertisers: “AI is one of those ways, video is obviously another one, podcasting is the third, audiobooks is the fourth.” Onekey point: Leaving the door open to charging for ad-supported listening. Click for key points and quotes from Spotify’s Q4 earnings call. Continue Reading

SiriusXM Q3 earnings: Slippage in revenue comps and the sweep of history

SiriusXM released its Q3 finance report, announcing $2.17 billion in third-quarter revenue, and $93M in free cash flow. Digging into the weeds of the publicly available comparative income sheet going back nearly five years, we see small percentages of revenue drops. Charting backwards over three decades, we see the broad sweep of audio pre- and post-digital. Continue Reading