Spotify acquires Gimlet and Anchor to double-down on podcasting

Wow. This is big.

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I hate to say it but Spotify is looking more and more appealing by the day :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Iā€™m a very heavy Google play music customer but itā€™s getting very tempting to jump to the green team :eyes:

The only thing holding me back is that Iā€™ve got a family subscription to look after :thinking: I may want Spotify but I canā€™t say that itā€™ll be such a simple change for everybody else :stuck_out_tongue:

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Google really need to double down on YouTube Music. At the moment we still pay for both in our household but youā€™re right, Spotify are killing it.

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:100:

Yeah, Google need to sort it out! :sweat_smile: I canā€™t remember the last change they made to GPM :sleepy:

Itā€™s beginning to get stagnantā€¦ It needs the same kind of effort and attention that Google put into photos a few years ago :boom: a redesign and a look at three offering in general.

Itā€™s got some good things going for it :eyes: I love that Iā€™ve got 1000+ of my own songs uploaded and streamable like any other track and itā€™s great that I can set a sleep timer but what else is unique? ĀÆ\_(惄)_/ĀÆ

Iā€™m gonna continue to hold out for stuff like dark mode, crossfade, lyrics & a material design 2.0 refresh :pray: but please let it be soon, Google.

Iā€™m a very heavy Google play music customer but itā€™s getting very tempting to jump to the green team

I pay for YouTube premium and have been using YouTube music for a while. Itā€™s pretty good. Spotify is much better but I donā€™t want to pay for 2 services.

This is indeed big news, and makes me uneasy. It remains to be seen what Spotifyā€™s/Gimletā€™s plans are, but I worry that this is the beginning of podcasts being locked away and fragmented. As well as limiting the reach and accessibility of podcasts, this could kill off the great innovation in podcast players. Hopefully thatā€™s not what happens, but Spotify must be expecting big returns somehow.

Also a bit of a shame from the standpoint of seeing where Gimlet Media could go as an independent company. But I imagine they will give us more insight in an upcoming episode of Startup (assuming it comes out before everything is :lock: away behind Spotifyā€™s subscription :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:).

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Interesting move but Apple is still, by far, the 500lb Gorilla in Podcasting. As long as theyā€™re content to sit their and not interfere much itā€™s tough to see anyone else with the market share to make a significant change.

We have a Spotify family account and although I thought all these music services were much of a muchness, in reality Iā€™ve been very impressed with the playlists. They really do offer a great point of differentiation.

I wanted to switch to YouTube Music just to get rid of the ads on videos, but they donā€™t support Family accounts on Google Apps.

You can use free or inexpensive (~Ā£2ā€“Ā£6 one-off purchase) ad blockers to achieve this (Ad Block Plus, 1Blocker, etc). Or the iCabMobile browser.