Dylan Schmidt: 0:08

A week ago, spotify announced some pretty big updates for podcasters specifically and how they are shifting the whole Spotify for podcasters brand. So in this episode I wanted to go through some of the things that they announced and how we could utilize them to grow our podcast on Spotify. Let's dive in First things first, spotify introduced a new way to monetize with the Spotify Partner Program. If you're a creator who publishes videos on Spotify and you host your podcast on Spotify, you can earn premium video revenue through the Spotify Partner Program from Spotify, they say, with this new revenue stream, when Spotify premium subscribers in select markets stream video episodes will serve content to them without dynamic ads to ensure they have an uninterrupted viewing experience. And instead of earning ad revenue for those streams, creators can earn based on how much their fans stream the content. The greater number of fans who watch or listen to your podcast, the more creators can earn. This sounds like it works a lot similarly to how it works on YouTube. For creators.

Dylan Schmidt: 1:07

There is some criteria you're going to have to meet in order to be eligible to apply to monetize with this new program from Spotify. You have to be located in the US, canada, uk or Australia. Your show needs to be hosted and uploaded through Spotify for creators. You have to have 10,000 streamed hours on Spotify in the last 30 days. You have to have been streamed by 2,000 unique Spotify users in the last 30 days and have at least 12 episodes published. Now, if you've looked at the stats lately, for most podcasts I'm talking off the top of my head, I know it's 50% or more are not going to meet the criteria for this. That sounds awesome and enticing. If you're not hosting with Spotify for creators right now and you don't meet that criteria, and you're not going to be meeting that criteria anytime soon, you might just be better off saving your time and working on continuing to grow your podcast.

Dylan Schmidt: 1:58

Another new announcement from Spotify was the ability to upload video clips with your episodes and thumbnails. It was about a year ago that Spotify announced you'd be able to upload video with your podcast, regardless of where your podcast is hosted, and it took quite a while from when they made that announcement to when you got the ability to actually do it. Well, you can do it now. I just posted a video on my Instagram and TikTok and YouTube about how to upload a clip for your episodes, in that it also shares where to upload a video for your episodes, in that it also shares where to upload a video for your episodes as well. It's super easy to do. Right now, you can only do one clip at a time. I don't see any way to schedule the clips. You can add a short description of the clips, but there's not a whole lot you can do. If you're already making clips for your episodes, it's a no-brainer to just also upload a clip for your episode. The clips can be up to 90 seconds long, and then from Spotify episode episode, the clips can be up to 90 seconds long and then from Spotify. Episode clips can then be recommended across Spotify app services, like the Home Feed, podcast Feed, browse, the Now Playing View and more. Clips will also always be visible on show pages, allowing potential audiences to preview your latest episodes.

Dylan Schmidt: 2:56

Our goal is not to make our platform yet another place to watch short-form content. We want to help people find their next favorite shows where they are ready to immediately listen or watch, ultimately driving more streams of full-length episodes. Thank you. About a year ago, when Spotify had their last Now Playing event, they were making all these announcements. That was making this shift towards making Spotify look a lot like TikTok in many ways, and this is just one more push in that direction. They want people to stay on the app. Clips are already engaging. It's a low lift opportunity for creators to just up their clip there, because Spotify knows that creators are already uploading clips to other platforms. Why not just upload it to our platform too? And then also now you can customize the video thumbnails for your episodes. So if you upload video along with your episodes, you can go in there and upload a thumbnail as well, and this just takes care of a lot of the overlap.

Dylan Schmidt: 3:49

Podcasting is decentralized, right. It uses RSS feeds. For example, I host my podcast on Buzzsprout. It gets pushed out to all these different directories. Spotify is a directory YouTube. If you have your RSS feed set up on there, it could be a directory. And on Spotify, when you have a new episode published for example, I do an audio podcast upload through Buzzsprout, it gets pushed out to Spotify. When I go on Spotify for creators and I upload a video, it replaces the audio episode and it uploads the video. Now, when someone goes to listen to that, only on Spotify they're getting the video episode, but that doesn't affect any other platform. It doesn't matter if someone goes on Apple Podcasts because the RSS feed is still just showing that audio episode, it's audio only. You're just changing things on Spotify, similarly to YouTube. If I publish an episode and then I go into YouTube to change something, it doesn't change it on Spotify. It doesn't change it anywhere else because I'm not changing it at the root or the hosting service, like, in my case, buzzsprout. So after you publish an episode, if you want to add it into your workflow, change things on YouTube, change things on Spotify. This adds a couple steps into your workflow. I think it could be useful and we'll talk about that more in a second.

Dylan Schmidt: 5:05

Next, spotify announced new analytics to help you learn and grow. Once again, this is benefiting creators who host their podcasts on Spotify. They redesigned their dashboard on the web with an aim to try and get creators more analytics. That's been a sore spot. I've heard from many podcasters when it comes to analytics and hosting their podcasts on Spotify. But from Spotify, they say, at a glance, creators will be able to see how many Spotify followers they have and how that growth rate changes over time, track the performance of their latest episodes, including how many streams, consumption hours and comments they have, and visualize their audience's journeys to discovering content, including comments they have. And visualize their audience's journeys to discovering content, including the number of people they are reaching, the number showing interest and the number converted to streams on Spotify, and view the latest comments so they can like and reply to favorites. To build a fan community on Spotify. This is cool, so you can start to see more of the connection of the analytics and what you're doing as podcasters.

Dylan Schmidt: 5:49

We cannot welcome them enough, right? We don't get enough analytics. So many people consume their podcasts on YouTube. Spotify wants a piece of that. That's why they're updating everything here to match what people are already familiar with on other apps, whether that's podcast clips on TikTok and Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts or with longer form content where people are going to watch their video podcasts, which is really popular. Now they can go to Spotify. They don't have to go to two different apps. And then the last announcement was just that Spotify is refreshing their hub from Spotify for podcasters to Spotify for creators.

Dylan Schmidt: 6:22

As someone who used to have a show name called Digital Podcaster and it's now Digital Creator, I can tell you firsthand it is a lot of thought that goes in between a subtle shift of a name from podcaster to creator. I don't know what Spotify went through on the internal decision to make that switch from podcaster to creator, but I can tell you why I did and I've thought about this a lot. My hunch is that they shifted from Spotify for podcasters to Spotify for creators because they recognize that creators encompasses more of what it's actually like and all of the work that goes into it and the identity of being a creator is just a better label, I think, more accurate label than being a podcaster. I like the shift. And last thing I'll say is I know that you know Spotify does not pay their artists fairly and all that that's a discussion for a different day.

Dylan Schmidt: 7:11

Anytime there's updates to anything happening in the world of podcasts, even if it feels like it moves like an inch, I'm all for it. When you talk about opening up monetization opportunities for podcasters, I'll welcome it. I want to be grateful for every step that they move, I think, in the right direction, which I think this is a great move in the right direction. There is a bunch of bad stuff I could say about Spotify, but I'm not going to choose to do that. I'm going to spread around some positivity. I'm going to say you know what? The future is looking bright and I'm excited about this update from Spotify. I'll catch you in the next one.