This one came in overnight: for the uninitiated, Epic is the… I guess they call themselves a “content studio,” but it’s more specifically a firm that sources and produces long-form stories that can eventually be spun out as adapted properties for print, television and film. (One such notable project: Argo, later turned into a Ben […]

(1) Spotify announced this morning that it is moving to acquire Parcast, the Los Angeles-based company founded in 2016 by Max Cutler that trades in a genre-oriented, high-volume portfolio with broad titles like Serial Killers, Cults, and Unsolved Murders. (My dude Jonah Bromwich at the New York Times has described the company’s fare as “pulp […]

Also at Thursday’s Hot Pod Summit (gotta keep the #brand strong, friends), I was joined on stage by Courtney Holt, Spotify’s Head of Studios and Video, along with Gimlet co-founders Alex Blumberg and Matt Lieber, who both now hold Managing Director titles at the company, to talk through some details about the Swedish streaming platform’s […]

If I had a podcast, this is when I’d drop an emergency pod, because this is some Kristaps Porzingis-level shit. Recode’s Peter Kafka and the Wall Street Journal’s Ben Mullin both fired out the story within the past two hours that Spotify, the Swedish music streaming company, is apparently in “advanced talks” to acquire Gimlet […]

The New York Post reports that Liberty Media is aiming to take control of iHeartMedia as soon as the financially-struggling radio giant (which recently acquired Stuff Media for $55 million) crawls out of bankruptcy early next year. Here’s the report. iHeartMedia had been struggling with a $20 billion debt burden over the years due to […]

SiriusXM, the satellite radio giant, announced yesterday that it is officially moving to acquire Pandora, the streaming music service, for $3.5 billion in an all-stock deal. This development doesn’t exactly come out of the blue; as Recode’s Peter Kafka pointed out, SiriusXM already invested $480 million in Pandora for a 19% stake last summer which, […]