Spotify's Video Shift: Podcasters Need To Beware!

Well, welcome to Podcast Tips. My name is Rob Greenlee, and thank you so much for being here tonight. I hope everyone had a great holiday. I know some are just starting their holiday, others are kind of wrapping it up, and then as we move into the, the new year 2025. So this is going to be the last episode of Podcast Tips for 2024. Now I know that's not a significant event, but it's something that, uh, you know, it's a, it's a change. And I, I think we're all moving into a new year with lots of optimism and, and some realism too. And that's kind of what the purpose of this episode is tonight, is to share a little bit of reality, um, in regards to what this show is all about, and that's pretty much podcasting. So wanted to talk tonight about Spotify's big video shift and what podcasters need to be aware of. Now, I'm not going to share anything really kind of groundbreaking tonight. It's really a kind of a big picture kind of show about, you know, what's going on with, with video in regards to Spotify and how that maybe is related to what we've seen happen here locally with even YouTube and that there is a connection between these two events. So I'm gonna talk about the significant changes that have resulted from this kind of perceptual and reality shift in the landscape towards video. And I know it's one of those issues that, you know, you talk to 10 different people and you're gonna get 10 different answers about this, about whether or not a shift to video is something significant for podcasting, or is it a distraction? Or is there going to be people that are disappointed, you know, 6 months from now or a year from now that they invested too much effort into video, uh, versus just staying the course with maybe doing an audio episode? And so, you know, what I'm going to really talk about tonight is, is this topic around Spotify, because I think what Spotify is doing is kind of confusing people about what is really going on with them and what they're trying to do. So that's what I'm going to share, some, some of my insights into what's going on. I've really shifted towards doing more video myself, and that's, you know, given me a little bit of a greater appreciation for it, uh, and what's happening with it. It has its good sides, it has its bad sides. So you just have to kind of weigh those choices when you start out as a podcaster, or if you're an existing audio podcaster, or if you're, you know, you're on video, you're doing YouTube already, and do you want to be over on the audio side with your content? So these are the confusing choices that are that are really at the forefront of what a lot of content creators— and I'm increasingly calling all of you out there content creators or creators— and a lot of that really stems from this perceptual shift, reality shift around what audiences are thinking about and how, I guess, diversified you as a content creator need to be about how you think about what you're doing. You know, whether or not you choose to head down the path towards video or you stay doing audio or you start out with video and head towards audio as a more complete offering. I think each of us needs to decide what path we're going to take on that. And I think it's definitely a challenging one because it really focuses back on what you are as a content creator. Do you want to be an audio-only content creator? Do you have the resources? Do you have the money to invest in getting a nice camera? I know I'm playing around that I've got two cameras hooked up to StreamYard right now and, and I'm able to switch back and forth between them. You know, you can do a lot of creative things with the video if you have the equipment and you have kind of worked through the, the different workflows that are involved in doing that and create one piece of content that you can use on the audio side as well as the video side. And that's what I try and do with this show, since this show is actually an audio and video podcast that's on all of the social platforms, YouTube. It is not currently on Spotify Video. So that's an interesting little twist on this topic tonight. So let's kind of dive into it. And let me be clear about this. And this is where things, the conversation goes a little sideways sometimes is that people think that this shift is really a mandate. So what Spotify is doing is really creating a little bit of confusion in the marketplace around, you know, the priority of video. And then you see what's happening with YouTube, and I think it just compounds that message that content creators are increasingly getting around the priority of video. And it just may not be for everyone. And I think you have to really weigh what you're doing, what your type of content that you're doing, what you want to do with the content and maybe start out with audio. And then maybe as you develop your audience and you grow, maybe you think about adding the video element to it. But I do think just my own thoughts about it is that no matter what you're doing, I think you need to think about yourself as a content creator first. And what does that include, right? You know, we see the platforms that are out there today, the Shorts platform, the Reels, TikTok, all these are all kind of being lumped into the kind of complete pie of podcasting, right? And, you know, so really a good analogy is to think about all these as slices of a pie, right, of being a content creator. So if you want to create content that fits into all these places where all these millions and millions of people are getting access to content today, then, you know, a YouTube strategy makes sense. If you want to be found in, in the world's largest content search engine, then YouTube is the place to be. Now Spotify does not, in my view, qualify as a massive player on the video side. I think as you contrast the amount of video that's in Spotify versus the amount of video that's in YouTube, it's really, Spotify is very, really currently a small player in that. So that's one of the reasons why I'm not making my show available on Spotify today. So it's because, is it really worth kind of