Podcast Acquisitions & Investments - 2023 Industry Recap

Let’s kick off 2024 with a look back at notable acquisitions, investments, and podcasting’s evolution over the past year.

As is tradition at Sounds Profitable, we like to kick off the first newsletter of every year recapping the financial activity of the podcast industry through both acquisitions and investments and some thoughts about the space in general. 

Last year filled me with a ton of confidence in our industry, not necessarily reflected in the acquisitions and investments listed below. Economic, media, and advertising impacts far greater than podcasting absolutely disrupted goals and growth within our industry, but that wasn’t unique to us. We chose education, with many companies putting in considerable effort to do more research along with better equipping their buyers and internal teams with an understanding of how podcasting works. We chose collaboration, acknowledging that at the size of our industry we are not competing with each other as much as we are competing with other opportunities outside of podcasting. And finally, when given the choice we chose accuracy, collectively elevating a need for change within the Apple Podcasts app that reduced total downloads industry wide.

It’s important to remind you of the big picture that was 2023 before you review our recaps of 2021 and 2022 which both have more entries and large disclosed numbers. We encourage you to bookmark today's coverage to serve as a great way to keep things in perspective while 2024 starts to unfold around us.

Before we begin, we are asking for new submissions to the first 2024 update of The Podscape, the comprehensive resource covering the companies in the business of podcasting. If your company is not currently listed or your logo needs to be updated, hit reply and let us know.

Now, time to dive in.

AdTech & Monetization

We kicked off the year with Value for Value (V4V) platform TrueFans, PodFans at time of funding, securing £300k in funding. In June, B2B focused podcast ad marketplace Businesswise raised an additional $150k from Sunstone Management. And in the acquisitions department, US-based identity and attribution company Claritas acquiring AI-focused audio attribution platform ArtsAI in September.

Creator Tools

Podcast audience growth platform Amaze Media Labs acquired long-time partner Rockable to expand their proprietary technical offerings in March. April saw the close of a crowdfunding campaign for production and monetization platform Zencastr, securing an additional $559,853 from 1,074 investors on top of the previous $388,606 raised from 644 investors. And in August, audio and video editing platform Descript acquired remote recording studio SquadCast to offer a more a to z solution for their users.

Hosting & Distribution

In March, Tindle Media Group acquired a 10% interest in Podcast Radio. May saw the acquisition of Italian distribution and promotion company Mentre by EU-focused ad marketplace Audion. In June, hosting and monetization platform Mumbler raised €155k in June. Treegoat Media, focusing on their distribution and discovery platform Marbyl, raised $610k in August. On the acquisition side, Patreon acquired Moment, a digital events platform, in October. And podcast and audiobook subscription platform Podimo raised an additional $48 million with a focus on profitability, at the end of December.

Media

Five podcasts were acquired this year, with Gilded Audio acquiring Laura Myer’s Shameless Acquisition Target in January. Condé Nast Entertainment acquiring In The Dark Podcast from MPR News, part of American Public Media Group in March. Metapigeon, the development and production company behind Critical Role, made their first entertainment acquisition with the fiction podcast Midst in March. And KQED acquiring both Spooked and Snap Judgement from Snap Judgement Studios in August.

On the industry trade side, Podnews acquired Podcast Business Journal from Streamline Publishing Inc. in April, bringing a weekly business-focused newsletter to the existing portfolio of Podnews’s daily newsletter/podcast and weekly review podcast.

Production

By far our largest category in both acquisition and investment. This year saw self-proclaimed UK’s fastest growing independent podcast company, Novel, raising $6.2M from VGC Partners in January. In February investment firm PodX Group made this first acquisition of the year with Nordic production company Filt, followed by UK’s Listen in May and Finland's largest production company Suomen Podcastmedia in July.  Back to March, Starglow Media raised $2.5M and announced their launch with a focus on high-quality audio content for kids and family.

May had a lot of activity, starting with French production company Binge Audio being acquired by Paris and LA production company Paradiso Media. Production companies Audily and Rococo Punch announced their merger. And LiveOne announced their intention to acquire some of Kast Media’s assets in an all-stock deal before splitting off PodcastOne and going public in September.

Taking a breather until August where we have global production company and podcast network Realm acquiring kids and family podcast network Pinna and unscripted podcast network Lipstick & Vinyl. Quebec sports media & entertainment group La Poche Bleue was acquired by Playmaker Capital. And the network Evergreen Podcasts expanded their footprint in music podcasts with controlling interest in Sound Talent Media.

Later in October, tech advisory and media research firm Futurum Group acquired the Business Podcast Network, and last but not least, Tenderfoot TV made their first ever acquisition in Resonate Originals in November.

Wrapping It Up

We start this year knowing what the new normal is in podcasting. Knowing our audience and who we can work to bring into the fold as listeners. Knowing that advertisers see the value in our industry and are gaining more confidence in it. And most importantly knowing that we’re still firmly in the collaboration phase of growing this industry.

We survived a boom and bust during a pandemic. Even if we remove that spike, we’ve still consistently grown every single year as an industry. It’s easy to get bogged down in the layoffs, but it’s unfair to look solely at our industry's layoffs without comparing it to other media and advertising channels.

Education has now clearly become a priority, we see that every day as our newsletter signups grow, almost 1:1 with the hires I get to hear about from our partners. Which is a reminder that everything we do here at Sounds Profitable is meant to educate you and empower you with material to win more business and further your career.

I - and the team at Sounds Profitable - are here to help both you and the industry grow in any way we can. Just hit reply.

I’ll leave you with one final comment: Allison Schiff of AdExchanger recently recapped Ad tech M&A in 2023, succinctly put as “weak sauce”. But just a few short lines down, she highlights LUMA Partner Conor McKenna’s emphasis on adtech entering “an era of efficient growth” and abandoning the growth-at-all-costs mentality. 

That rings pretty true to me looking back at podcasting last year.

New Partners

Sounds Profitable exists thanks to the continued support of our amazing partners. Monthly consulting, free tickets to our quarterly events, partner-only webinars, and access to our 1,800+ person slack channel are all benefits of partnering Sounds Profitable.

• Jamx is an end-to-end platform that infuses publishers, podcasters and advertisers with a podcast discovery widget that recommends podcasts to audiences based on their interests.

• Atomic Entertaiment's approach blends storytelling with history and science for premium platforms, brands, and networks, on projects like the Emmy-nominated Brain Games and hit family podcast Who Smarted?

Want to learn more about partnership? Hit reply or send us an email!