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May 31, 2019 @ 4:08 PM

The Podcast Ecosystem in 2019 – a16z’s 68 page analysis

The Podcast Ecosystem in 2019 – a16z’s 68 page analysis

 

The Podcast Ecosystem in 2019 – a16z’s 68 page analysis

Dear readers,

Podcasting has been a slow burn, and has turned into a movement. 90 million Americans now listen to podcasts, and if your behavior is anything like mine, it’s turned into a multi-hour per week habit. I reach for my podcasts whenever I’m commuting, whenever I’m doing a long walk between offices, or if I’m doing random stuff around the house. No wonder the consumer investment team ended up digging into this trend by doing a market map report — the analysis led by Li Jin and including work from myself, Connie Chan, and others. You can follow and message Li on Twitter if you have thoughts about the piece.

See below for a long-form analysis everything we’ve observed in the podcasting industry. It was originally published on a16z.com. There’s a lot to read here, but I wanted to highlight a couple of my takeaways and what I’m looking for now:

  • Podcasting is big, mainstream, but severely undermonetized — and some of the biggest opportunities in the podcasting space lay in pivoting the business model from ads into some kind of direct payment. I’m looking for startups that can change the game there.
  • The bigger idea is actually “audio”, not specifically podcasting. And in fact, the combined revenue of Headspace and Calm are more than half of the entire podcasting market. Whoa! I’d be interested in other products that tap into the trends around AirPods, Alexa, voice assistants, etc., but may not directly sound like podcasting
  • After this analysis, I’m looking for really differentiated verticals of audio. Meditation is one, but what about something that’s at a much higher price point? For example, something that’s very business-focused and can be put on a corporate credit card? It could create a strong advantage around paid marketing if a product has high subscription retention or ARPU, allowing them to make higher bids in the various ad networks.

The report covers things in more detail at the end, but that’s the tldr; from an investment standpoint.

The other quick plug I want to give — get a copy of the PDF version of the deck by joining the a16z newsletter:

Subscribe to the a16z newsletter here.

The a16z team uses the newsletter to circulate resources, including podcasts, op-eds, presentations, and more. You can subscribe to get more updates.

If you want to skip the deck, here's the extended writeup:
The a16z consumer team’s definitive analysis of the podcast ecosystem in 2019

Hope you enjoy it!

Thanks,
Andrew
Copyright © 2019 Andrew Chen, All rights reserved.

All views contained in here are my own and do not represent the views of AH Capital Management ("a16z" or “Andreessen Horowitz”) or any a16z affiliates. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. This newsletter may link to other websites and certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation.

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