what they're trying to do? And I think the big thing that I need to share with you tonight in this episode— and many may understand this, but many I don't believe probably have the full scope of understanding— and I'm going to try and keep it as simple as I can to understand what's, what's going on. And, and just like what I said too, here, let me share something on the screen here really quick around what the Spotify folks are doing. So you can see at the very top of the page, they have, you know, it's basically the Spotify logo. You know, if you're listening to this, it's a Spotify logo for creators, right? So, but they are still throwing this name podcast around. As you can see in the headline here, it says the new home of podcasting on Spotify, monetize and get discovered and stand out with video. So you can kind of see what they're doing is they've been primarily an audio podcast consumption platform. They acquired a platform called Anchor in the early, you know, many years ago now that was primarily audio and it helped podcasters create, you know, a free podcast of sorts. They weren't charging for content creators to host their podcasts with Spotify back in those days and it was Spotify for podcasters. So we've seen seen them make this shift, right, to thinking of themselves as a platform for more than just RSS-based audio, right? Now granted, podcasting has included video for most of the existence of podcasting. This is another element that a lot of people don't fully realize too, is that when podcasting started back in 2004, and as they as the medium developed into 2005 and '06 and '07 and '08, video played a big part because you can today on a few of the hosting platforms, you can distribute a video MP4 file in the same way that you distribute an MP3 file. So it's just a matter of creating a separate feed that has a video file attached to it. That's what I'm doing with this show. This show is hosted on the Blubrry platform that supports audio and video publishing. So I can do that here, but the other big takeaway here is that none of the platforms like YouTube or Spotify or really any, you know, most of the other platforms except for Apple in a significant way support video podcasts under an RSS distribution. So as you back up and you think about it, podcasting has always included the option to distribute via RSS on the video side, but yet we've seen YouTube and now Spotify say, nope, we're not going to take any video via RSS. So you kind of can kind of start to see the shape of this is that maybe this isn't really about supporting podcasts or supporting RSS. It's really— and if you look at what YouTube is doing, YouTube is taking content from the podcasters and they're making actually a video file of your audio program because YouTube only supports video playback, right? So they'll create an experience in the YouTube platform that looks like you're playing audio, but it's really playing a video. It's just they just strip out the, the visual portion of it. And, and this is what Spotify is doing as well. So, you know, as you look at what YouTube is doing, translate what you see YouTube doing today to what Spotify is trying to do and wants to do and is shifting towards doing, because they see YouTube as being very successful You know, having a huge user base, having multi tens of millions of content creators, and that are doing all sorts of video content on their platform, and they want a cut of that. It's really as simple as that. And if they can siphon content creators to publish directly to them, just like what's happening with YouTube, because all video gets uploaded directly to YouTube. Now, granted, there is some APIs that connect some of the podcast hosting platforms to publish their episodes into YouTube, but those have been primarily audio publishing pathways. And so even all these years, those audio files have been converted into video files for playback on YouTube. And that's not exactly what Spotify is doing yet. But I do believe that there could be a point when that may happen here. So what, what the risks are to a content creator right now is that they have a program that you log into that you can replace your audio files. So let's say you have your RSS feed in Spotify from your favorite podcast host, whether it's Libsyn or Blueberry or Buzzsprout or any of these platforms. You can go in and upload a video version of your show, uh, to replace your episodes that are coming in via RSS, right? That would pass through from your main podcast hosts. And I know this topic can get kind of complicated. You know, I've got a long history of working with Spotify to get content into a variety of the podcasts, you know, from a variety of the podcast hosting platforms into their platform. They they always wanted to rehost the file, and that means caching the file. So what they wanted to do really from day one is cache all of the episodes of your RSS feed. So they wanted to store all your episodes on their servers, and they wanted to stream those to their users or their podcast listeners, or their— now they're video listeners, but So they wanted to stream those to their customers because they thought that they could do a better job of that. So that's, that's kind of what's been going on with that. And they, they basically don't really want to take RSS feeds and take your content via a, a RSS feed. So they don't really want to do that. They only want to do that, uh, just to get your content, right? So once they have your content— now granted, all these hosting platforms quite a few years ago pushed back and said, no, Spotify, we're not going to allow you to cache our episodes because it breaks our models, you know. So let's say you're running dynamic ad insertion or you're running programmatic advertising in your content, you're making money from that. If Spotify takes a copy of that and stores that on their servers, they're gonna want an ad-free version of that because what they're gonna wanna do is monetize it through their monetization approaches that are out there. And what is happening here is when you upload your video to Spotify today, they're overwriting your