By Antoinette Siu • December 11, 2024 •
Ivy Liu
A month after Spotify introduced plans to attach videos to its podcasts in 2025, creators and experts are yet to be convinced.
They point to missing features, like social engagement and creator monetization incentives, that will ultimately get marketers and the creator community invested in the new product and allow Spotify to compete with other platforms in the space.
Spotify in November introduced new video offerings aimed at growing its creator monetization programs. It includes dynamic video podcasts in some countries, TikTok-like podcast clips, a new creator partner program with video and ad revenue share and a streamlined platform. While Spotify has had a creator partner program, the incoming premium video revenue allows creators in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia to earn a revenue share on videos from Spotify Premium subscribers starting in January 2025. Pricing for this inventory was not made public.
The company would not say how many have signed up. Some 250 million users have streamed a video podcast on Spotify, and the number of creators actively posting videos monthly on the platform has grown more than 50% year over year, per the company. These shows include “The Joe Rogan Experience,” “Call Her Daddy” and “What Now? with Trevor Noah.”
“Video has naturally been growing in popularity on our platform, so it’s a continued area of investment for us,” the spokesperson said.
Challenging the market
Audio will account for 24.5% of ad-supported media consumption in the U.S. — but just 8.4% of ad spend in 2024, according to WARC and Audacy. In November, both presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump also appeared on Spotify’s biggest podcasts with hosts Alex Cooper and Joe Rogan, respectively — with those YouTube videos and clips garnering millions of views.
While podcasts isn’t just Spotify’s game, the platform does have a much larger catalogue of content and a sizable user base to keep attracting creators and marketers.
“Tying revenue to engagement will motivate creators to share and promote their video podcast content, attracting more users to the platform and helping Spotify compete with YouTube,” said Sophie Crowther, talent partnerships director at influencer agency Billion Dollar Boy.
YouTube currently outranks Spotify for 31% of weekly podcast listeners aged 13 and up, while 27% prefer Spotify, according to Edison Research. Apple Podcasts comes in third with 15%.
Spotify said it currently has more than 170 million monthly podcast listeners and around 300,000 video podcast shows — with the video podcast monthly active users globally growing 60% year over year. Some 70% of users are watching these video podcasts in the foreground (as opposed to it playing in the background).
“Spotify already has [a loyal user base],” said Samantha Hicks, managing director of influencer talent management agency Shine Talent Group. “To compete, and I think they can, Spotify would need to invest in a framework that supports video and target specific user segments, like podcast listeners.”
Because social networking isn’t Spotify’s core business, it may have catching up to do compared to Instagram and TikTok. While Spotify has a large user base, Scott Sutton, CEO of social media management platform Later, argues that it also lacks social media features (like news feeds and direct messages) compared to the major players — especially if Spotify is going to lure more Gen Z listeners, 84% of whom are monthly podcast listeners that like watching videos, per Edison Research.
“With this in mind, I am not bullish on Spotify for this use case unless they go all in on social features and subsidize creators to build volume and incentivize those creators to produce content specifically for the platform — the way that Snap is doing currently,” Sutton said.
Like its competitors, Snap has been trying to highlight creator content in users’ feeds and implement more campaign and brand integration tools.
Creator Roxy Couse also mentions that this move into video allows Spotify to add more long-form content that Couse sees as an opportunity to grow its existing communities. Couse makes content on leadership and digital marketing topics and has 157.6K TikTok followers.
“If you’re incentivizing creators to upload videos and … add these snippets to the podcast that they were already going to create, it just makes sense,” Couse said. “You’re capitalizing on a segment that was already interested.”
So while there is excitement with talent agents representing major podcasts, Crowther also mentioned that they remain cautious as the program gets introduced in coming months.
“They’re also waiting to see how its revenue model and format compares to other similar partner programs,” Crowther said.
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