By Anne Steele
Spotify Technology SA got serious about podcasts less than two
years ago, but some of the biggest names in culture -- Joe Rogan,
Michelle Obama and Kim Kardashian West -- have already signed on
with the company. Getting those high-profile figures to the table
was Dawn Ostroff, an executive who's made her career tackling the
next big thing in media.
Podcasts need to become a big moneymaker if the nearly $50
billion company is to become profitable. It is Ms. Ostroff's job as
chief content officer to make Spotify less reliant on music, and
the company has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to make
it happen.
She has helped position Spotify as a major player -- and sparked
an arms race for podcasting companies and talent -- with deals for
Gimlet Media, Anchor FM, Parcast Studios and Bill Simmons's the
Ringer. The streaming company now has more than 1.5 million
podcasts on its platform, up from 185,000 in 2018.
Parcast founder Max Cutler said he had no intention of selling
his self-funded network, home to hit true-crime shows like "Serial
Killers" and "Unsolved Murders." Ms. Ostroff saw in Parcast's
thousands of hours of programs both a library of evergreen shows
and opportunity to grow.
The executive promised Mr. Cutler backing to produce more shows
more frequently and elaborately. She also offered access to a trove
of in-depth analytics that would tell Parcast who its listeners
were and what they liked -- the Holy Grail for podcasters, for whom
reliable data have been scarce.
"Dawn showed up and turned out to be pretty persuasive," said
Mr. Cutler, who sold the company last year for $56 million.
Ms. Ostroff, 60 years old, arrived at Spotify in 2018 after
executive positions in TV, film and digital video. Her hire
signaled the company's ambition to become more like a media company
and less like a tech startup.
Podcasts, the company says, will improve its margins, eventually
helping it turn a consistent profit. Since its $100 million-plus
agreement in mid-May with Mr. Rogan, Spotify's recent flurry of
deals has run up the company's stock as much as 80%.
While the decade-old Spotify has come to dominate
music-listening habits around the world, profits have remained
elusive. Nearly three-quarters of its revenue goes out the door in
the form of royalties to record labels, music publishers and other
rights holders.
Spotify is now the second-largest platform for podcasts, behind
Apple Inc.
It is not the first time Ms. Ostroff has helped a company tackle
a new medium.
As programming head at Lifetime she led the company to become
the No. 1 cable network in prime time two decades ago. At the CW
she attracted young audiences with shows like "Gossip Girl," making
it available on iTunes before it aired on TV, and to stream online
after -- selling ads at the same rate, relative to audience size,
as on air -- to get ahead of the online piracy that was then
rampant. More recently at Condé Nast, she coaxed powerful and
territorial magazine editors to embrace digital video just as the
format was taking off.
In her current role, Ms. Ostroff has pushed podcasters to
innovate in various ways, such as urging Parcast's Mr. Cutler to
produce a daily, narrative true-crime podcast -- a previously
unheard-of tempo for the genre, which tends to be costly and
requires a large production team. A crime junkie herself, Ms.
Ostroff said she is now an avid listener of Parcast's "Today in
True Crime."
The daughter of a concert promoter who worked with Frank
Sinatra, Ms. Ostroff spent some of her teenage years answering
request lines for a Top 40 radio station. She became a protégée of
top CBS executive Les Moonves, who in 2002 tapped her to become
president of entertainment at UPN, the fledgling television arm of
Paramount Studios. There she helped turn around the network by
drawing in African-American and Hispanic audiences and developing
shows like the teen detective drama "Veronica Mars," "WWE
SmackDown" and "America's Next Top Model."
"Top Model" was early to the trend of reality-show competitions.
Creator and host Tyra Banks said, "It took foresight to be able to
see the potential."
Ms. Ostroff's creative feedback about the show -- including a
note about amping up the "after" photos in makeover episodes --
made big differences. "Dawn understood the ground we were
breaking," Ms. Banks said.
In 2011 Ms. Ostroff jumped to another startup-like outfit inside
a media giant, co-founding Condé Nast Entertainment, a studio and
distribution network for film, TV and digital-video projects based
on the magazine giant's brands including Vanity Fair, Vogue, GQ and
Wired. It was no easy task, said Bryan Lourd, partner at Creative
Artists Agency, which then represented Condé Nast
Entertainment.
"Established media companies like that are holding on to the
past, and she was screaming in the halls about the future," he
said.
Ms. Ostroff has been instrumental in landing top talent, from
Mr. Rogan to Ms. Kardashian to Barack and Michelle Obama. The
executive traveled to Washington, D.C., to woo the former president
and first lady.
The Obamas were sold on Spotify's global reach, including its
free version. "The Michelle Obama Podcast," which made its debut
last month, has had the biggest podcast launch in Spotify's
history. It is No. 1 on the platform globally and has millions of
listeners.
While podcasts are a new format for Ms. Ostroff, she said she is
following the same instinct she did in other media: "My natural
inclination is to follow the younger generation," which includes
her four children, aged 17 to 30.
She is sometimes ahead of them. They didn't understand why she
left the CW for Condé Nast; a year later they were watching short
digital videos her team had made. With the move to Spotify, Ms.
Ostroff said, they weren't sure about podcasting; now they are avid
listeners.
While many entertainment executives tend to obsess over product,
Ms. Ostroff understands the audience, said Dana Walden, chairman of
Disney Television Studios and ABC Entertainment.
"If you focus on a specific audience and program for them
successfully, inevitably what you end up with is a broader piece of
entertainment," she said, pointing to Spotify's mostly young-adult
listeners. "If you do it really well anyone can listen to those
podcasts. They become part of the zeitgeist."
Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, has a
content partnership with Spotify's Gimlet unit.
Ms. Ostroff last year added advertising business officer to her
title -- a relatively small part of Spotify's revenue but one that
aligns with podcasts.
Early this year Spotify introduced a new digital tool that for
the first time lets advertisers know how many and what type of
listeners heard a given ad in a podcast. Omnicom Media Group said
it plans to spend $20 million on advertising in podcasts
distributed by Spotify.
Throughout her career, Ms. Ostroff said, she has consistently
sought to pursue new ways of telling stories and reaching
audiences. "I always have been interested in going to what's next,"
she said, "because I consider myself to be a builder."
Write to Anne Steele at Anne.Steele@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 11, 2020 05:44 ET (09:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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