Spotify最近大手筆支出3.4億美元投資播客，可不僅僅是想要主宰你音頻生活的方方面面——雖然Spotify肯定對此求之不得。最近收購播客制作公司Gimlet和播客制作發布平臺Anchor后，Spotify的首席執行官丹尼爾·埃克在公司博客中寫道，這些舉措是Spotify從音樂企業向“音頻優先”型企業轉型的一部分。他沒有明寫的是，Spotify希望你在他們的平臺上多聽播客而非音樂。

但你肯定會反駁，Spotify做的就是音樂。沒錯，但它現在也是世界上最大的播客發行公司，自有節目比其他任何競爭對手都多。如今它還擁有一個備受追捧的工具平臺，可以讓更多的播客界新秀創作新節目，助力公司的播客經濟。而另一方面，音樂整體而言仍然受到唱片公司的控制。不同于自有播客節目，或者說不同于Netflix的大量原創內容，Spotify平臺上的海量歌曲版權都不歸它所有。也就是說，聽眾每次聽Lady Gaga或Cardi B時，Spotify都必須向唱片公司支付版稅，導致公司盡管擁有2億全球用戶卻無法盈利。而且，Spotify不能簡單地成為自己的唱片公司——因為這可能導致其他唱片公司將幾百萬首經典曲目從它的曲庫中撤出，此時Apple Music和Google Play就能坐收漁利。

因此，對于Spotify而言，最自然不過的對策就是向用戶提供更多的自有內容，這樣就能剔除中間商。播客還開辟了許多新的廣告創收機會。所以繼續看吧，聽聽埃克對“全球音頻經濟”的宏偉愿景。是的，這是他想要的。但他真正想要的是讓這個全球用戶最多的手機應用之一最終實現盈利。（財富中文網）

本文另一版本登載于《財富》雜志4月刊，標題為《Spotify播客，大有名堂》。

譯者：Agatha

Spotify’s $340 million play for podcasts is not just an attempt to dominate every facet of your audio experience—though Spotify would certainly like that, too. Following its recent acquisitions of Gimlet, a podcast production house, and Anchor, a broadcasting app for podcast creators, CEO Daniel Ek wrote in the company blog that the moves were part of Spotify’s transition from a music to “audio-first” enterprise. What he did not write is that Spotify wants you to listen to music on its platform way less than podcasts.

But Spotify is music, you counter. True, but it’s also now the world’s largest podcast publisher, with more in-house shows than any other competitor. It also now owns a popular tool for up-and-coming podcasters to create new shows and fuel the Spotify podcast economy. But music, however, remains by and large controlled by the record labels. Unlike its podcasts or, say, Netflix’s slew of original content, Spotify doesn’t own the rights to its extensive catalogue of songs. That means royalties must be paid out to labels every time you play Lady Gaga or Cardi B, preventing Spotify from becoming a profitable company despite 200 million global users. And no, Spotify cannot simply become its own label — otherwise it’d risk the others pulling millions of iconic songs from its database while Apple Music and Google Play benefit.

Spotify’s natural solution then in is to provide more content that it directly owns, allowing the company to cut out the middleman. Podcasts also open a host of new advertising revenue opportunities. So go ahead and listen to Ek’s grand vision of a “global audio economy.” Yes, he wants that. But what he really wants is to make one of the world’s most-used apps finally profitable.

A version of this article appears in the April 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline “Spotify’s Podcast Play.”