Brand name of market leader podcast hosting Anchor disappears and is absorbed into Spotify

Anchor, market leader in the field of podcast hosting, will disappear as a brand name and will be merged into parent company Spotify. The Swedish music streaming company has announced this. Anchor has been owned by Spotify since 2019.

Anchor’s features will be available in Spotify for Podcasters, the company says according to Techcrunch. The integration comes as no surprise, because Anchor’s apps were already renamed just before the announcement.

Spotify acquired Anchor in 2019. Since then, the podcast host has existed as a separate app and service, but that will come to an end after four years. Anchor is the market leader in podcast hosting and competes with Podbean and Libsyn, among others.

In addition, Spotify announced that people who support a podcast via Patreon can also listen to episodes that are only for donors in the app. The two companies work together for this purpose. The integration also works in reverse, allowing listeners to support podcasters via Patreon directly from the app.