audio file that was made available to them through RSS. And what they're doing is they're taking that video file and they're splitting the audio out of the video file because they're assuming that that video file is the same thing as what your audio file episode was in the system. And so what they're doing is they're basically making your video audio available as an audio playback experience. Now I know this can be a little bit confusing and maybe isn't entirely clear about what's happening here. But just trust me, it's one of those things that they're in a transition right now. And so what they want to do is they want to train content creators to upload directly to them. And that's what they're attempting to do. Now granted, you know, you look at what's happening with YouTube and you look at what's happening with Spotify, you can— I think logically we can all basically understand that there's an interest in them owning the relationship and continuing to grow the content in their catalog in the hopes of gathering more users, right? And more, in this case, viewers. But there's also another motivation for that, and that is to monetize video content, which tends to have a little higher CPM or a higher revenue per thousand viewers, uh, if you look at it, because, you know, a video presentation like a TV ad or, or any of that has a higher perceived value with advertisers because then there, there's a brand communication there, there's a presentation of the product, there's there's a presentation that what is seen by the advertising industry is more compelling, thus worth more. So what Spotify wants to do is monetize and generate revenue from the video side as well as the audio side. And this is a way to get more content in there. And as you look at what their bigger strategy is, is that they want to bring in primarily and have relationships with larger content creators. So if I go back to this screen here and scroll down, you know, they say that they are the best place for audio and video podcasts. Well, the question you have to ask yourself is that they are not really taking or making video podcasts available under the original definition of what a video podcast is, is via RSS, right? They're having audio come in via RSS and then they're giving the opportunity for you to replace your content in their platform with video. And is that a video podcast? Well, I think it's probably slicing hairs to be too much, you know, worried about that. I think the perception of the user or the consumer of this is that if it's a show like this, right? I think this show is a good example of what a video and audio podcast is, right? I produce this show with kind of to some degree an equal emphasis on the audio and the video. So how I format this show, how I present it tends to be, fairly balanced, right? So when I talk about things that are on the screen, like on the screen right now it says introducing new ways to monetize with Spotify's partner program. So this is the other part of it too, is that, um, they want to do a revenue share, which is terrific. You know, I think same thing with YouTube. I'm a, I'm a monetization partner with YouTube myself and make some money a month, um, on the content that's consumed on that platform. I wouldn't say it's huge money. Now, I know if you have huge audiences, you're probably going to make decent money. If you're getting, you know, a million views on your content, you're probably going to get a lot more views or a lot more dollars into your bank account. So, you know, this is the direction that Spotify is heading to, is that they want to have a complete monetization program. And The other part of this too is basically a disruption in your metrics. So if you're hosting your audio podcast through one of these hosting platforms, you have a consolidated central view of your analytics, like how many people downloaded your content from this country, this city, what type of devices that they're consuming that on. And it's in a consolidated metrics platform within your publishing tool with the podcast hosting platforms. Well, when you head down this path with these partner, you know, these distribution platforms of uploading directly and fracturing your distribution strategy into 3 different layers. So let's say you're creating content that you're publishing into your podcast, publishing and distribution platform like a, like a Blueberry, Buzzsprout, you know, Libsyn, or any of these, you get one set of numbers from your audio podcast. Now granted, I get separate numbers from my video podcast that's delivered via RSS, but that's, that's a subset of the audio because most of the audience is on the audio side. So you kind of have this, this disruption in a centralized place for all your metrics for your show. So you wind up getting in this situation where you have metrics over with Spotify, you have metrics over with YouTube, and you have metrics with your podcast hosting platform. And if you want to, you know, sell your show to a brand or something like that, or you want to do a host read, or you want to be able to offer this on a brand deal, or if you want to, you know, just do more direct advertising sales as opposed to what the options typically are with a Spotify or YouTube, Granted, you can still do that as a host read, right? So you can still sell your stuff, but the, but the issue gets into is now your metrics are scattered across, um, 3 different platforms, right? So you're going to have to go in and you're going to have to export your metrics from Libsyn, Blueberry, Buzzsprout, okay, into a spreadsheet. Then you're going to have to go to Spotify, you're going to have to export your numbers out of Spotify separately, and you're going to have to go to, you know, um, YouTube, export all your metrics out of YouTube. And so you're going to have to manually assemble all your numbers. And one of the other downsides of that too is that not all these platforms are analyzing, um, the playback or the audience, uh, in the same way. So YouTube doesn't analyze downloads, they analyze streams. And in engagement and in playback, right? So what's the duration of listening? Now