Spotify acquired podcast production studio Gimlet Media for €172m in February 2019. Now it has hired a suitably high-powered media executive to be the company’s head of content.
Lydia Polgreen has been poached from her role as editor-in-chief at HuffPost, a title she’d held for the past three years. Variety reports that Polgreen will be in charge of all programming as well as strategic planning for Gimlet.
In a tweet about the announcement, Polgreen said she told her HuffPost staff that she would be stepping down later this month and described the Gimlet appointment as “an incredibly exciting new role”. She added, “Gimlet has built the greatest audio team in the world, and I’m so lucky to have the chance to learn from them.” Prior to HuffPost, Polgreen spent more than 10 years at the New York Times.
The fact that Spotify is appointing someone with so much media experience is telling and indicative of where its ambitions lie. Polgreen comes into a team that is well established but also well organised. In March last year, just after Spotify acquired it, the staff of Gimlet announced plans to unionise – making them the first US podcasting company to do so.
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