Spotify?s grand plan for podcasts is taking shape

Both will continue to operate, but they’ll do so with the added goal of making Spotify the go-to destination for podcasts.This much is clear: Spotify knows podcasts can generate ad revenue — podcasts are estimated to bring in $659 million in revenue by 2020 — and it’s willing to invest in exclusive content to make sure that people listen on its platform. That fact has been confirmed over and over again.“You’ll see us double down on investment spending in podcast content, and increasingly you’ll see more of that become exclusive on the platform,” Spotify CFO Barry McCarthy said at a Morgan Stanley conference.Spotify will experiment with exclusivity and release windows on its original shows, Blumberg, one of Gimlet’s co-founders, said in an interview with the Recode Media podcast. In response, Holt compared Gimlet to Pixar and Marvel, saying that even after they were purchased by Disney, they continued operating as discrete and successful studios.“I think there’s things that Gimlet’s going to do that maintains the independence of what they’ve always done, and my hope is that there will be many more chapters of Gimlet over the next X number of years,” he said.Some of Spotify’s big podcast hires have the backgrounds to make that happen.Holt, prior to running Spotify’s studios and video department, started his own multichannel network company for YouTubers that Disney eventually acquired.