Tencent Music Entertainment Shares Jump 21% on News of Lazy Audio Acquisition

Over the past year and a half Spotify has led the streaming industry’s investment in podcasts and other audio content, using the formats to grow beyond music and become a broader audio service. Lazy Audio, available at lrts.me, offers a selection of fiction and non-fiction audiobooks, podcasts and news shows. Tencent Music had already upped its audiobook offerings by reaching a partnership with China Literature in March 2020 to add its long-form audio catalog. (China Literature is a shareholder in Lazy Audio along with the company’s management team and other financial investors.) Now, Lazy Audio will allow Tencent Music to “cater to the increasingly nuanced needs of our customers,” Tencent Music CEO Cussion Pang said in a statement.

Streaming companies are spending big money to chase growth and market share. Lazy Audio’s $417 million price tag alone exceeds the $400 million to $500 million that Spotify earmarked for acquisitions of content producers and podcasting platforms in 2019. Since 2020, Spotify has acquired podcaster production houses Gimlet, The Ringer and Parcast, and bought Anchor, a podcast creation tool for smartphones, and Megaphone, a podcast advertising platform. Not to be outdone, in December Amazon purchased Wondery, producer of such podcasts as Death of a Starlet, Over My Dead Body and Business Wars. Apple Music, Pandora and iHeartRadio are also betting that podcasts are a basic requirement for a music streaming service in the 2020s.