Table of Contents
- 1 Video podcasters should get paid
- 2 No more advertising for premium subscribers
- 3 Podcasters become “creators”
- 4 The boom in video podcasts
- 5 Deep conversations in expensive sets
- 6 Youtubers are experimenting with Spotify
- 7 The algorithm as a recipe for success
- 8 What key factors do you think will influence the success of video podcasts on Spotify compared to traditional audio podcasts?
The podcast medium is older than many successful tech companies – and more stable than many social media platforms. So it’s no wonder that the format has repeatedly experienced highs and lows over the decades and has repeatedly triggered trends and hype. The latest one at the moment: video podcasts.
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This was clearly visible in the US election campaign: Unlike his rival Kamala Harris, the future President Donald Trump primarily relied on presence in long video interview formats in order to reach the young, mostly male electorate. Trump once paid a visit to YouTuber Logan Paul’s “Impaulsive” podcast, and another time he gave a 50-minute interview to comedian Theo Vong. The kick livestream with influencer Adin Ross followed by a YouTube recording was also largely structured like a video podcast. The recording on YouTube was viewed 2.7 million times.
The fact that moving images are playing an increasingly important role in podcast formats is not only noticed by politicians, but also by the platforms themselves. The Swedish music streaming service Spotify introduced a number of innovations last week announcedwhich point to one thing above all: In Stockholm, they are obviously planning a frontal attack on their main competitor – the Google subsidiary YouTube.
Video podcasters should get paid
A big change is coming, especially to creative people. In the future, she wants to bind Spotify to herself with a new payment model. Video podcasts themselves have been available on Spotify since 2022 – but now the Swedish platform also wants producers to participate in advertising and subscription sales. The decisive factor is the success of the respective show – i.e. how often and for how long it was viewed or listened to.
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With the new model for video formats, Spotify is aligning itself directly with market leader YouTube: The US platform has been giving video makers the opportunity to participate in advertising sales through a partner program for many years. The more often and the longer the audience watches a video, the more money the content producers can make.
Spotify is focusing on becoming more interesting for video makers with its own offering. There is only one drawback for German creators: revenue sharing will initially only start in the English-speaking markets, specifically in the USA, Great Britain, Australia and Canada.
Another change is aimed primarily at users. If you have a premium subscription to Spotify, video podcasts will no longer be interrupted by advertising. The company apparently wants to make the user experience more attractive – which could lead to subscribers staying in the app longer and engaging more with the video content.
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This business model can also be understood as an attack on YouTube: The Google subsidiary has massively increased the intensity of advertisements in videos in recent years – depending on the device, many advertisements can hardly be skipped. If you watch YouTube videos on TV, videos are often interrupted by commercials lasting up to a minute.
If you want to use YouTube completely ad-free, you have to take out a premium subscription. However, this has a comparatively high price of 12.99 euros per month. The Spotify subscription is currently lower at 10.99 euros – and many have long been using the subscription for music streaming on the service anyway.
Podcasters become “creators”
Other, smaller announcements also indicate that Spotify wants to change significantly from a pure audio to a video platform. Video makers can now also create small clips of their shows, which, similar to Tiktok or Instagram Reels, will then be visible in the app.
Producers can now also upload preview images (so-called thumbnails) in 16:9 format. This suggests that the platform is also planning a new presentation and better discoverability for video content.
And another change is likely to spur the video trend on the platform: around a month before the podcast announcement, the streaming service introduced music videos on its platform. In the future, users will not only be able to listen to their favorite music, but also switch directly to the respective video clip. The habit of using Spotify exclusively for listening is being broken with new, small functions.
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The boom in video podcasts
The fact that Spotify is making the transition from audio to video is not an entirely unusual step. After the great hype surrounding audio podcasts from the mid-2010s, producers began to share video clips of their shows on social media. The success of the short video platform Tiktok in particular has spurred this trend – short clips from longer podcast episodes repeatedly achieve high reach and attract new listeners.
