Sup ya beautiful bastards. Hope you've been a fantastic Tuesday. Welcome back to the Philip

DeFranco show. Buckle up. Hit that like button and let's just jump into it. And the first

thing we're gonna talk about today. Let's start today off on a slightly less intense vibe than

the past few weeks. And we've got some interesting entertainment business news we should talk about.

Starting with the podcast world, which of course has been now around a while, but has gotten really interesting these past few years.

A free of things recently like that huge Joe Rogan deal also deal struck with people like Kim Kardashian, Michelle Obama, entire companies being bought like The Ringer, Gimlet Media, and others. And if you're not aware, all those deals I just mentioned involve one single company, and that is Spotify.

And they've been such an incredibly interesting and important company to watch over these past few years because they are buying every part of the ecosystem.

Yes, we've been talking about deals that involve content, right, have face and name value.

But we've also seen them in the past buying companies like anchor.

Fantastic and easy way to create, distribute, and monetize your podcast.

And on that last note, right, monetize. Today we saw big news with Spotify buying a podcast hosting company called Megafone.

Buying the company for a reported $235 million and among the reasons because the company offers technology for podcast, publishers,

and advertisers seeking targeted slots on podcasts.

Also, now Megaphone hosted podcasts for publishers like ESPN, the Wall Street Journal, and others,

who will have access to Spotify's proprietary ad insertion technology called streaming ad insertion.

And that system, very interesting, it makes real-time decisions about which ads a specific listener should hear based on their data,

and also based on the goals of various ad deals, Spotify is running and that's what makes this deal so interesting they've now built out this fully rounded out podcasting ecosystem a network of exclusive shows a podcast player podcast creation software a hosting company and its own ad sales team and that may also be the reason we're seeing reports this week that they might be considering launching

a separate paid subscription just for podcasts.

Which, I mean, would be incredibly notable

because I mean, as of right now,

you can listen to podcasts on Spotify for free with ads

or without ads if you're one of the 150 million people

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