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Business News Deals Digital
Pandora to stream second series of Serial, Tidal moves into comedy and drama
By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 3 November 2015
As the catalogues of most streaming services are largely identical, the new battleground for these companies is rapidly becoming non-music content. The latest announcements in this area are that Pandora has done a deal to become the exclusive streaming partner for the second series of the ‘Serial’ podcast, and Tidal has started commissioning comedy and drama programmes.
A spin-off from popular radio show and podcast ‘This American Life’, ‘Serial’ launched last year, and over twelve weeks examined the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee in Baltimore to (unsuccessfully) establish whether or not her boyfriend, Adnan Syed, had been wrongly convicted of her killing. You probably know this, as everyone listened to it. Well, everyone except the majority of people who still don’t listen to any podcasts at all.
“For people already listening to ‘Serial’ and ‘This American Life’, nothing will change”, says ‘This American Life’ host and producer Ira Glass of the Pandora deal. “But we believe lots of people who’d like our shows simply haven’t heard of them, or haven’t started listening to podcasts. ‘Serial’ is the biggest podcast in the world, but only 17% of Americans listen to podcasts at all. That’s why it’s so exciting for us to work with Pandora. Pandora reaches millions of people who never listen to public radio or download podcasts. This’ll get our shows to them”.
Meanwhile Pandora founder Tim Westergren said in a blog post: “Pandora is all about discovery and this gives us a great opportunity – not only to offer each of you a great new experience, but to help ‘Serial’ expand its audience”.
Elsewhere in music services not doing music, The Hollywood Reporter says that Tidal has commissioned two new non-music series to add to its catalogue. Today it will air the first episode of ‘No Small Talk’, a five episode stand up comedy series hosted by DJ Cipha Sounds. And in January, the streaming service will also run the second series of ‘Money & Violence’, a drama created by filmmaker Moe Verneau, originally shown on YouTube.
Other streaming services are also dabbling with non-music content of course. Last year Deezer made the first move by acquiring podcast streaming app Stitcher, integrating podcasts into its catalogue in May this year. Google Play Music is also preparing to add podcasts to its catalogue in the US. And in May, Spotify announced all kinds of non-music stuff, including podcasts and video, which have so far failed to materialise.
If it’s podcasts you want though, you don’t have to wait for your streaming service of choice to start serving them up. Take the CMU Podcast for example. Just LOOK at how many different platforms you can already listen to our weekly programme about the music business on. We couldn’t make it simpler. Listen to the latest episode immediately.
