CEO James Meyer says there still a few things that need to happen before podcasting reaches a mega audience. During SiriusXM’s second quarter earnings call, Meyer referred to podcasting as a flea market. He said right now podcasting is a race to see who can put the most content out there and no one can find it.
SiriusXM owns Pandora which Chief Content Officer Scott Greenstein says has about 3,000 podcasts now and will have up to 10,000 by the end of the year. Greenstein said eventually what will separate SiriusXM and Pandora from everyone else in the podcasting space is unique podcasts from big names that will not be available anywhere else. SiriusXM purchased Pandora about a year ago.
Meyer did say SirisXM is committed to the podcast space, but here are his concerns. The first is what content do people really want in podcasting. “Right now it’s a race to see who can put the most stuff up and I don’t believe that’s who’s going to win. We believe more branded content is more important in the space. There’s content everywhere but it’s like a flea market. It’s up there everyone and nobody can find it and nobody can find it easily. We’re busily working on those two things that we think are gatekeeper things that need to be done for this stuff to finally catch fire. There are a few big things that need to happen before this becomes a mega audience.”
