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Apple Podcasts is rolling out a new “Listen With” editorial franchise to give users a new way to discover podcasts. The company says Listen With helps users discover new shows by sharing those that popular artists, authors, filmmakers, journalists, influencers and other podcasters are listening to. Each collection includes a few shows and quotes about why they were selected to be featured. The collections are curated by Apple’s editorial team and are now available in the United States and Canada and can be found in the “Browse” section of the Apple Podcasts app.
The first collection is with Jay Shetty, who is an author, life coach and former monk. In his collection, Shetty recommends “A Slight Change of Plans” with Maya Shankar from Pushkin Industries; “Anything goes with Emma Chamberlain” from Ramble; “How I Built This with Guy Raz” from NPR; “We Can Do Hard Things with Glenn Doyle” from Cadence13 and Oprah’s “SuperSoul.”
Listen With is Apple’s third editorial franchise. The company launched its “Spotlight” editorial franchise last year to highlight rising podcast creators in the United States. The editorial team at Apple selects new podcast creators to feature every month and give them prominent screen real estate in the Apple Podcasts app and promote them across social media and elsewhere. Apple also has a “Kids & Family” collection curated in partnership with Common Sense Media.
In addition to launching Listen With, Apple also shared insights on podcasts subscriptions, which launched in April 2021. The company revealed that launching a subscription grows the total audience of a podcast. Apple notes that the total audience increased for the top 50 subscriptions with existing audiences on Apple Podcasts in the four weeks after their subscription launch. The company also said that among the best-performing creators, more than 10% of listeners have signed up for a subscription. Since the launch of Apple Podcasts Subscriptions, one in five subscriptions enjoy an adoption rate of more than 10%.
Apple has been working to expand its podcasts platform and it’s clearly not the only one to do so. For instance, Spotify has spent over $800 million on podcast companies, like Anchor, the Ringer, Gimlet Media, and Megaphone. SiriusXM, meanwhile, has bought podcast management and analytics platform Simplecast, ad tech platform AdsWizz, and podcast app Stitcher. On the other hand, Amazon has acquired the podcast network Wondery.
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