In our view Pocket Casts has sharply defined and useful features, but any indie podcast listening app faces gale-force competitive headwinds in a field dominated by Apple, Spotify, and Google. Then-CEO Owen Grover (ex-iHeartMedia and a RAIN Summit speaker) departed in March of last year. A steady drumbeat of new features followed. 'Co-founders Russell Ivanovic and Philip Simpson will continue to lead Pocket Casts as part of Automattic. (RAIN coverage HERE.) NPR, WNYC Studios, WBEZ Chicago, and This American Life were principles in that acquisition. Pocket Casts was acquired by a public radio group in May, 2018. Pocket Casts co-founders Russell Ivanovic and Philip Simpson will continue to lead Pocket Casts as part of Automattic. The company previously established a partnership with Spotify-owned Anchor, enabling blog posts to become podcast episodes through text-to-speech features. The app was previously owned by NPR, but was known to be losing money. This is Automattic/WordPress’s second headline dive into podcasting. Popular podcast listening app Pocket Casts has been bought by Automattic, the company behind and Tumblr. “We will explore building deep integrations with and Pocket Casts, making it easier to distribute and listen to podcasts.” –Automattic announcement.
Along with it, Automattic is also looking for ways of incorporating Pocket Casts multi-platform nature. The company plans to create integrations with its blogging platform WordPress, according to its public announcement: Automattic, the parent company of a microblogging website called Tumblr and website-creator tool called WordPress is planning to acquire a podcast application Pocket Casts from public radio groups including NPR and BBC Studios. Automattic, parent company of WordPress has acquired podcast listening app Pocket Casts from NPR and a consortium of public stations.
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