Blog: spotify podcasts

Read our latest daily deep dives, hot takes, and exciting updates about the entertainment world. Check out the latest insight from your favourite analyst, or search by coverage areas - music, entertainment and fandom, creator economy and social.

Beyond video podcasts: Spotify’s investment in video creators reveals its format agnosticism

Cover image for Beyond video podcasts: Spotify’s investment in video creators reveals its format agnosticism

Rutger Rosenborg

9 Oct 2024

Video streaming

As more sustainable acquisitions come to podcasting, according to Podnews , Spotify is again looking to spend up to seven figures on creator investments. This time, video is the primary focus. Per Bloomberg , Spotify’s content acquisition strategy is shifting from podcasters to video creators: “ What’s different in today’s news is Spotify seeking YouTube-oriented creators and specifically looking for them to simply put their show on the service ”.

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Advertising remains podcasting’s best monetisation opportunity

Cover image for Advertising remains podcasting’s best monetisation opportunity

Rutger Rosenborg

4 Sep 2024

youtube podcasts

Despite the layoffs and budget cuts across the industry in 2023, MIDiA remained optimistic about podcasts . As our 2024-2030 podcast forecasts states, the growth rate will slow, but over the course of seven years, revenue will continue to climb from $4 billion to $10 billion and listeners will grow from almost 700 million to more than 1 billion worldwide.

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Consumers prefer to be alone with audio, but social opportunities abound

Cover image for Consumers prefer to be alone with audio, but social opportunities abound

Rutger Rosenborg

25 Jul 2024

Audience Insight

Gone are the days when families huddled in the living room to listen to a radio broadcast. Cars and mobile phones — the latter to a much larger extent — have enabled and encouraged solitary audio consumption.

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Spotify’s engagement game: How Nebula and direct video uploads could change podcasting

Cover image for Spotify’s engagement game: How Nebula and direct video uploads could change podcasting

Rutger Rosenborg

12 Jun 2024

In May 2019, Dave Wiskus and a handful of YouTubers launched an independent subscription service called Nebula. The purpose of Nebula was to provide creators — namely, video creators, podcasters, and educators — with an alternative to YouTube’s multi-channel networks.

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Audio is not enough: Why audio platforms and creators are betting on video

Cover image for Audio is not enough: Why audio platforms and creators are betting on video

Rutger Rosenborg

8 May 2024

subscription video on demand

Video may have killed the radio star, but digital audio platforms and creators increasingly see video as a beneficial supplement to podcasts and audiobooks. From ghost podcasts filmed for social media advertising to podcasts following in the footsteps of TV and film and Amazon opening the IP tap for its Audible to Prime Video pipeline , video crossing over to audio — and vice versa — is a trend that will only continue.

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Inverse incentives: the implications of Spotify’s Substack integration for podcasts

Cover image for Inverse incentives: the implications of Spotify’s Substack integration for podcasts

Rutger Rosenborg

19 Apr 2024

As platform decay seeps into major tech platforms and microcultures proliferate across the internet, feature development becomes less about building native tools and more about third-party integrations .

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What podcast slowdown? 1.2 billion people will be listening by 2030

Cover image for What podcast slowdown? 1.2 billion people will be listening by 2030

Rutger Rosenborg

11 Apr 2024

spotify podcasts

Is podcasting slowing or growing? Both, as it turns out. With marketing and advertising budget cuts contributing to layoffs and cancellations at major podcasting players like Spotify and NPR, 2023 was an uncertain time for the podcast industry.

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Spotify wants to make podcasts a marketing driver for music

Cover image for Spotify wants to make podcasts a marketing driver for music

Rutger Rosenborg

4 Apr 2024

Music streaming

Last summer, Variety published an article about the effect Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast has on boosting the streams of her musician guests . According to Spotify, Anitta’s streams increased by 155%, Madison Beer’s by 130%, John Legend’s by 200%, and John Mayer’s by 350% after each artist appeared on Cooper’s show.

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Why Spotify’s podcast exclusivity era is coming to an end

Cover image for Why Spotify’s podcast exclusivity era is coming to an end

Rutger Rosenborg

7 Feb 2024

spotify podcasts

In July 2021, Spotify paid Alex Cooper more than $60 million for the exclusive rights to host her hit podcast, Call Her Daddy . On January 31st, six months short of the end of that deal term, Spotify announced that Call Her Daddy will be available on all platforms .

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Will 2024 be the year of podcast unbundling?

Cover image for Will 2024 be the year of podcast unbundling?

Rutger Rosenborg

21 Dec 2023

spotify podcasts

Before Spotify, YouTube, and Netflix disrupted music and video, bundled consumption helped drive profitability. From albums to TV networks, consumer preferences were largely dictated by the bundle, allowing record labels and television providers to leverage the fact that consumers would pay a lot for access to a little.

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Podcasts are following in the footsteps of TV and film…. should they?

Cover image for Podcasts are following in the footsteps of TV and film…. should they?

Rutger Rosenborg

14 Dec 2023

Spotify’s 17 percent workforce reduction was one of the biggest headlines in music, audio, and tech last week. Those layoffs coincided with the cancelation of some of the most critically-acclaimed podcasts to come out of Spotify’s acquisition drive: Heavyweight and Stolen .

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The podcast push that mainstream audiences never asked for

Cover image for The podcast push that mainstream audiences never asked for

Annie Langston

1 Mar 2022

spotify podcasts

The investment from streaming platforms to bring podcasts to mainstream audiences has reached, quite literally, a stadium-sized push. These platforms are making investments as part of wider strategic objectives rather than audience demand.

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Spotify Q4 2019: First Signs of the New Spotify

Cover image for Spotify Q4 2019: First Signs of the New Spotify

Mark Mulligan

5 Feb 2020

spotify creator tools

Spotify’s Q4 2019 results reflect another strong quarter and a good year for Spotify. Look a bit deeper, however, and there are the first signs of the new company that Spotify is building – and they point to a very different and much bolder future.

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MIDiA’s Podcast Research – A Response

Mark Mulligan

15 Jan 2020

midia podcast data

midia podcast tracker

Last week we published a blog post highlighting some initial findings from our inaugural quarterly podcast tracking data. The results show Spotify in a leading position as a standalone platform, Apple Podcasts second and national broadcaster apps doing well.

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Spotify AND Apple Lead Podcasts – It’s All Down to How You Measure It

Cover image for Spotify AND Apple Lead Podcasts – It’s All Down to How You Measure It

Mark Mulligan

10 Jan 2020

midia podcast data

midia podcast tracker

The podcast platform data from MIDiA’s Q4 tracker is in. These are the high-level findings (you can read more about our methodology here ): Apple still leads overall: A recent report showed that Spotify has become the leading podcast platform in the US.

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Spotify Podcasts Q3 2019: Solid Start

Cover image for Spotify Podcasts Q3 2019: Solid Start

Mark Mulligan

29 Oct 2019

Word count is always a useful guide for how important something is to a company’s ambitions. It is therefore no small detail that Spotify’s Q3 2019 earnings release mentioned the word ‘podcast’ thirteen times.

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Podcasts: a Netflix Moment for Radio But Perhaps not the Future of Spotify

Mark Mulligan

6 Feb 2019

Wednesday was a busy day for Spotify: it reported above-expected subscriber growth, hitting 96 million paid subscribers, strong total user growth reaching207 million MAUs , improved margins and its first ever profitable quarter, registering an operating profit of €94 million.

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