Spotify head Daniel Ek during his company’s ‘Now Playing’ event, which delivered, among other things, the announcement of a new monetization program for video podcasts. Photo Credit: Phillip Faraone
Following a number of video investments – including several noteworthy expansions in 2024 – Spotify is rolling out a monetization program for video podcasts.
Spotify unveiled this program and different video buildouts during its “Now Playing” event. Unsurprisingly, given the streaming giant’s emphasis on maintaining a lean and profitable operation, the bolstered bet on video coincides with “rapidly growing” consumption for visual media. That refers chiefly to podcasts, but music videos as well as television shows and more are part of Spotify’s offering.
“Today, I want to focus on podcast videos,” Spotify co-president and CTO Gustav Söderström said during his Now Playing presentation. “In 2021, already back then, 43% of listeners that we asked said that they preferred video podcasts. And in 2024, that number has grown to 64%, almost 70%. And today, more than 250 million users have watched video podcasts on Spotify.”
Keeping the focus on the new monetization approach – which will also be available for audio uploads, though a slice of Premium revenue is being reserved for video podcasts – the debuting Spotify Partner Program is open solely to shows hosted via Spotify for Creators.
(Formerly Spotify for Podcasters, the latter is billed as “a more expansive and streamlined hub” for video-content creators.)
Any show that comes from a creator based in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., or Australia – with, among other things, at least 10,000 streamed hours on Spotify during the prior 30 days – will receive a piece of advert revenue at hand, the company disclosed.
That includes from listenership and viewership on Spotify itself besides any other platforms carrying the relevant programming. More interesting (and presumably more lucrative) than the straightforward advert-revenue side of the Spotify Partner Program is an ad-free viewing experience bankrolled by Premium subscription revenue.
While time will reveal the precise compensation details here – the feature is slated to go live on January 2nd, and Spotify is still saving big from audiobook bundles – the platform has indicated that this option will be tied particularly to video podcasts.
“[W]hen Spotify Premium subscribers in select markets stream your video episodes,” Spotify for Creators spells out, “we’ll serve your content to them without dynamic ads to make sure they have an uninterrupted viewing experience.
“And instead of earning ad revenue for those streams, you can earn based on how much your fans stream your content. The more your fans watch or listen to your podcast, the more you can earn,” the text proceeds.
Spotify is also touting single-podcast subscriptions, designed with diehard supporters in mind, as a revenue opportunity.
Creators can “connect” existing membership platforms like Patreon and Substack if so inclined, and amid a continued superfan-monetization push in the music world, it’ll be worth keeping this feature in mind heading into 2025.
Closer to the present, Spotify has launched customizable video thumbnails (“now you can upload your own video thumbnails”), a revamped audience-analytics dashboard, and viewer-geared upgrades like “thumbnail scrubbing, pinch to zoom, video chapters,” and more.
Lastly, as anticipated by Digital Music News seven months ago, Spotify has confirmed support for up to 90-second-long short-form videos. Limited to one clip per video-podcast episode, these previews are designed to drive discovery – not render Spotify “yet another place to watch short, engaging content,” according to the company, shares in which are knocking on the door of an astonishing $500 apiece.