granted, Apple's gone down this path too of trying to give you metrics in their backend on how far people are listening, all those kinds of things, but you are starting to fragment your metrics. And that's just extra work, right? Not even speaking about the extra work that goes into actually publishing your, your episode, right? So that, that's the other side too, is that if you're having to publish your episode, your audio episode, into your hosting platform, and then, then you have to go over to YouTube and separately publish into your, your YouTube channel, and they have to separately go over and and replace your audio feed with a video directly in Spotify, you've now tripled your work, right, that you have to perform each time you create a new episode. And I think that's one of the downsides of what's happening in the industry right now is that all these platforms are prioritizing having a direct relationship themselves with the content creator and controlling the distribution and the monetization themselves. Versus what we have had historically, at least with the focus of the podcast industry around audio, is that you have been in control of that because you've centrally hosted it with one platform. So that has had some inherent efficiencies, right? And so hopefully, I'm hoping that if we keep going down this path, that there'll be some way that all these platforms, whether it be Spotify, YouTube to some degree has done this, and Spotify has done this to some degree too. I just would hope that they would actually go completely down the path of sharing metrics back to the central hosting platform, like a, like a Blueberry or Lipson or whatever, on the listener side to those central hosting platforms. Now granted, this bifurcation between audio and video creates an environment with Spotify and YouTube where they don't really feel necessarily compelled really to fully enable the sharing of metrics and playback and audience size and all this stuff directly back to a third party. And so that's one of the the downsides of this. And on the screen here, I, I scroll down a little bit further and there's a headline here that says reaches new audience on Spotify with video clips and thumbnails. So as you think about what's happening with YouTube, right, there's, uh, there's Shorts, there's long-form content, and the big thing is thumbnails, right? Everybody's got a thumbnail. Right, that they need to, to create separately. And, and this creates a situation where you have to create a separate thumbnail, probably, that you might be able to use both on YouTube as well as Spotify. But I'm not 100% sure about that. But I can pull up— here, let me pull up the Spotify video experience. So if I pull this up here You can kind of see this is the video area on Spotify. And if you go into one of these shows, you can kind of see, and not all of these are necessarily going to be audio podcasts. Now there's the Oprah podcast. So you can see this here. If I go into this, it seems to have just— it says that there's video in here. It says, okay, it doesn't really differentiate and say this is video or audio. If I click play on this, what does it— okay, it does quickly start to play a video version of that podcast. Now, the other question that I have right now is, is there a link to the audio version of this, and that's what's interesting here. Um, I don't necessarily see that. And so I don't see a horizontal thumbnail on, on Spotify like I do see on, on YouTube. So when they talk about, uh, thumbnails, I believe that they're actually talking about, um a square version. Now they may be moving towards trying to get maybe a different size here. Let's see if it says in here, uh, anything about the thumbnail size. Now granted, it looks like they're, they're in the process of doing, um, clips and shorts that are vertical, vertical videos you can see on the screen. So You know, you just back up and you think about it here. They are doing pretty much the same thing that YouTube is doing. And, and that is a glimpse of the future. So, okay. So you look here as we talk about thumbnails, they are looking for horizontal artwork, just like YouTube is. So this is a strategy that almost mirrors what, um, what YouTube is doing. So, and, you know, kudos to, to Spotify for doing that. I mean, I think that it definitely, um, probably makes sense for them to head down this path, but it does, like I said, it does disrupt the, the current model around, um, metrics and dynamic advertising. So if you're on a programmatic platform with your podcast, let's say you're on Spreaker or Blueberry or Lipson, whatever, and you're— you created insertion points in your audio stream and you're getting automatic ads that are being sold by another person that you don't have to do the sales for, and you're getting a revenue share on that. Once you add it to Spotify, or you add it to YouTube, um, both those platforms don't want programmatic advertising. They don't want advertising embedded in that because, because then that's locked in unless it's pass-through. And this is where it gets complicated, and a lot of podcasters don't realize what's going on here. And what you're giving up is that you're, you're giving up central control over the monetization of your show unless you just do host-read advertising, which is like a brand advertiser deal that you as the host, or you hire some voice talent to actually bake into your content, uh, your sponsor message. And I do think that this direction that we're seeing happen with these platforms, with YouTube and Spotify, is pushing this direction towards the— that there's going to be 3 tiers of advertising. There's going to be each of these platforms are going to want to have programmatic advertising in, and then on your podcast hosting platform, they're going to want to have programmatic advertising that goes into your audio currently right now. And then there's going to be your challenge of if you want to monetize directly yourself of selling your own brand advertising deals and doing baked-in host reads again, which takes us back to the early days of podcasting. So you have these, it