Rutger Rosenborg | MIDiA Research

Spotify’s publisher dilemma: Audiobook bundling makes music publishers mad — is all-in-one audio sustainable?

Blog post by Rutger Rosenborg

25 Apr 2024

Try as you might, you cannot make everyone happy. Spotify is learning that the hard way as the company tries to make the case for audiobooks to users, shareholders, and the book publishing industry —...

Inverse incentives: the implications of Spotify’s Substack integration for podcasts

Blog post by Rutger Rosenborg

19 Apr 2024

Audio

Podcasts

Spotify

As platform decay seeps into major tech platforms and microcultures proliferate across the internet, feature development becomes less about building native tools and more about third-party integrations...

What podcast slowdown? 1.2 billion people will be listening by 2030

Blog post by Rutger Rosenborg

11 Apr 2024

Podcasts

spotify podcasts

Spotify

Is podcasting slowing or growing? Both, as it turns out. With marketing and advertising budget cuts contributing to layoffs and cancellations at major podcasting players like Spotify and NPR, 2023 was...

Spotify wants to make podcasts a marketing driver for music

Blog post by Rutger Rosenborg

4 Apr 2024

Podcasts

Music Streaming

music industry

Last summer, Variety published an article about the effect Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast has on boosting the streams of her musician guests . According to Spotify, Anitta’s streams increased...

AI could enable a golden age of audio piracy

Blog post by Rutger Rosenborg

28 Mar 2024

audiobooks

Podcasts

Spotify

Everyone knows the story: In the early 2000s, peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing platforms like Napster, Kazaa, and LimeWire helped digital music piracy proliferate, ultimately decimating recorded music revenue...

MIDiA Research 2024–2030 global podcast forecasts
Road to a $10 billion business

Cover image for MIDiA Research 2024–2030 global podcast forecasts

Report by Mark Qi and Rutger Rosenborg

28 Mar 2024

£5,000.00 excl. VAT

Business Strategy

The temporary digital consumption boom of the pandemic gave way to an inflationary landscape fuelled by global supply chain issues and geopolitical crises. While inflation levelled out in 2023, the residual...

As Spotify corners audiobooks, Audible eyes functional audio

Blog post by Rutger Rosenborg

22 Mar 2024

audiobooks

Podcasts

Spotify

Over the course of 30 years, Audible’s catalogue has grown to include more than 470,000 audiobooks, at least according to their own ads . In less than a year, Spotify’s catalogue has grown to include...

New audiobook pricing gives Spotify the best of both worlds

Blog post by Rutger Rosenborg

6 Mar 2024

audiobooks

Spotify

Audible

In late 2023, Spotify slowly started rolling out audiobooks to Premium subscribers in select markets . In contrast with Spotify’s unlimited supply of music, Premium subscribers were allotted 15 hours...

Why don’t we hear popular music on popular podcasts?

Blog post by Rutger Rosenborg

29 Feb 2024

Audio

Podcasts

Streaming

There are a number of popular podcasts that dissect popular music. One is called, well, Dissect . Others are Popcast , Song Exploder , and Switched on Pop . Podcasts like these usually play extended sections...

What indie book publishers can gain from audiobooks

Blog post by Rutger Rosenborg

22 Feb 2024

audiobooks

Music Streaming

music industry

In the music industry, three major labels generate the lion’s share of revenue: Universal, Sony, and Warner. In the book publishing industry, the “big five” publishers dominate: Penguin Random House,...

Audio substitute threat
Measuring consumer time allocation

Report by Rutger Rosenborg

22 Feb 2024

£3,000.00 excl. VAT

Streaming

cannibalization

Radio

All forms of entertainment compete not only for the same time, but increasingly for the same digital real estate. As audio streaming platforms move towards all-in-one access to multiple formats, both...

iHeartMedia is converting radio listeners to podcast listeners

Case Study by Rutger Rosenborg

22 Feb 2024

Business Strategy

Read the case study …

Is embracing RSS a smart move for YouTube?

Blog post by Rutger Rosenborg

15 Feb 2024

Audio

Podcasts

rss

2023 saw YouTube bring podcasts to YouTube Music, but it did so without one of the podcast industry’s fundamental building blocks: RSS. However, just months later, YouTube has announced in a video posted...

Why Spotify’s podcast exclusivity era is coming to an end

Blog post by Rutger Rosenborg

7 Feb 2024

Audio

Podcasts

spotify podcasts

In July 2021, Spotify paid Alex Cooper more than $60 million for the exclusive rights to host her hit podcast, Call Her Daddy . On January 31st, six months short of the end of that deal term, Spotify announced...

Audiobooks’ Latin explosion — a new front in the streaming wars?

Blog post by Rutger Rosenborg

2 Feb 2024

audiobooks

Audio

Spotify

As streaming and demographic shifts bring a second Latin explosion to the music industry, audiobooks are gearing up to follow suit. In a January 2024 press release , popular subscription-based audio platform...

Why podcasts may have more in common with TV than radio

Blog post by Rutger Rosenborg

25 Jan 2024

Audio

Podcasts

tv

Television is really a nebulous format. From serialised mysteries to talk shows and stand-up comedy to educational documentaries, the format spans a wide range of content on a wide range of delivery mechanisms,...

Ghost podcasts are haunting your social feed — what to know about the new ad format

Blog post by Rutger Rosenborg

17 Jan 2024

Podcasts

TikTok

social media

We typically think about podcast advertising in terms of brands advertising their products on podcasts, but an emerging podcast advertising trend is calling into question what a podcast actually is. Rather...

Podcasts have a recommendation problem

Blog post by Rutger Rosenborg

10 Jan 2024

Audio

Podcasts

algorithms

Podcasts do not go viral. A video clip of an out-of-touch tech billionaire stoking controversy might make the rounds on social media, but podcasts themselves — at least since the Serial phenomenon —...

Audiobooks enter their streaming era, but will it pay off?

Blog post by Rutger Rosenborg

3 Jan 2024

audiobooks

Spotify

Streaming

Most people agree that streaming saved the recorded music industry, but that only happened because demonetised digital consumption helped bring it to the brink of death in the first place. The internet...

Will 2024 be the year of podcast unbundling?

Blog post by Rutger Rosenborg

21 Dec 2023

Podcasts

spotify podcasts

Spotify

Before Spotify, YouTube, and Netflix disrupted music and video, bundled consumption helped drive profitability. From albums to TV networks, consumer preferences were largely dictated by the bundle, allowing...