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AFP Partners with Leading Digital and Media Companies to Launch Europe's First AI-Powered Marketplace for Digital Audio and Podcasts
Agence France-Presse (AFP), in collaboration with prominent digital and media entities, has launched the European Audio Data Space (EAD) project. It aims at being the continent's first online marketplace for the exchange and commercialisation of digital audio content and podcasts powered by artificial intelligence.
Accessible in multiple European languages, the B2B platform will strive to revolutionise the audio content industry across Europe, fostering collaboration, innovation, and the exchange of high-quality, trustworthy content among producers.
“This ambitious project aims to address a significant gap in the industry: podcasters and digital audio producers are reaching a growing audience of tens of millions of listeners across Europe, yet they lack tools to collaborate and effectively monetise their content,” says Christine Buhagiar, AFP's Regional Director for Europe.
The EAD initiative seeks to tackle key challenges faced by the European podcast landscape, including the difficulty of purchasing and selling trustworthy content among producers, the uncertainties surrounding metadata and sources, the limited international reach of locally produced podcast series, and the growing threat of misinformation spreading through audio content.
The initiative is co-funded by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG Connect), with a grant exceeding 1.3 million euros. The project intends to launch a public version of the marketplace around mid-2025. The consortium behind the initiative includes Agence France-Presse (France), DAWEX (France), ENEX (Luxembourg), Europod (Belgium) Agora Media (Poland) a prominent private radio group, the news agency EFE (Spain), and Wake Word (Germany).
DAWEX, a leading technology company specialising in data exchange, will manage the technical setup of the EAD platform, creating a trusted digital environment for audio content producers. Wake Word, a Germany-based podcast producer, will develop a recommendation tool for the project. ENEX, an association representing commercial TV broadcasters across 25 European countries, will conduct workshops, surveys, and preparatory activities to support the platform’s development. Europod, a Brussels-based podcast agency dedicated to delivering high-quality podcasts in multiple languages, will promote the EAD project within the podcast industry and facilitate connections with other relevant projects.
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