becomes a very complicated advertising management kind of issue is to manage all that stuff and to manage it over in Spotify, the monetization of your podcast. And is your show big enough over on Spotify to really justify separate monetization over there. Now granted, if you look at YouTube, if you're a successful YouTuber, it probably makes sense to just have them handle it all. That, that doesn't preclude you from doing your own baked-in host reads into the shows that you upload to YouTube. It's just that in the YouTube interface, you have to identify that. I mean, you have to mark it as, you know, in-content paid advertisements or sponsorships or whatever. There's a little checkbox in the publishing process that you check if you have a Host Read ad inside of that piece of content. And so that pops up a little notification up on the screen up here that basically says in-content sponsor. And so you can kind of see how this is all kind of working together and, and, you know, my, You know, it's, it really gets back to the bigger picture, right? What do you want to do at the end of the day? You know, it's, it's easy to go down this path and a lot of people in the podcasting space have gone down this path of like, well, avoid Spotify's strategy here of creating a, a direct dependency upload relationship with their content creators is there's a history of them not being very fair to all of the music artists either, not paying them a fair share and all this kind of stuff. So we'll have to see how that works out over time. I think there's been a lot of criticism over many years about what— how YouTube has treated their creators as well, pulling back on the, the ad revenue share over subsequent many years. There's been a progression even at YouTube around the, the AdSense platform of, of YouTube and Google pulling back what their rev share is on the advertising that they run on their platform. And it's kind of like one of these top secret things that, uh, that Google doesn't really want to share with other people, uh, about what they're doing. And, and how that pays off for, for content creators. And I think that there has been a progression over time of kind of a, a rollback on that where Google and YouTube make more money over time and the content creator makes less. And it's not always visible to see them kind of playing that game in the back end. So this is why we've seen here more recently is some talk about, you know, is it time for content creators to kind of pull back and say, well, you know, let's get together and like do a collective bargaining kind of a situation and, and require that these big platforms get into content licensing deals with all of us, um, just because we're, we're open to being I guess taken advantage of is probably the simple explanation here. And because this value exchange has always existed in the podcasting space and the UGC, that's the user-generated content kind of platforms like a YouTube, is that the value exchange between me, the creator, and you, Spotify, or you, YouTube, is that YouTube has algorithms that give me an opportunity to get exposure, right? Get audience. And that's their value equation to say, well, you have to give that to us for free. So how do you, you know, as you look forward, at what point do we get so out of balance with this and that the content creators get so much more power in the market because there's content creators now that are, that are, you know, multi-million dollar, multi-million view content creators now on the podcasting side as well as in the, the YouTube side. I mean, there's, there's like MrBeast and there's other ones out there that are getting billions of views. So, you know, you start looking at the value that the content is bringing to these platforms versus what they actually have to payout and support of the content creators is where you've kind of, you run up against the wall, and it feels like we've been running up against that wall for a long time. And then there's the other tension around ad load and how many advertisements can, can the audience support, right? I think we're seeing a growth in that as well, and the per thousand CPM has dropped a little bit, uh, and so there's this kind of tension that's constantly going on in the medium right now. And, you know, you as a content creator need to think about a diversity of touch points, right? Um, of strategies around like email marketing, audio, video, social media, You know, how do you as an individual content creator do everything? I think that's the question that I'm increasingly running up against as I think about this stuff and I see the progression of what Spotify wants to do, what YouTube is doing, and what's happening with even Apple. Apple Podcasts, you know, has increasingly moved towards a direct upload strategy around their, their premium content. So, you know, there is this kind of movement towards, uh, these big proprietary platforms wanting to own the relationship with the content creator as well as the audience and not have them have a relationship with like a distribution platform like a Buzzsprout or a Lipson or, or any of those that are third party, right? That I think they see that as a disadvantage to them. And that takes us back to, you know, what's the content creator's response to this type of environment? Is it, you know, I think many have said, you know, own your own domain name, your own website, control your audience interaction, and increasingly, move towards, in the bigger picture of things, move towards direct audience support, direct audience membership, direct audience, you know, access, right? So there's all these communities like Kajabi and, and many others out there like Skool and, and that are enabling content creators to create a more interesting and dynamic and monetizable relationship with their audience because their audience becomes very engaged and participatory in that content creator's kind of knowledge and helping others, which is what a lot of podcasting has been about, is creating content that helps others. And the same thing with, with YouTube as well. So what we're building is relationships with