Acast is continuing its push into small but growing European podcasting markets by launching versions of its app in Swedish, French, German, and Spanish. They claim that there have been “130 million listens to Acast podcasts across France, Germany, Spain and Sweden in 2019”, although don’t say how many of those listens actually happened in the Acast app as opposed to other podcatchers.
European expansion is a big theme for Acast this year. Their model seems now to be predicated on getting into a country’s market early in order to tie up production deals with major publishing houses and start attracting independent creators, and then trust to inertia and that head start to keep the revenue growing. We’ve seen moves along these lines already with their acquisition of Pippa, a host popular in France and the opening of their new office in Paris. Since they raised $35m in series C funding at the end of last year, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw at least one more international launch before the end of 2019.