In addition to ARN’s deal with Whooshkaa that was revealed late last week, ARN has announced a partnership with Spreaker, which means over 500,000 episodes in the iHeartRadio library. There will also be more announcements with other partners in coming weeks.
ARN notes iHeartRadio has the biggest library of podcasts in Australia and ARN is better placed to commercialise that offering.
The podcast library includes hundreds of contributors and a breadth of content across health, sport, politics, comedy, food, crime, paranormal, lifestyle.
ARN is also taking a stand on podcast measurement – it wants to see a standard on listen throughs and not downloads. “It’s easy to have plenty of downloads, but they may sit dormant or only have the start listened to them so that ads aren’t being heard. Listen throughs are what deliver the commercial opportunity and that’s the space ARN will be playing in.”
ARN is also working with Adswizz (a global digital audio advertising solution provider) which will also allow ARN to commercialise listening through dynamic ad insertion.
ARN’s Spreaker partnership
Spreaker was launched in 2010 by Francesco Baschieri and Marco Pracucci and head office is in New York. It is a complete solution for creating, distributing, measuring, and listening to podcasts. Podcasts include the acclaimed S-Town, This American Life and True Murder.
For podcasters: new as well as experienced podcasters, broadcasters, and radio hosts can use the web and mobile apps to record audio or go live. Features include the ability to engage with other hosts and listeners, sharing and exporting content to different social networks and platforms, and accessing detailed analytics on audiences.
For listeners: listeners benefit from a streamlined experience when searching and discovering original content on every topic. With hundreds of contributors, there is a niche for everyone with podcasts across everything from health, sport, politics, comedy, food, crime, paranormal, lifestyle and more. Fans can even follow and like favourite users and tracks, and interact through comments and chatboxes. With Spreaker’s freemium model, anyone can join and utilise the platform for free, or can upgrade to a Pro plan in order to access features like extra audio storage and advanced analytics.
Spreaker and BlogTalkRadio (blogtalkradio.com) announced last month that their respective boards have approved a merger of the two companies. The combined entity will consist of more than 50,000 podcast shows, delivering millions of episodes. In this first phase of the partnership, and until the Spreaker/BlogTalkRadio merger is completed, iHeartRadio will house 3,000 of these shows, which is more than 300,000 episodes. Combined with its current library, this will take iHeartRadio’s total to more than 500,000+ episodes, making it the largest podcast provider in Australia.
Ingestion of these podcasts into iHeartRadio begins this week so should be available for consumers towards the end of this month.