YouTube, on the other hand, has long been interesting for podcasters because of its high reach – and not just on mobile phones. In the US, 150 million people watch YouTube every month on their televisions – YouTube is increasingly displacing classic cable television from living rooms.
This also has an impact on the podcast sector: Users are increasingly deciding not only to follow their favorite stars’ shows via audio, but also to look at the accompanying images on YouTube. Instead of a talk show on TV, you watch the video podcast of your favorite hosts in the evening. In the USA, YouTube is now the most popular service for podcasts. Ocean Edison Research 31 percent of weekly podcast listeners say they watch and listen to their shows on YouTube.
Deep conversations in expensive sets
The podcasts themselves have also developed: While the first formats were not very professional Zoom conversations during the corona pandemic, the scene has now become highly professional. Hosts have built elaborate sets in which the conversations take place. Expensive cameras film the talks, which often last hours, in 4K.
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And the shows are highly successful: Logan Paul’s “Impaulsive” podcast often has six to seven-digit views on YouTube and a following of more than 4 million.
A trend that is also emerging in Germany: The “Edeltalk” by the well-known streamers Papaplatte and Reeze has an average of more than 100,000 views on YouTube. The “Die Nervigen Podcast” by the influencers Julia Beautx and Joey’s Jungle comes up with similar numbers.
Youtubers are experimenting with Spotify
But it’s also interesting that Spotify doesn’t always explicitly talk about video podcasts when it comes to its innovations – but apparently also looks at all sorts of other video formats. The upload area for producers will have a new name in the future: instead of “Spotify for Podcasters”, it will now be called “Spotify for Creators”.
In Germany, in the past few months, several YouTubers who do not produce traditional conversation formats have also uploaded shows, vlogs and documentaries to Spotify. Since July, the self-experiments of the YouTuber Tomatolix have been visible on Spotify, and the streamer Gnu and the YouTuber Malternativ have also uploaded episodes of their formats to the platform.
“Bloomberg”, the Swedish service, reported in the summer I even pay money to some well-known YouTubersso that they make their content available not only on YouTube but also on Spotify. The aim is to expand the platform’s video catalog. The news agency refers to insiders without naming names – we are talking about seven-figure sums in some cases. It is unclear exactly which YouTubers benefit from the advantages and in which countries such an enticement offer exists. The contracts also vary depending on the popularity of the video makers.
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The algorithm as a recipe for success
But it is also clear that if Spotify wants to take over YouTube’s market, there is still a lot of work waiting for the Swedish company.
Video formats on YouTube are also so successful because the Google subsidiary has been using recommendation algorithms that have been trained for decades, which always present users with perfectly tailored content on the homepage or in the vicinity of the videos. If you turn on the TV or start the smartphone app, you can lose yourself on YouTube for hours without it quickly becoming boring.
Spotify is still a long way from such a user experience: If you open the service in the smartphone app or on the television, suggestions for video podcasts are also displayed on the home page – but the offer is sparse and sometimes hidden deep in the menu. In its launch announcement, the Swedish company already announced that it would introduce “new ways” to “find podcasts and delve deeper into them”.
What key factors do you think will influence the success of video podcasts on Spotify compared to traditional audio podcasts?
Open-ended questions:
1. How do you think the shift from audio-only podcasts to video podcasts will impact the podcasting industry?
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of having video podcasts on Spotify instead of exclusively on YouTube?
3. Do you think video podcasts will become as popular as audio ones, or will they remain a niche genre?
4. How will Spotify’s pivot towards video format content affect its relationship with independent creators who primarily produce audio content?
5. How do you see the role of algorithms in shaping the success of video podcasts on Spotify?
Topic 1: Introduction to the article and its main points
Topic 2: Shift from audio to video podcasts and its potential effects on the industry
Topic 3: Spotify’s approach to video content and its monetization strategy
Topic 4: YouTubers experimenting with Spotify as a platform for their video content
Topic 5: The challenge of competing with established platforms like YouTube for video content and user engagement
