Podcast companies Spreaker and BlogTalkRadio announce merger

Spreaker and BlogTalkRadio have agreed to a merger. The two audio companies will join forces to create a single combined entity comprising more than 50,000 podcasts and millions of listeners worldwide. The new company will offer services for podcast creation and monetization in an all-in-one solution. Terms of the merger were not disclosed, but shareholders from each of the two original companies will be making investments to support the new business.

For Spreaker, the merger rationale appears to key on BlogTalkRadio’s recent technology development.

“BlogTalkRadio recently released its ‘big data’ audience data solution, Cortex,” Spreaker CEO and Co-founder Francesco Baschieri said. “Through the combination of this technology platform with Spreaker’s sophisticated mobile apps and creation tools, we can deliver the ‘holy grail’ to the podcasting industry — targeted buys enriched by analytics and audience data that provide extremely high accuracy and transparency to advertisers, while also providing rich feedback loops for content creators to improve their content. This tightly-coupled capability, supported by Spreaker’s existing promotional deals and distribution channels with the likes of iHeartRadio, iTunes and Sonos, will make our company an instant leader in the space.”