WordPress.com Invests in RadioPublic

We are thrilled to announce that Automattic — parent company of WordPress.com — is making an investment to deepen its partnership with RadioPublic — where listeners can discover and reward podcasters.

Automattic joins a growing group of strategic investors in RadioPublic, including The New York Times, Bose Corporation, WGBH, McClatchy, American Public Media, and our founding partner PRX.

Last year we announced a partnership with WordPress.com to make RadioPublic’s universal podcast embed player available for all WordPress.com websites (“Better Blogging Through Podcasts: Announcing RadioPublic Embeds”). Since then, we’ve seen tremendous growth as a pathway for podcast publishing, listener discovery, editorial curation, and content marketing.

WordPress is one of the crucial building blocks of the open web, continuously innovating and evolving, and now powering more than 30% of all websites (!). Recent data suggests that podcasts are becoming as popular as blogs, and the two mediums share not only the same RSS protocol, but also, and more fundamentally, an ethos of democratizing expression and distribution.

“WordPress helps empower communities large and small, whether by providing a viable platform for local journalism, or advancing the work of small businesses and entrepreneurs,” said Kinsey Wilson, President of WordPress.com. “Podcasting is increasingly a vital part of these efforts, and RadioPublic is developing leading-edge tools and practices for the industry.”

In keeping with the missions of both organizations, our partnership is non-exclusive and focused on delivering value for users (listeners) and publishers (podcasters) in ways that support sustainable business models and a vibrant, independent web ecosystem.

If you’re a podcaster powered by WordPress, sign up for RadioPublic to get your WordPress-ready embed player immediately, and stay tuned for more.

Interested in some real-world examples of a RadioPublic embed on WordPress sites? Check out this Hechinger Report episode on higher education and social mobility, or a selection of Fast-Company recommended podcasts.

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