Followups: Spotify and podcasts are stuck in the middle without you
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Podcasting’s subscription alchemy: Subscriptions; advertising; and the kings and queens of podcasting
by Annotote TLDR 2019.09.16
Spotify is pitching podcasters on valuable listener data
by The Verge 2019.08.13
Spotify for Podcasters comes out of beta today… giving more podcasters a chance to see data like their listeners’ music taste, age, gender, location, and how long they listened to a particular episode. Apart from Apple, which offers some show analytics, this is the most detailed information podcasters likely have about their audience…
Around 100,000 podcasts have signed up for the program since its beta rollout last October [although] Spotify has more than 450,000 shows as part of its catalog, so it has a ways to go to bring those hosts over to the analytics platform…
Podcasters have long lacked data about their listeners, which poses problems when they’re trying to sell ads. Spotify is uniquely qualified to give podcasters that data because every Spotify user requires an account to listen, where they’ve provided basic demographic data about themselves, as well as their music listening habits…
Spotify already gives musicians the ability to publicize tour dates, sell merch, and create playlists. It’s easy to imagine the company doing the same for podcasters, which could make the dashboard more powerful than what’s available today. In theory, it could also become a place for ad insertion to be handled if Spotify wanted to become an ad network or help connect brands with podcasters… as it courts new podcasters, [Spotify] has to offer them something in return for providing their shows if it wants to avoid a Luminary-like backlash, in which a podcast startup wanted to profit in part off creators’ freely available work…
For now, the company’s podcast-creation technologies, like Anchor and SoundTrap, are also kept separate from the dashboard[.]
Open or closed: Who will control the paid-podcast experience, podcasters or tech companies?
by Nieman Lab 2019.08.20
It’s becoming increasingly common to monetize podcasts via a direct connection with listeners, whether via merchandise, donations, live events, or bonus or ad-free content. Big networks and publishers are doing it (e.g., Wondery Plus, Stitcher Premium, Slate Plus) and independent creators are too (via Patreon, Memberful, or other solutions)… But as anyone who has tried subscribing to a bonus or premium feed knows, it’s not always straightforward to get your new paid-for content set up in your podcast app of choice…
Enter [the] CEO and CTO of RadioPublic… who have a proposal for a new way of handling this. What they’re suggesting, laid out in detail in this post and in the draft technical spec, is a new open protocol that would enable listener identification and authentication in any enabled app. If it can be built as they’re currently suggesting, this would drastically reduce the customer-service difficulties around delivering premium podcast content, since listeners would be able to access their extra paid-for episodes with a few taps inside their usual listening app (here’s a mockup of how it could work). They’re calling this system PodPass…
[N]one of the big players (Apple, Spotify) have addressed the need for seamless private feeds yet. The idea, therefore, is to develop PodPass as an open, collaborative project — RadioPublic would not have ownership of it.
Not a platform, not a publisher: Meet Spotify the podcast “platisher”
by Nieman Lab/Hot Pod 2019.09.10
The relevant question here, I think, is how all these machinations figure into Spotify’s position as both a platform distributor and a publisher. Will Spotify launch its own originated exclusive sports and news audio content, thus increasing competition for sports and news-oriented third party publishers? Or will it focus more on signing exclusive partnerships with said sports- and news-oriented third party publishers? The answer probably lies in an iterative mix of the two.
A clue can be found in this LA Times profile of Dawn Ostroff, Spotify’s chief content officer[:] “Next year, Ostroff says the plan is to have ‘hundreds and hundreds’ of new original podcast series in production or available on the platform”…
In other words, more positional complication lies ahead, along with more headaches for strategists and those who think about competitive risk in their respective organizations.
Spotify earnings conference call (2019q3)
by Quartz 2019.10.28
Spotify says 14% of MAUs listen to podcasts, podcast hours streamed grew 39% qoq, and podcast engagement is driving increases in free to paid conversion.
Tweetstorm: After acquiring Gimlet, Anchor, and The Ringer, Spotify seems to be approaching the podcast industry in the same way Yahoo did the internet — and the monetization opportunity is rather linear
by Anthony Bardaro (@anthpb) 2020.02.06
Spotify provides an update on its Anchor acquisition
by The Verge 2020.12.02
Spotify’s $100 million-plus Anchor acquisition is seemingly paying off… Anchor, which makes podcast creation software, powered 80% of new podcasts on Spotify this year, meaning the software contributed more than 1 million shows to Spotify’s catalog in 2020 alone. Overall, Anchor powers 70% of Spotify’s total podcast catalog, or around 1.3 million out of over 1.9 million shows…
Anchor shows account for more consumption, in terms of time spent listening, than any other third-party podcast hosting or distribution provider on its platform…
Still, many of these creators might not be making money through their podcasting, or at least not with the help of Spotify. Although Anchor supports monetization and automatically inserts ads into participating shows, the feature is only available in the US. So while a variety of countries contribute to Anchor’s growing reach, the creators on the platform likely aren’t making a living, or even any income, because of their podcasting work.
