The Hidden Cost of Spotify's Video Uploads #podcastrevenue #spotify

Name: The Hidden Cost of Spotify's Video Uploads #podcastrevenue #spotify
Uploaded: 2025-04-13T19:49:08+00:00
Duration: 1 min 14 s
Channel: Rob Greenlee
Description: In this segment Rob Greenlee warns creators that uploading video to Spotify can unintentionally sabotage their podcast revenue. He explains that Spotify…

13 Apr 2025 · 1 min

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1:14

In this segment Rob Greenlee warns creators that uploading video to Spotify can unintentionally sabotage their podcast revenue. He explains that Spotify currently replaces the RSS‑hosted audio version of an episode with the audio extracted from the uploaded video, which is then hosted on Spotify’s own servers. Because the audio is no longer served from the podcaster’s primary host, the creator loses the monetization tied to that feed. Greenlee cites industry recommendations to hold off on video uploads until Spotify resolves the issue, noting documented cases where podcasters have seen up to a 50 % drop in earnings after their audio was swapped out. The core message is that, rather than generating extra income, premature video uploads can halve a creator’s existing revenue stream.

Chapters

So the industry has been publicly recommending not to upload video to Spotify until Spotify fixes that. Because at the present time, Spotify is not playing fair with the content creators. And some of the content creators have said, okay, I'll upload my video to Spotify, unknowing that inadvertently or on purpose, you know, you can come to your own conclusion, is that they're going to lose half of their revenue. Let's say that they have a lot of people listening to their audio file on Spotify. And then all of a sudden that audio episode that's shared through RSS gets removed and the audio from your video file replaces it. And that's all hosted by Spotify instead of hosted from your central podcast host. You're going to lose revenue, clearly. And there's been examples of people losing half of their revenue by doing this. When the whole idea was to grow your revenue, you upload video, hopefully you're going to make additional money from the video and not lose the revenue from your audio.