The Swedish music streaming company Spotify made two big moves into podcasting this week, buying podcast publisher Gimlet Media and podcasting recording app company Anchor.

Superficially, the acquisitions make no sense. After all, there’s no money in podcasting, right? The entire U.S. podcasting industry made only $314 million in advertising revenue in 2017.

Yet Spotify’s acquisitions are part of a $500 million buying spree in the podcasting space promised by the company for this year.

Gimlet raised about $28.5 million in venture funding and was valued at around $70 million, yet Spotify reportedly paid around $230 million for it. (Anchor raised about $14.4 million, and its purchase price at press time was unknown.)

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