community and individuals. And by creating content that builds trust, builds understanding, builds maybe shortcut pathways to doing things that, you know, have a maybe a financial benefit or a community building benefit, or, you know, help you build your, your brand relationship with potential customers or existing customers. So you have a lot of that kind of stuff that is available through direct kind of relationships in a particular platform community. And there's no reason why you can't build that, right? Build that for yourself, own that relationship with your audience. And that puts you in charge of your monetization capability with your audience versus, Putting your content out over at Spotify and, and YouTube or whatever and expecting Google and Spotify to do all that for you because they own the, the relationship with the audience. Now granted, they're getting paid a subscription to have an advertising-free version of your show. So if a subscriber to Spotify or YouTube pays, you know, $13 a month, whatever, they get access to, let's say, you know, like Spotify Premium or YouTube Premium that basically strips out all the ads except for— what's the answer to this? It's except for baked-in host reads, right? Or baked-in advertising mentions. Those can't be dynamically stripped out. And, and that is kind of the, the middle ground here that we can all rally around. But there, there isn't a lot of buyers or brands that are willing to necessarily do that kind of a deal with the show. And that's the, that's the challenge. And so it's forcing content creators to get in these deeper relationships with these platforms like a Spotify and a YouTube that can help you do that, even Apple with their premium content. So you have this tension that's going on right now around all of these platforms. And so let me go into another question here. I see we have one from Pete Georgie George has said, hi Rob, from Australia. All the best to you and your family in 2025. Well, thank you so much, Pete. I appreciate the, the comment there on all that, and I appreciate you being here. And, and certainly if you have a question or a comment about all of this and your, your experiences, um, with these platforms and what you see is happening here over the next, uh, next year. I think 2025 will be a big year for content creators. I think it, you know, whether or not it's a big year financially or a big year, it's going to be a big year in, in, I think, a lot of this stuff getting sorted out and straightened out. But I think it's also going to be a big year around all of us kind of facing the realities of what's happening in the content creation, content publishing, and monetization world here. It's not getting easier. And it looks like Film Your Darlings just posted, happy holidays, Rob. Well, happy holidays to you as well. Thank you so much. And so I don't think it's going to get any easier in 2025. I think that the landscape around distribution and the type of content that you want to make is going to increasingly become probably more confusing. And there's going to be points in time where it's just going to be overwhelming to many content creators to do everything. And I just don't think that that's something that is reasonable to think that's possible. So I did want to show everybody kind of— so when you log in to Spotify today, this is what you get. So if you create an account, Yeah, so what I have up on the screen is the— so once you've created an account in Spotify, this is really the first question that it asks you if you go in through the Spotify for Creators platform. And it asks you, you know, create a new show, right? So as you look at this, that's the terminology. It's not create a podcast anymore, it's create a new show. So, and then which, which is exactly like what I was saying is what's happening here is that we are, we are moving away from this concept of just creating a podcast, right? We're creating a show and find, and the other option is to find an existing show. And this is, this is where we get into this replacement things. So if you go in here and you search to find an existing show, so I'll go in here and somewhere else. Yeah. So you can see that there's, where's your show hosted? Is it at Spotify for Creators? Is it on Megaphone by Spotify or somewhere else? So let's say if I click somewhere else, So it's asking me to drop my RSS feed in here, and it will match that up with, um, with your feed that's in there in their platform. I don't happen to have this particular show in here. I didn't really want to get, get this set up here. I just wanted to show you how that worked. And so they are looking for you to share your RSS feed in here So they can, they can look it up. And if you upload a video, then guess what? Um, that video goes in and, and replaces the episode, um, that you published via RSS. And if you uploaded a video, it actually will override it, uh, and it will not make it hosted on Spotify anymore. So that's the, that's the process of how that works. And let me back out of this. And, and so I think we'll have to be cautious around what we're doing with, with Spotify here. And we have to do things with an intent that we know what's going to happen if we do like what I was just showing you on the screen, is that it will create a situation if you want to upload a video. So let's say you recorded a video on StreamYard or you did it on Riverside or any of this stuff, and you took the audio out and you put that out as a— as an audio version in an RSS feed. And you go into Spotify and you create an account and you locate your RSS feed, and then it asks you to, you know, upload your video. Well, is this video a part of your RSS feed, episode, you know, 10 of your RSS feed? Well, you upload that. Guess what? It overwrites that and it makes an audio and video version, a new version, and it takes out that, that link that is linked back to your podcast hosting platform. So that's the unfortunate consequence of this, is that, um, it's, it's not— here, let me go back to full screen here. And yeah, so it's it may do things that you don't necessarily want it to do. And I think that's