Spotify Teams Up With Barack and Michelle Obama to Launch Podcasts

Spotify has agreed to an exclusive multi-year partnership with President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s production company, Higher Ground, to produce podcasts on the platform, the company announced today. The Obamas will develop, produce and appear on select podcasts as part of the agreement. Higher Ground Audio has been formed by the production company to manage the upcoming podcasts.

This is the latest move by Spotify to beef up its podcast offerings, after spending nearly $340 million to acquire Gimlet Media — the maker of popular podcasts like Reply All — and Anchor, a company which aims to make podcast creation easier, earlier this year. The company has said it is willing to spend up to $500 million this year to improve its podcast offerings. The podcast ad market is still nascent, pulling in an estimated $479 million in 2018, but that number is expected to more than double by 2021, with more than $1 billion in revenue projected by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC.

President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama launched Higher Ground productions in 2018 and struck a deal with Netflix to produce content that inspires viewers. The company has announced its initial lineup of content for Netflix, which includes adaptations of Michael Lewis’ book The Fifth Risk and author David W. Blight‘s Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in History…….read more

 

Source: Billboard

Photo: WireImage

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