Spotify has announced that it will begin rolling out a suite of podcast monetisation tools for creators that are meant to provide wide reach, discoverability, and maximized revenue.
Spotify paid subscriptions will launch in the US, and then be rolled out in additional markets in the coming months. The feature, which was originally announced at the Stream On event in February, will be available as part of the suite of creator tools available on Anchor. Anchor is Spotify’s podcasting platform, and will now allow podcasters to designate certain episodes in their feed as ‘subscriber-only’ content.
The subscriber-only content can be published on Spotify, and on other podcast listening factions.
For the next two years, this program will come at no cost to the creator, with participating creators receiving 100 per cent of their subscriber revenue (excluding payment transaction fees). Starting in 2023, Spotify plan to introduce a competitive 5 per cent fee for access to this tool.
Spotify will begin with a group of participating creators. including a variety of 12 independent creators, in addition to a collaboration with NPR starting May 4th, and will expand to additional shows in the coming weeks.
As well as podcast monetisation, Spotify is also launching an Open Access Platform. Aimed at creators and publishers who have subscribers on other platforms, Spotify is building tech which will let their listeners hear their content on Spotify at no extra cost.
This will make it so that subscribers to all kinds of services and publications can access subscriber-only content on Spotify through consumer’s existing logins, using the provider’s own billing solutions. Spotify is currently testing the technology and will have more to share in the coming weeks about partners and features.
Finally, Spotify is sharing the initial rollout of Streaming Ad Insertion technology for independent Anchor creators as part of the Spotify Audience Network (SPAN), which the company first announced in February at Stream On. The first group of Anchor creators participating in SPAN will launch on May 1.
