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Lakewood Times

Lakewood Times

Lakewood Times

    Amazon bought a podcast company called Wondery

    On Wednesday, December 30th, Amazon announced that they are going to be buying a podcast company called Wondery.

    Amazon has added podcasts to Amazon Music, and they plan to use Wondery to help grow their share of the podcasting market.

    Sadly, the terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Spokespeople from both Amazon and Wondery declined to comment on the deal.

    Wondery was launched in 2016, but it has grown tremendously well. It was also founded by a former Fox executive Herman Lopez. Within three years of its launch, it became one of the top five podcast publishers. It also had forty million downloads in just December of 2018. It currently has about ten million listeners.

    Wall Street Journal made an assumption that Amazon acquired Wondery for about 300 million dollars.

    Wondery has published many well-known podcasts, such as Dirty John, Business Wars, and Dr. Death. These will soon be available through Amazon Music.

    Spotify and Apple have also made moves regarding podcasts.

    Spotify is heavily invested in having new and exclusive podcasts for their platform. They have bought podcast publishers, such as Joe Rogan, Michelle and Barack Obama, and Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle.

    Spotify has also bought four companies (The Ringer, Gimlet Media, Anchor and Parcast) to try and expand their podcast library.

    Apple has tried to expand its podcasts by pre-downloading a podcasts app onto new iPhones.

    These podcasts will still be available from both Amazon Music and Wondery seperately, but Amazon is trying to help produce high-quality podcasts so listeners can have a better experience. “I usually listen to podcasts on Spotify, but I might have to switch to Amazon Music or Wondery now,” says Franklin Limkemann, a junior at Lakewood High School.

     

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