The video streaming company Cinedigm, which has made podcasts a growing piece of its business, is changing its name. It will rebrand to Cineverse. The company says its corporate name change is an “important step forward” in its evolution into a streaming content and technology company with all of its content bound together by “compelling and innovative storytelling” whether it is video or audio.
“We have come a very long way from the Cinedigm of 10 years ago, which specialized in digital innovation within the cinema industry,” said CEO Chris McGurk. “Today we officially turn the page to become Cineverse, a pure-play business in the exciting and dynamic streaming content and technology space,” he said in the announcement.
Cineverse has already established a podcast business with the launch of what had been known as the Cinedigm Podcast Network which has brought its Bloody Disgusting and Fandor brands into the audio world. The company said last year that it was tracking to have $1 million in podcast-related revenue in 2022. Based on that success, executives said they planned to significantly expand their spending on podcasts to grow to more than 100. The pace of that will happen more slowly than first planned however, as they now expect to reach that size within a two to four year timeframe. For now, Cineverse says its downloads increased 12% year to year to more than 74 million downloads in the first quarter across 28 podcasts. The Bloody Disgusting brand currently represents the largest share of its podcasts.
“We’ve become a major player in the new and emerging scripted podcast category with our show the Mayfair Watchers Society picked up by Apple as a top podcast for 2022, and we had five shows on Spotify’s top 50 fiction charts, said Chief Strategy Officer and President Ericka Opeka during a recent conference call with investors. “We continue to scale this business with the forthcoming international language launches of key shows, our partnership with the George A. Romero Foundation on a new Living Dead property – and much more to come,” she said.