Bell’s iHeartRadio Brand Inks Podcast Deal With Spotify

By FYI Staff

Bell Media’s iHeartRadio Canada Podcast Network announced today a new distribution partnership with Spotify, vastly broadening the reach of original podcasts in sports, entertainment, lifestyle, and news categories originating from TSN, Much Digital Studios, RDS, CTV News, iHeartRadio Canada, and Bell Media Studios.

The deal solidifies iHeartRadio Canada’s position in Canadian podcasting by ensuring its content is available to listeners across every major audio platform in the country.

In addition to Spotify, the iHeartRadio Canada network reaches podcast listeners through distribution partners including Apple, Audible, Stitcher, and Google Play Music.

The media company’s podcast network offers a library of more than 11,000 unique programs, with hundreds of thousands of hours of new content produced monthly in 17 categories including entertainment, news, sports, science, politics, food, business, comedy, and crime.

“This latest agreement with Spotify is core to our strategy of delivering the best storytelling to diverse audiences across the country, in every medium, on every platform, and now to more Canadians than ever before,” said Rob Farina, Head of Radio Content, Strategy, and iHeartRadio at Bell Media.

Continuing: “Podcasting is an established and growing content ecosystem where diversity of opinion flourishes and a near limitless array of genres and sub-genres can be discovered and explored. As Canada’s leading content company, we look forward to growing our footprint through sustained investment in this dynamic content community.”

As many as 10 million Canadians listened to a podcast in the past year, according to a Canadian Podcast Listener Study conducted by Audio Insights Inc. and Ulster Media with support from The Globe & Mail. Three years ago, 30 percent of Canadians were listening to Podcasts. Today that figure has jumped to 41 per cent with 24 percent listening monthly, 15 percent weekly and four percent daily.