Amazon buys Wondery to Expand into the Podcast Industry

Amazon announced that it has acquired one of the last major independent podcast network, Wondery, yesterday.

Wondery, a podcast network well-known for its true crime podcasts like Dr. Death and Dirty John, will now become part of Amazon Music. Wondery was founded by Hernan Lopez in 2016 and is ranked as the 4th largest podcast publisher in November by Podtrac.

Wondery has over 9 million unique listeners in the United States and has raised a sum of $15 million in funding from Advancit Capital, Greycroft, BDMI and Lerer Hippeau, as reported by Tech Crunch.

Amazon Music was also upgraded with podcast support in September to aid this transition and it is expected that Amazon Music will also have its own original podcast shows.

Amazon hopes to expand into the podcast industry through this acquisition and compete against Spotify, which has been growing its podcast network through more acquisitions and better talent management over the past year. Although this new acquisition will not change Amazon's existing shows, it will definitely accelerate growth and evolution of its podcast network by increasing its reach to more listeners over the globe.

While Amazon did not release financial details of this acquisition, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal report that Wondery's value is estimated to be around at least $300 million.