PODCAST INDUSTRY VETERANS FROM APPLE, AUDIBLE, MEGAPHONE, AND SLATE LAUNCH SPOOLER

Spooler’s Technology Revolutionizes the Podcast Experience, Allowing Storytellers to Keep Up with the Pace of Today’s Always-On News Cycle

New York, NY — February 28, 2022 — Podcast industry veterans James O. Boggs and Andy Bowers have teamed up to launch Spooler, a first-of-its-kind audio platform to transform how podcasts are produced, distributed, and experienced. Boggs, formerly Head of Podcasts at Apple, serves as CEO, overseeing a team of seasoned executives from leading entertainment, tech, and audio platforms. Bowers, who co-founded Megaphone and Slate podcasts, serves as CCO. Henry Blodget, CEO of Insider, Inc., is co-founder and board chair. Rounding out the senior executive team are CTO Dan Benjamin, founder of the Fireside.fm podcast hosting company and well-known technology podcast personality; and Executive Producer Kerry Donahue, former producer at Audible, WNYC, and director of radio at Columbia University.

Spooler’s suite of services provides journalists, storytellers, and all kinds of content producers a better solution for keeping up with the pace of today’s news cycle and updating content in real time. Through the platform’s proprietary technology, partners can easily assemble, re-sequence, update, and distribute podcast episodes.

Spooler makes it possible for media and publishing partners to distribute on-demand audio that offers listeners fresh, up-to-date information. It enables partners to build modular “playlist” programs that Spooler automatically stitches together in a way that is seamless and adaptive, resulting in a finished product that sounds as polished as highly-produced podcasts and as smooth as live radio.

Notably, Spooler further raises the bar in podcast post-production with its groundbreaking implementation of Dolby.io’s Enhance technology, which automatically applies audio enhancements including noise removal, speech leveling, and loudness correction to all Spooler partners audio in real-time. This is a precedent-setting integration of Dolby.io Enhance into an audio publishing workflow.

The first media partner on the Spooler platform launching today is Insider with The Refresh from Insider, a new audio news brief that combines the freshness of live broadcast news with the conversational voice and on-demand convenience of today’s most popular news podcasts. With an attitude that blends personality with authority, The Refresh from Insider will cover the spectrum of news, from business and tech to politics and culture. Insider is one of many partners Spooler will roll out this year.

“Podcasts gave news and entertainment publishers a way to further engage with listeners on the Internet, but now they are yesterday’s news…literally. Today’s audiences demand up-to-date information on the topics they are passionate about, but it is difficult for podcast producers to keep up. Spooler’s technology provides that solution by empowering podcast producers to deliver real time content for the podcast generation,” said James O. Boggs, CEO of Spooler. “Joining me in this venture are some of the most innovative leaders in radio and podcasting. I am fortunate to work with them to bring new technology solutions that will advance the industry we love so much, allowing anyone the ability to create entirely new forms of on-demand audio.”

Spooler launches at a pivotal moment in podcasting and on-demand news content. Podcasting is among the fastest growing industries worldwide with more than 420M podcast listeners projected in 2022. News captures the largest share of US podcast ad revenues.

The Spooler team brings an incredible track record developing and accelerating the growth of new technologies across the podcast, audio, and news industries. At Apple Podcasts, James O. Boggs presided over the company’s worldwide editorial teams and podcast operations. He spent over 17 years at Apple, joining the company’s iTunes division in 2004 before initiating Podcasts for Apple internationally during a stint in London. In 2010, he was elevated to Apple’s Worldwide Manager of Podcasts where he helped launch podcasts in China, worked on the initial designs of Podcasts app, and launched Podcasts Connect creator tools.

Andy Bowers is an award-winning journalist and podcast pioneer, called “the godfather of podcasting” by the editor of The New York Times Magazine. In 2015 he co-founded podcasting’s leading services and technology company, Megaphone (acquired by Spotify in November 2020), after creating one of the industry’s first professional podcast networks at Slate in 2005. Additionally, Bowers has created dozens of podcasts and overseen podcasting partnerships with companies and authors including Netflix, HBO, Starbucks, among many others. As one of the medium’s most experienced innovators, he’s spoken to audiences all over the world about on-demand audio and its future.

With more than 20 years of experience, Dan Benjamin has found success as a podcaster, writer, entrepreneur, and software developer. He founded Fireside.fm, a podcast hosting and analytics platform, as well as 5by5 Studios. Prior to working in audio, Benjamin was a CTO of several startups and co-founded Cork’d, a wine social networking platform acquired by Gary Vaynerchuk and others.

As an audio journalist, Kerry Donahue has dedicated much of her career to reaching new audiences. She led a global podcasting program as the director of training at PRX and was the director of audio at Columbia Journalism School. As an executive producer at WNYC, Donahue was part of the team that launched The Takeaway, a daily national public radio news program. She started her audio career at Audible where she produced downloadable, on-demand programs prior to the podcast boom.

About Spooler

Spooler is an audio platform founded by industry veterans James O. Boggs, formerly Head of Podcasts at Apple; Andy Bowers, co-founder of Slate Audio and Megaphone; and Henry Blodget, co-founder and CEO of Insider. Founded in 2021 to transform the podcast experience, Spooler provides a solution for journalists and storytellers to update content in real time and keep up with the pace of the always-on news cycles. The platform’s proprietary technology offers its partners the ability to edit, assemble, and rearrange podcast segments as well as automatically sequence background music and host identification. Partners can build modular “playlist” programs that can be easily and quickly stitched together in a way that is seamless and adaptive, resulting in a finished product that sounds as polished as highly-produced podcasts and as seamless as live radio.

Spooler investors include its founders and Axel Springer Insider Ventures.

Learn more at spooler.fm