Now Playing: Spotify for Creators

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Spotify announced a set of new features for creators at its Now Playing event in Los Angeles, with Gustav Söderström announcing its podcast (and video) hosting platform has been renamed to Spotify for Creators. Eligible creators in the US, UK, Canada and Australia are able to join the brand new Spotify Partner Program, which earns money from podcast audio ads (both on and off the platform), and, from early next year, revenue based on how much your video podcast is streamed by Premium users. (The videos will appear uninterrupted and ad-free for those users).
- Eligibility for the Spotify Partner Program requires you to use Spotify for Creators to host your podcast (or Megaphone in some cases); and you need at least twelve episodes, 2,000 unique Spotify users in the last month, and 10,000 streamed hours in the last month. (YouTube, by comparison, needs 1,000 all-time subscribers, but 4,000 streamed hours in the last year.)

Spotify also announced that it’s now possible to upload video clips and video thumbnails for every episode.
- The event happened in Spotify’s Los Angeles studios, in front of around 150 creators including Stephen Bartlett, Meghan Trainor, Jay Shetty, Emma Chamberlain and Don Lemon. Halsey played an acoustic set and there were a number of sessions. In one of them, when asked what his favourite thing about podcasting was, Geoff Chow, Head of Podcast Studios at The Ringer, said that it was that podcasts are open. (Admittedly, after saying that his favourite thing about podcasting was Bill Simmons.)
- Podnews is here as a guest of Spotify.

On Tuesday, Spotify announced its Q3/24 financials. The company reported record income, record gross margin of 31.1%, and revenue up by 21% year-on-year. It made $32mn profit in the quarter, and is on course to post a yearly profit for the first time. Spotify is now used by 640 million active users every month.
- Ad-supported revenue, including advertising in podcasts, grew 6% year-on-year. However, yield appears to be an issue: the company noted that “podcasting advertising was driven by growth in impressions sold, partially offset by softness in pricing.“

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