Retail giant Amazon.com Inc has confirmed its decision to acquire podcast startup company Wondery, a deal in which Wondery was valued at a total of $300 million. This is believed to be a push by Amazon to expand its non-musical audio content offerings.
Amazon and Wondery were reported to have entered talks earlier this month, with Amazon intending to catch up with industry leaders such as Spotify Technology in a bid to dominate the audio content space. While Spotify has already invested in big names to become an audio content leader, Amazon is a late entrant to this market, having only begun to make significant strides.
Leading media company Variety has reported that Wondery now rakes in 20 million unique monthly listeners. This podcast network offers a variety of wildly successful podcast series, including the likes of “Dirty John”, “Dr. Death”, and “Business Wars”.
While Amazon looks to be closing in on a deal to acquire Wondery, the retail organization has faced stiff competition from the likes of Apple Inc and Sony Music Entertainment, each of which has expressed interest in Wondery.
