He also reported that the group was losing money on the app, drawing from NPR’s financial statement for the 2020 fiscal year to find that the public radio mothership had lost $800,000 on the app during that time period.
In January, Current’s Tyler Falk reported that, less than a year after raising additional funds from BBC Studio Americas, the consortium agreed to sell off Pocket Casts to a new buyer. Despite strong initial optimism and a stated emphasis on experimentation - “We want to help make podcast discovery a better experience for listeners and its delivery and distribution more valuable to podcast creators,” Thomas Hjelm, then holding the role as NPR’s Chief Digital Officer, told me at the time - it never ended up being entirely clear what the consortium strategically had in mind with the app, which, in my understanding, continued to enjoy a strong following. The original participants of the consortium were NPR, WNYC Studios, Chicago Public Media, and This American Life, with BBC Studios Americas stepping in last March as a new investor. Originally created about a decade ago when Ivanovic and Simpson were operating as the independent Australian mobile development firm Shifty Jelly, the app was eventually acquired by a consortium of public-radio organizations in the summer of 2018. That we’re seeing a change in ownership for Pocket Casts shouldn’t come as a surprise. A spokesperson for Automattic noted that the company had no additional details to share beyond what’s mentioned in the official blog post on the matter, and a message by Ivanovic and Simpson sent out to its user base yesterday morning stated that they expect to share more details on what this transition for the app means over the coming weeks, and that they don’t expect users to notice any immediate changes to Pocket Casts for now. The terms of the deal were not made public. The move was announced early Friday, with Automattic stating that the co-founders of the popular podcast app, Russell Ivanovic and Philip Simpson, will continue to lead the product after the change in ownership.
Some news, in case you missed it: Pocket Casts acquired by Automattic, parent company of Wordpress. This article first ran in Hot Pod, an industry-leading trade newsletter about podcasting by Nick Quah.
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