The one factor in which Spotify’s podcast strategy has succeeded: It grew-the-pie and won podcasting’s late-adopters
by Anthony Bardaro (@anthpb via Twitter) 2022.09.29
[I have] has been spot-on about Spotify’s strategy, except: I didn’t think listeners would switch to $spot as their default podcast app (and perhaps they didn’t), but Ek correctly bet on growing-the-pie, new adopters, not switching — not that it’s mattered for [his] shareholders.
Spotify’s podcast exclusivity strategy is not bearing fruit
by Simon Owens (via Substack) 2022.10.12
Spotify [is] canceling several Gimlet shows and laying off a sizable portion of its staff… the merger had struggled to bear fruit… Spotify’s strategy of locking its IP exclusively behind its walled garden played a large role.
“Yesterday Spotify told show teams that their podcasts were being canceled because of low numbers,” tweeted the Gimlet Union. “But decisions Spotify leadership made directly contributed to those low numbers. Their decision to make most of Gimlet’s and Parcast’s shows Spotify exclusive caused a steep drop in listeners — as high as three quarters of its audience for some shows.” [Another podcaster] tweeted that “Spotify invested zero in building the show’s audience, then forced us to go exclusive to Spotify, and then canceled it b/c it didn’t build a big enough audience”…
Spotify pursued this strategy aggressively, shutting off the RSS feeds for many of its acquired and licensed podcasts [but] the exclusivity strategy generates limited returns. Not only did some Gimlet shows experience a 75% drop in audience once they were locked down, but multiple other podcast companies — including Last Podcast on the Left and the Obamas’ Higher Ground — cited it as one of the reasons they chose not to renew their contracts with Spotify. Back in 2021, The Verge compiled publicly-available data indicating that The Joe Rogan Experience saw a sizable drop off in influence once it went exclusive. And Luminary, a podcast startup built on the idea of locking down exclusive IP on its premium app, also struggled to gain traction and recently began distributing its content on other platforms…
[I]t seems that the average podcast consumer has no desire to switch through multiple apps, which means that if you take a podcast exclusive to an app they don’t use, they’ll just stop listening to it.
See also…
Spotify plans to drop its paywall and change its exclusivity rules for some of Gimlet’s podcasts in the coming months
by Semafor 2023.04.17
“we are expanding our windowing strategies to increase the audiences and ad sales potential of our shows… pursuing broad distribution for some of our original podcasts…”
As Semafor reported earlier this year, Ringer founder Bill Simmons personally lobbied Spotify CEO Daniel Ek against putting the podcast company’s shows behind a strict exclusivity window. Simmons argued that the Ringer would miss out on the advertising revenue on on other platforms, which was growing in areas such as sports gambling.
Spotify’s podcasting plan has gone off the rails and is now entering its “next phase”
by Hot Pod (The Verge) 2023.06.21
Spotify knows something is wrong with its podcast strategy — and these past few weeks have proved it. The company’s missteps reveal how fundamentally different the formula of success is in podcasts from film, video games, books, and even music. Franchises, IP, and name recognition can be enough to deliver a hit across many different mediums. But in the world of podcasts, a series from an acclaimed filmmaker, best-selling author, or even a former president can barely register on the charts. And after years of chasing this hit-making strategy, it all seems to be falling apart…
One pillar of Spotify’s podcast strategy was meant to be originals from its in-house studios… The next pillar of Spotify’s podcast strategy was splashy, usually celebrity-driven originals… As those pillars of Spotify’s podcast strategy continue to falter, Spotify seems to be shifting its attention to one big — and much more obviously lucrative — remaining element: its ability to sell ads… the company’s “next phase” in podcasting, which would focus on “delivering even more value” for creators and users — including upgrading its ad tools and business models for podcasters…
Spotify isn’t selling anything that’s unique in the world of podcasting. And that may be why Spotify’s strategy around content is shifting: while Trevor Noah’s podcast — due later this year — will be a Spotify Original, it won’t be exclusive to the platform. This will be a win for Noah’s podcast, which will gain more exposure. But it’s also a pivot for Spotify, which has kept many of its original shows in its walled garden.
See also…
Spotify’s $1B podcast bet turns into a serial drama
by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) 2023.09.05
Spotify’s decision to keep many of its original shows exclusive to the platform limited the number of listeners. At the same time, the company was pursuing greater ad revenue — which required larger audience numbers.
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