Digital and media companies launch Europe’s first online 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. The project aims to develop the continent’s first online marketplace platform for the exchange and commercialisation of digital audio content and podcasts powered by artificial intelligence.

Accessible in multiple European languages, the platform will strive to revolutionise the audio content industry across Europe, fostering collaboration, innovation, and the exchange of high-quality, trustworthy content among producers and consumers.

“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 project 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. A first online version of this B2B marketplace will be released 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), which will develop a recommendation tool.

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. “Trust is at the heart of the world of culture and information. Traceability, compliance and security are essential pillars to create trust in the exchange of audio content and their information” says Laurent Lafaye, co-CEO at Dawex. “We are delighted to bring Dawex technology to the European Audio Data Space, to create a trusted digital environment for all audio content producers in Europe.”

ENEX, an association representing commercial TV broadcasters across 25 European countries, will conduct workshops, surveys, and preparatory activities to support the platform’s development. “Audio is booming and ENEX is excited to work across European borders to create a new audio focused resource destination for producers and consumers”, says Adrian Wells, ENEX Managing Director.

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. “Rooted in European values, this project focuses on cross-border collaboration and innovation, respecting the interests of all participants in the current podcast market, from independents to established producers and the media. Europod is delighted to be associated with EAD”, says Antoine Lheureux, CEO and founder of Europod.