Bryan Thoensen, head of content partnership at TikTok, has left that company to join Spotify’s podcast team — or as it’s known inside the company, the talk creator content and Partnerships team. The news was announced Tuesday.
He’ll report directly to Max Cutler, the head of talk creator content at Spotify. Cutler assumed that role in May of this year. Thoensen will be based in Los Angeles.
Thoensen will oversee content strategy and acquisition, business development, partner management and creator community development.
“Bryan’s knowledge of the creator landscape will be critical as we build out our platform strategy with the goal of becoming a true platform beyond distribution, and reinforce our mission of building trust with creators,” Cutler wrote in an internal memo first published by Variety.
Thoensen joined TikTok in 2019, following stints at WME, Hulu and Fullscreen.
Spotify spent $1 billion on podcasts in 2021 and has been working to expand on that in 2022. In June the company said it has a total of 182 million subscribers out of more than 480 million users, and that it intends to reach 1 billion users by the end of the decade.
