Why Spotify is buying Gimlet.

Spotify entered 2019 as a company primarily known for music, but that’s not how it wants to end it. Spotify made a couple of moves last year that underscored its challenges and hinted at a path forward: It introduced a beta program to allow artists to directly upload music onto the service and, much to the chagrin of major labels, began offering artists direct deals to stream on the platform. Even if a megastar like Taylor Swift, who split from Universal Music Group last year, dealt directly with Spotify, major labels would continue to hold onto a near-century of cataloged music that no amount of direct deals could rival. The company’s first podcasts, Start-Up and Reply All, were immediate hits; by the end of the 2017, with $27 million in investment, Lieber mused that the company could be the “HBO of audio.” In addition to the ads it sells against its original podcasts, the company makes branded podcasts for companies like Tinder and licenses its intellectual property, as with the short-lived ABC series Alex, Inc. that was based on Start-Up and the Amazon Prime Video drama Homecoming, based on a podcast of the same name. Last year, when Spotify began offering direct artist deals, Music Business Worldwide reported that the major labels were considering holding back licensing their music to Spotify in India, which would deny it content in an important market for future growth.