A Chat with Andrew Craissati, Founder and CEO at Podcast Publishing Company: Auddy

Auddy is a podcast publisher, founded in early 2020. Its mission is to become one of the top five and most intelligent global podcast organisations, publishing the highest quality podcasts, delivering them to a mainstream audience and while always striving to innovate and prioritise the creator and its work, above all.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
Four founders, all old friends coming from senior roles at Netflix, Virgin, National Geographic, EMI and warner music all saw the challenge faced by podcast creators (over 500,000 were created just in the first 6 months of 2021) in trying to navigate the complex tasks of distribution, finding an audience, turning that audience into sales and then actually making money.

So Auddy was born and with a goal of combining proprietary tech with data analytics, insights and a world-class management team. Auddy was innovative in its inception in that it is one of the world’s only podcast companies to pay out a meaningful share of the sales to its creators.
 

 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
At a team level, the pandemic has created a heightened sense of health and awareness for everyone in the team. So we paid particular attention to each team member’s wellbeing, emotional state and looked to reassure, provide absolute flexibility and support and we were alert to any presence of anxiety or stress.

At a business level, the pandemic has allowed the consumer to devote more time to their listening habits whether at home, whether on a stroll or even working in the garden! In the UK in 2020, the UK government’s Ofcom has just published its findings that 2020 saw growth in the listener base (rising by 100% over the period from 2017) and with a 43% uplift in ad revenues in 2020. For Auddy, this meant that we need not delay or hesitate in publishing and distribution podcasts: quite the opposite.
 

What can we hope to see from Auddy in the future?

 
Auddy is now focused on meaningful and agile growth. This means that we will be establishing non-UK presences in at least Australia and with two other markets to follow this year. We will expand our sales and market abilities and resources and our investment in catalogue will continue. At present, we own over 600 episodes of podcasts, represented by over 5.5m downloads.