Spotify's podcast deal spree continues.
The company said Thursday it has a new partnership with DC and Warner Bros. to exclusively produce and distribute a new slate of narrative scripted podcasts featuring popular comic book characters.
Spotify shares touched a new 52-week high Thursday, ending the day up more than 12%.
The company says the deal includes the intellectual property of the entire DC universe, which includes the Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, The Joker and Harley Quinn franchises, among others. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and Spotify didn't say when the first DC podcasts would be released.
The news comes the morning after the Wall Street Journal reported reality TV star Kim Kardashian West was entering into an exclusive podcast deal with the music streaming platform, sending shares up in extended trading Wednesday evening.
It's not the only one: Spotify has made a series of high-profile moves in the podcast space, including bringing on comedian Joe Rogan's massively popular podcast exclusively to the platform, which he announced in May. In February, Spotify announced its plans to acquire sports and entertainment media company The Ringer, which has more than 30 podcasts in its network. Spotify also bought two other podcast companies last year: Gimlet Media and Anchor.
Spotify said in addition to producing narratives based on existing characters and franchises from Warner Bros. and DC, the companies will also work with Spotify to create new programming from original intellectual property.
In the company's first quarter earnings call in late April, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said podcast consumption grew by triple digits in the quarter compared to the year prior, and said it was also the company's biggest quarter ever for organic podcast creation.
"Both new and reactivated [monthly active users] grew substantially even during lockdown periods in major markets," he said. "And we believe this is a testament to how engaging our platform and ecosystem are to our users. And last year, as you all know, we outlined a vision to be the world's largest audio platform, and we've made significant progress. We now have more than 1 million podcasts on the platform, and we're the No. 1 audio service for podcasts in dozens of countries around the world and quickly gaining ground where we're not."