the key thing to, to think about here. And if you have any questions here about this, or you're confused about what I'm talking about here, this is, this is one of the things that's difficult that I found, especially over the last couple years, to help everybody understand what's going on in these relationships and, and how it technically works too. And it's not a It's not always an easy conversation. It's not always one where, where it makes perfect sense, right, that, that this is what's, what's going on and this is what their strategy is. And that's why I wanted to do this episode, was to share that and to have, have some clarity that I can hopefully draw from all the years that I've spent in the podcasting space, um, creating these relationships with various folks, um, you know, these big platforms like Apple and Spotify and to some degree Google and, and, and YouTube, and just kind of share the behind the scenes and the things to be concerned about. Um, and it looks like Harold Gilchrist, uh, said happy holidays and good evening, and same back to you. Uh, I hope 2025 is a good Good year for you. So let me pull up Harold as another question. He writes, I know this episode is mainly for podcasters, but how do you see the podcast listener experience in Spotify when it comes to interacting, such as commenting, as a listening kind of platform. Well, I think that the commenting is like it's always been in, in Spotify, and I think I can probably pull that up and we can take a look at it really quick here. Um, let's see here if I find it. Okay, here it is. Let me share this back up on the screen again, and we can kind of see this Um, yeah, so you can see Oprah and her podcast here. And I think that, uh, let's see, this isn't a logged in— well, no, it is logged in. It's just there's probably an app experience. Now granted, I'm not seeing a chat window here that comes up obvious. So let's say I go into— that's a different episode. So as you look at Oprah, so you can follow her podcast, you can actually watch it here, but I don't see— okay, so I don't see any commenting. Let's see here. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. It doesn't look like there's commenting going on in this this particular episode, but let me go back here. So anyway, let me continue this with Harold's question. So, okay, how do you see the podcast listener experience in Spotify? Well, I think that the— that's what I was looking for. I couldn't see a link to an audio file. Playback type of experience in here. It was just the, the video is all that was playing here. So that could be— I don't see a separate audio playback experience here. So if I go in here, light bulb moment. Can we start the light bulb moment? Yes, the prom. I love this moment. You know, Oprah, I have dreamt about the day that I would get to sit down Yeah, so let me turn that off. And yes, I didn't see any commenting capable in here. I'm sure it is somewhere, it's just kind of not obvious. So let me pull it back here. And so I think, you know, exploring that more. I'm not a heavy Spotify user myself, so that's not an area that I'm really spending a lot of time. With right now. I probably need to, to get more informed about what they're doing. But it's just one of those platforms that, you know, I've always been kind of a user of the Apple Podcast platform. I guess that just gets back to how long I've been involved in podcasting. And other, you know, Podcasting 2.0 apps like Fountain and some of those apps are are the ones that I actually use on a, on a regular basis. If you have any other questions, I would love to try and address them. But I do think that historically the listener experience and the listener side of Spotify has been a little, sometimes a little sketchy. So I know that a lot of people haven't always been warm to the user experience or the listener experience, or in this case, the viewer experience on the Spotify platform. And so it looks like Pete wrote another question here. It says, all the changes and continuing evolution will in time be the demise of third-party hosts? Well, that's a very interesting question, Pete. I do, worry about that. So, and I do know that a lot of the big podcast hosts are also worried about that, and that— and I know many people have said this too— if you think about direct upload relationships with these platforms, and if everything starts to shift more towards video, I do think that there's some concern around that maybe there's an emphasis on video that basically undermines the podcast hosting platforms out there. And all these big platforms like Apple, Spotify, YouTube have direct relationships with all the content creators, and that creates this environment, um, that basically makes it too difficult for these big, historically large podcast hosting platforms, third-party hosting platforms, to maintain their their creators. I don't think that's a good movement for the industry. I think that there's been a lot of people that have invested a lot in platforms and capabilities in this industry, and that would really undermine it. But that could be, you know, if you look out 10 years, 5 years, A lot of things can happen. And I do worry that, that this move towards not exclusive, just audio podcast distribution as a priority with creators, um, does kind of accelerate that move towards people not prioritizing it, um, just working with, let's say, a podcast hosting platform. And I think you're seeing signs of that with Spotify here, that they're shifting away from that anchor model over more towards trying to do a video strategy. And that is, I think, a direct threat to podcasting in the long run. So anyway, I'm hopeful that 2025 will be a good year for podcasting and that that we continue to grow audience. And I do think that that's happening on even a global level. I think we've matured quite a bit here in North America, but I do think that we are still early days and still growing outside of the United States. And that's certainly a factor in all these big proprietary platforms too. They're all, like Spotify is huge outside of the US. Apple is strong in the US and in North