Amazon to Buy Wondery

Amazon is said to be in talks to buy podcast startup Wondery in a deal worth $300 million. Wondery's last funding round was in June 2019, where the company raised $10 million at a $100 million valuation. This was the largest funding round for an independent podcasting company at the time. Today Wondery is the last large independent podcaster.

Wondery is on track to make over $40 million in revenues this year, of which 75% of the revenue comes exclusively from adverting. The remainder of the revenue comes from TV licensing, subscription services like Audible, Stitcher Premium and their very own premium subscription service which they launched mid-year 2020.

US ad revenues from all podcasts were up 48% to $708.1 million last year, and according to Interactive Advertising Bureau, those will cross the $1 billion for the first time in 2021. Wondery is popular for true-crime podcasts like "Doctor Death," "Dirty John", and "Over My Dead Body" and enjoys over 60 million downloads of its shows per month.

Wondery is the catalyst that Amazon audio needs to compete with Spotify on podcasts. I have been bullish on podcasting for over four years now, and I finally bought myself Spotify shares to add on to my Apple shares. Listen to podcasts and learn something new every day!