Bundling or individual pricing? The optimal pricing strategy of a podcast streaming platform
Part Of
PACIS 2025 Proceedings
Date Issued
2025
Author(s)
Abstract
The podcasting industry has grown exponentially recently. We observe two pricing strategies among podcast streaming platforms: individual pricing and cross-producer bundling. The major difference is the transfer of subscription pricing power. This study examines podcast streaming platforms' pricing strategies and their implications for the profit of the platform and podcasters. By constructing a game-theoretic model, we formulate interactions between involved players under these two strategies. Our analysis offers managerial insight. A podcast streaming platform should not transfer subscription pricing power to podcasters when the advertising fee is high and consumers' desires for podcast content are relatively heterogeneous. With increasing advertising fees and decreasing content demand, podcasters attract more consumers to free content to earn from ads. Intuitively, the platform should adopt cross-producer bundling to regain pricing power and prevent declining subscriptions.
Event(s)
Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems
Publisher
Association for Information Systems
Type
conference paper