America, but Apple is not strong, really that strong, outside of the US. I think that they, they have a place out there, but I think Android and Spotify have been able to carve out a pretty significant chunk of the international consumption of content. And so, and so has YouTube. That could really cause a problem for podcasting as you look to the future, because I think these other countries around the world are going to be very important audience growth areas and overall business growth areas for content creators and podcasters. So, you know, I'm hoping that it works out okay. What do you think? I mean, post a comment in the comment stream here and let me know what you think. Do you think that over the next 5 years we're going to see these big platforms really kind of take away the market from these third-party hosts or not? Pete, I think, posted in here as well, and so did Harold. Let's pull up Harold and hear what Harold said here. Are there apps or APIs for YouTube and Spotify that allow the content creator and podcasters pull their stats into a central tool? Well, I know that Lipson did a deal with YouTube and I do know that YouTube has APIs for stats. I don't believe that they're widely used yet. By all the third-party hosts. So that exists today. And I do know that Spotify has metrics too, but that's been primarily centered around the host getting that through a pass-through relationship with the third-party hosts. And so that's been coming directly from the delivery of the media file to their platform. So, you know, I don't know that these big platforms are going to want to do that because what they're doing is that then they're— I think they're running in the opposite direction from their own strategy of what they are trying to pursue, and that's direct relationships with content creators. And if they share metrics back to these third-party hosting platforms, that may somewhat put a damper in the growth of those direct relationships. Now, there's always going to be a need for having like a, like a central distribution manager of sorts, right? Of, or a desire on the part of content creators to create efficiencies. You know, this happened with Twitter for years. There were companies that created, you know, apps that were able to help you manage all your social media platforms all at the same time, all in one one software interface. And so I think if we do see this push towards siloing of all these platforms, there will be this kind of content creator pushback saying, well, you know, I don't want to do it to 3 different platforms. And the, the inverse reaction to that is, well, then each of these platforms is going to have a primary relationship with the content creator that is uploading, that has a relationship just with them, kind of like what's happened with YouTube. And that may be the danger here, is that these big platforms don't want to play with any kind of a central hub that, that enables kind of more efficient publishing and then metrics that consolidates back from all these big platforms because they want to own the relationships. That's the tension. And then Pete also asked a question here too, says, I think they have to evolve as well, like you said earlier, become a platform for creators to build their own identity and drive people to their own platform. Yes, and this gets back to what I was saying earlier about, you know, owning your own membership platform of sorts, whether it's a website or, you know, a separate platform that doesn't try and I guess, that own the relationship between, between you and your audience. They're a facilitator of helping that relationship, but you own the monetization pathways with that direct audience relationship. So that may be the hybrid that comes out of this, is that increasingly content creators are going to work with like a platform like a Kajabi or a Skool or whatever, that they publish all their content into one central platform and, and that, that the audience is gathered from social media and others to drive them into that owned platform. Um, yeah, so it looks like Pete wrote, um, that is like what Captivate is trying to do, and that's true, that's true. And also Blueberry is another one that, um, that has a platform that you can build your distribution around WordPress. So you have that. Now granted, that's a, that's a little bit of a challenge as well, but, but I think these other kind of membership platforms, kind of like a Patreon has done, and, and a Kajabi, and there's a bunch of other ones out there too. And I'm involved in school, um, myself. I'm trying to build a membership community myself that I'll be sharing more about that in the future here. But trying to pursue those those better, deeper relationships with audiences and being able to have those relationships more controlled by, by me. And the audience has more control in that relationship as well. So, so anyway, well, well, I want to thank everybody for being here with me tonight. I think I'm going to, um, you know, shut it down for the night. I appreciate you being here and being a member of this audience and asking terrific questions. Thank you to everybody that's here, Pete, Harold, and I believe we had also Film Your Darlings was here, aka TGIF was here, and, and those that are watching this on, on demand, please post comments in the, the thread of the platform that you're watching on. If it's YouTube or X or, or LinkedIn, we'd love to hear your ideas and feedback about where you think this direction is going in the future. I do think a lot of these things are up in the air right now. And it also gets back to how we as content creators respond in the market and what we push for. And I know that the podcast hosting platforms are pushing for their own survival, which is a good thing. So, so we shall see what happens. And I hope you have a wonderful 2025. I know this is, like I said, this is the last episode for 2024. So the next time I do this will be in, uh, 2025. So have a wonderful rest of your week, and thank you for being here with me, and I appreciate it so much. So good night and have a, have a wonderful rest of your evening. So take care. Bye.