Spotify希望你少听点音乐

Spotify最近大手笔支出3.4亿美元投资播客，可不仅仅是想要主宰你音频生活的方方面面——虽然Spotify肯定对此求之不得。最近收购播客制作公司Gimlet和播客制作发布平台Anchor后，Spotify的首席执行官丹尼尔·埃克在公司博客中写道，这些举措是Spotify从音乐企业向“音频优先”型企业转型的一部分。他没有明写的是，Spotify希望你在他们的平台上多听播客而非音乐。

但你肯定会反驳，Spotify做的就是音乐。没错，但它现在也是世界上最大的播客发行公司，自有节目比其他任何竞争对手都多。如今它还拥有一个备受追捧的工具平台，可以让更多的播客界新秀创作新节目，助力公司的播客经济。而另一方面，音乐整体而言仍然受到唱片公司的控制。不同于自有播客节目，或者说不同于Netflix的大量原创内容，Spotify平台上的海量歌曲版权都不归它所有。也就是说，听众每次听Lady Gaga或Cardi B时，Spotify都必须向唱片公司支付版税，导致公司尽管拥有2亿全球用户却无法盈利。而且，Spotify不能简单地成为自己的唱片公司——因为这可能导致其他唱片公司将几百万首经典曲目从它的曲库中撤出，此时Apple Music和Google Play就能坐收渔利。

因此，对于Spotify而言，最自然不过的对策就是向用户提供更多的自有内容，这样就能剔除中间商。播客还开辟了许多新的广告创收机会。所以继续看吧，听听埃克对“全球音频经济”的宏伟愿景。是的，这是他想要的。但他真正想要的是让这个全球用户最多的手机应用之一最终实现盈利。（财富中文网）

本文另一版本登载于《财富》杂志4月刊，标题为《Spotify播客，大有名堂》。

译者：Agatha

Spotify’s $340 million play for podcasts is not just an attempt to dominate every facet of your audio experience—though Spotify would certainly like that, too. Following its recent acquisitions of Gimlet, a podcast production house, and Anchor, a broadcasting app for podcast creators, CEO Daniel Ek wrote in the company blog that the moves were part of Spotify’s transition from a music to “audio-first” enterprise. What he did not write is that Spotify wants you to listen to music on its platform way less than podcasts.

But Spotify is music, you counter. True, but it’s also now the world’s largest podcast publisher, with more in-house shows than any other competitor. It also now owns a popular tool for up-and-coming podcasters to create new shows and fuel the Spotify podcast economy. But music, however, remains by and large controlled by the record labels. Unlike its podcasts or, say, Netflix’s slew of original content, Spotify doesn’t own the rights to its extensive catalogue of songs. That means royalties must be paid out to labels every time you play Lady Gaga or Cardi B, preventing Spotify from becoming a profitable company despite 200 million global users. And no, Spotify cannot simply become its own label — otherwise it’d risk the others pulling millions of iconic songs from its database while Apple Music and Google Play benefit.

Spotify’s natural solution then in is to provide more content that it directly owns, allowing the company to cut out the middleman. Podcasts also open a host of new advertising revenue opportunities. So go ahead and listen to Ek’s grand vision of a “global audio economy.” Yes, he wants that. But what he really wants is to make one of the world’s most-used apps finally profitable.

A version of this article appears in the April 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline “Spotify’s Podcast Play.”