Exclusive: Beehiiv expands into podcasting, taking aim at Patreon
One way Beehiiv is convincing creators to switch from rivals like Substack and Patreon is by not taking a cut of revenue.
Newsletter platform Beehiiv is introducing native podcast hosting, the company told TechCrunch. With this move, creators can now host, distribute, and monetize their podcast directly on Beehiiv. Users will be able to publish an episode, share it with subscribers, and track their analytics all on the platform.
“Podcasting was an obvious move,” Beehiiv co-founder and CEO Tyler Denk told TechCrunch in an email. “Fundamentally, newsletters and podcasts have massive overlap. Both are typically episodic, long-form content, distributed to an owned audience, monetized via sponsorship. Our roadmap is heavily driven by our customers. They’ve told us that they really want to consolidate all of their tools into Beehiiv, and podcasting specifically has been requested consistently across customers of all sizes.”
Related Knowledge Center: State of the business model
The traditional journalism business model has long since collapsed, and news organizations have shrunk or disappeared entirely. While a number of promising experiments are under way, the public has not shown a willingness to buy what news organizations are selling.