SiriusXM Acquires Podcast Analytics Company Simplecast

SiriusXM, the company still best known for its satellite radio service, has acquired another company: Simplecast. The analytics and podcast management company joins SiriusXM's own push into the increasingly crowded market, something the company says will help podcasters earn more revenue. With extra help from the SiriusXM-Pandora team and the resources they bring, Simplecast says it will be able to significantly speed up its roadmap.

SiriusXM, though it's not a dedicated podcasting platform, has long been home to a variety of talk shows, many of them exclusive to the service. With the renewed interest in and explosive growth of the podcasting market in recent years, it makes sense that SiriusXM would target listeners with its own offerings — in this case, it has a mobile-only subscription plan.

In 2018, SiriusXM revealed that it would be acquiring Pandora Media; following that, it said in February 2019 that it was adding Pandora music channels to its own app and then, in April 2019, it revealed that it was bringing many of its most popular talk shows to Pandora's own podcasting platform.

In a blog post today, Simplecast revealed that it is SiriusXM-Pandora's latest acquisition. Under this deal, the company says that it will be working with Pandora and AdsWizz to offer its users 'not only new, unique distribution opportunities, but also exciting new revenue-generating tools...'

Simplecast users will be able to find these new things directly on their dashboards, according to the company, which says that it will have more information about how this deal will play out in the future. "Big things are to come!" Simplecast teases — though for now, not much will change on the user end of things.