Been quite the week, hasn’t it?
In case you missed it: Last Wednesday, Panoply announced that it was getting out of the content business and, as a result, would be letting go of its entire editorial division — putting more than a few good producers out of a job — in favor of focusing solely on its “podcast hosting and ads services business,” i.e. its Megaphone platform. The company is also getting out of direct ad sales — leaving its client base to shop for new sales partners, seemingly abruptly — in favor of its podcast monetization offering that’s rooted in its partnership with Nielsen’s audience segmentation tool. Which is to say: Panoply is essentially shifting into a direct LibSyn and Art19 competitor with an additional monetization edge.
The Panoply news wasn’t an isolated development. That same day, Slate Group chairman Jacob Weisberg announced that he was leaving to form a new audio company with the author Malcolm Gladwell, he of Revisionist History…
