Michael Mignano, co-founder of the popular podcast creation platform Anchor, which was acquired by Spotify in 2019, submitted his resignation last week, a company spokesperson confirmed with Billboard.
Mignano’s departure was first reported by The Verge. It is the latest shake-up on the podcasting side of Spotify. In April, a pair of top executives — Courtney Holt, head of talk partnerships, editorial and global markets, and Lydia Polgreen, managing director of Gimlet, which Spotify also acquired in 2019 — both announced plans to leave the company.
Mignano founded Anchor with Nir Zicherman eight years ago. “We tried to start podcasts of our own… only to become discouraged by the complicated process and expensive hardware we found ourselves endlessly researching,” the two wrote in 2019. “We quickly realized we weren’t alone, so we set out to create a better way to make podcasts.” In 2019, when Spotify paid out roughly $340 million for Anchor and Gimlet, Anchor was responsible for “more than 40% of all new podcasts.”
In a blog post announcing those acquisitions, CEO Daniel Ek praised Anchor for “completely reimagin[ing] the path to audio creation.” That same post also doubled as a manifesto for the future of Spotify, as Ek trumpeted a vision for the company that went far beyond streaming music: “We believe it is a safe assumption that, over time, more than 20% of all Spotify listening will be non-music content.”
“While podcasting is still a relatively small business today,” Ek wrote, “I see incredible growth potential for the space and for Spotify in particular.”
Since the acquisition, Mignano helped lead Spotify’s podcasting and talk audio expansion, building Spotify as the world’s top podcast platform with over 3.2 million podcasts on the service. Anchor has played a key role in that growth: Of the more than 1.2 million new podcasts appeared on Spotify in 2021, and 80% came through Anchor. In a year-end wrap-up, the streaming platform noted that “more than 13,000 Anchor-powered shows charted in 2021, making up 35% of the shows on Spotify’s charts this year.”
Mignano will stay on until June 21, according to a source familiar with the matter. He’ll then be moving into an opportunity in early stage tech investing later this year.
Meanwhile, a search at Spotify is now underway — including internal and external candidates — to fill the head of talk role.
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Tagged: business, entertainment blog, Executive Turntable, Michael Mignano, music blog, Spotify, Streaming