Snippet: The End of Podcasting’s Innocence ☇

M.G. Siegler:

Joe Rogan has just signed a deal to take his talents to Spotify. Most notably, he’s doing so exclusively, which is a massive deal as he’s one of the, if not the, most popular podcast host right now. This is only surprising in that it’s Joe Rogan who has famously eschewed putting his podcast on Spotify to date. But the type of deal shouldn’t be a big surprise. It was inevitable.

And while my title implies a negative tilt, it’s more to denote a watershed moment for the podcasting industry. If it feels like there have been a lot of those over the past couple of years it’s because there have been. And in the past year or so, they’ve predominantly been driven by Spotify.

Just as Pandora, Stitcher, Spotify, Apple Music, and others have largely replaced music-radio, podcasts are about to grow up and replace talk-radio. Think of all the traditional, syndicated shows that currently chop up pieces and throw them on a podcast feed after air (sports-talk is big for this), but instead, the podcast feed will eventually become the primary product.