Spotify for Creators: The Rebrand, Vertical Video Clips, Video Monetization, Big Promises, and My Honest Take

[00:00:00] I mainly consume my short-form content on Instagram and YouTube. Do I need another app to do that? Am I going to start searching for cool or informative or funny short-form clips of people's podcasts within Spotify? For me personally, no.

[00:00:26] What up potty people and welcome back to Clipped. As always, I'm Eric, your host and Clipped brings you the tips, resources, and people to help you crush your content goals.

[00:00:35] And today, I'm talking about Spotify for Creators. If you didn't know, Spotify has launched this new program as of November 2024.

[00:00:44] And in this episode, I'm going to get into the two new features of Spotify for Creators that you may or may not want to take advantage of as a video podcaster and how these may benefit you or may not. That'll be up to you to decide.

[00:00:59] Before we get into it, got to give a shout out to Riverside. They sponsor this podcast. Riverside is my favorite place to record online audio and video podcasts.

[00:01:08] And I love their AI tools. In addition to recording high-quality audio and video, their AI will take your episodes, write show notes, write the transcript, and their magic clips feature will take your video file and break it up into short-form vertical clips for social media, all with the click of a few buttons.

[00:01:27] Head on over to Riverside.fm, enter promo code CLIPPED for 20% off. Now let's give it a go.

[00:01:46] Okay, so what is Spotify for Creators? Well, it's actually a rebrand. As of November 2024, they turned Spotify for Podcasters into what's called Spotify for Creators.

[00:01:59] And if you didn't know, Spotify for Podcasters was available to everyone who had an RSS feed. All you had to do was go to Spotifyforpodcasters.com, enter your Spotify login info, like the Spotify that you use for your music account where you stream music.

[00:02:14] And within that, you enter your RSS feed and your podcast will come up. And then you can see all your analytics for the people consuming your podcast on Spotify.

[00:02:24] So as of November 2024, that has rebranded and it's now called Spotify for Creators. And it's got several new features that I want to get into. Not sure how I feel about them.

[00:02:34] I do think it's cool that Spotify is kind of pushing the envelope and trying to help podcasters and video creators by offering these like additional services and different ways that you can grow your show and get more eyeballs on it within the Spotify ecosystem.

[00:02:50] But I don't know how many people are really going to take advantage of these. And let's get into it now. So the first one is video clips. Now, you've been able to upload video podcasts to Spotify for some time now.

[00:03:05] So if you're a creator that didn't even know about that, you've been able to upload your full length video podcast episodes to Spotify so that people can either listen to the audio version or the video version when they're accessing Spotify.

[00:03:19] But now with the clips feature, you can actually upload vertical short form clips to help promote your podcast. Let's talk about that a little bit. Are you a person who thinks that you would consume vertical short form clips on Spotify? Are you that active in Spotify where that would be of interest to you or that you would care to consume those clips there?

[00:03:41] For me, I mainly consume like my short form content on Instagram and YouTube. Do I need another app to do that? Like, am I going to start searching for cool or informative or funny short form clips of people's podcasts within Spotify? For me personally, no. However, I do think that it's cool that Spotify is offering this and some people probably will take advantage and that the early adapters, supposedly Spotify,

[00:04:11] is going to push your clips and your video podcasts more when you're accessing these tools because they want you to take advantage and get fully into Spotify's ecosystem and really start to engage and build community and consume content within Spotify. So I do think that that's cool. However, I don't know that that's of interest to me.

[00:04:35] That being said, will I upload some clips of my podcast to Spotify? I probably will for no other reason than it's good to be everywhere. And if Spotify is going to see those and help push my episodes because I'm using their tools, I think that that's great.

[00:04:52] I actually just moments ago before recording this scrolled through a few podcasts that I listen to regularly and enjoy. To be honest, I mostly listen to them on Apple, but I wanted to see if they had uploaded any clips and I couldn't find any. I could find some shows where the video, the full length video is up, but I didn't see any clips.

[00:05:14] So one, people are maybe unaware. This did go out in an email blast and there's articles all over the internet now. And two, just maybe they haven't done it yet because this is new. But yeah, I mean, potential uses, you could upload teasers in Spotify, short form video teasers of your podcast, trailers, promos, highlight clips, the same stuff you see on Instagram and TikTok. So we'll see. Is that of interest to you? You got to decide that.

[00:05:43] And we'll report back. We'll do some research in the next three, four or five months and see if this is actually a trend that continues to grow. And if people that are doing this are seeing more growth for their show. And if they are, probably I'll jump on that.

[00:05:58] Next, within the Spotify for creators new program, they actually have a monetization feature for video podcasters on Spotify. A couple caveats to this, and this is interesting. So to access this monetization feature, you actually have to be hosting your podcast on Spotify.

[00:06:21] So I currently host on Libsyn. There's Libsyn, there's Captivate, Castos, Buzzsprout. So if you currently host your podcast on another hosting platform, to get access to this monetization feature, you actually have to switch your hosting to Spotify. Don't know a whole lot about that. I do know Spotify's hosting is free for podcasters. So you're going to save money on hosting.

[00:06:47] Although hosting is pretty cheap. But yeah, that's how you're going to get access. And then without getting into too much about how much you're going to get paid based on your amount of streams or downloads.

[00:06:59] That's another thing that's interesting is like now with Spotify, streams are becoming more and more popular because for decades now, it's been like podcast downloads. How many downloads are you getting? With Apple Podcasts being a big part of that.

[00:07:15] But I don't really know. And me personally, I don't think I've ever downloaded a podcast from Spotify. When I do go to listen on Spotify, which is rare, but I do do it, I just stream the show.

[00:07:30] And so we're entering in this whole new world. And we have been for a while now, but this just even accelerates that more is the streaming of podcasts and how many streams you're getting versus how many downloads.

[00:07:43] Are these streams going to be more lucrative or when in terms of downloads and monetizing via downloads, is that still going to be the main metric that advertising agencies use and that the way monetization is calculated?

[00:08:01] Is it going to be skewed more heavily towards downloads or are streams becoming like the way that that's all going to unfold?

[00:08:08] Anyway, to get eligible for monetization on Spotify, you have to host your show within Spotify.

[00:08:15] You have to have a legal address, address, not a legal address on one of Spotify's eligible markets.

[00:08:22] So right now this monetization is only available in Australia, Canada, the UK and the US.

[00:08:28] You have to have at least 12 episodes of your podcast published and you have to achieve at least 10,000 consumption hours on Spotify in the last 30 days and reach 2,000 listeners who have streamed your podcast on Spotify in the last 30 days.

[00:08:45] So there's some pretty large eligibility requirements.

[00:08:48] So if you're an indie creator, you may be this big.

[00:08:53] Chances are you're not, but you might be.

[00:08:55] And if so, you can take advantage of this monetization.

[00:08:59] The revenue split is 50% to Spotify, 50% to the creator.

[00:09:03] Now, this isn't a great split because I produce a show, large show that's been partnered with several different advertising agencies.

[00:09:14] I've never seen a 50-50 split.

[00:09:16] It's usually either 60-40 or 70-30 with that higher number in both situations going towards the creator.

[00:09:23] So 50-50, I don't know, is that going to become more common?

[00:09:28] Never seen a split this low, although maybe you have.

[00:09:33] So take that into consideration if you meet these eligibility requirements with the advertising split.

[00:09:40] And where does the advertising come from?

[00:09:42] Well, it's programmatic, pre-produced ads that you hear on shows that you're probably listening to already,

[00:09:48] where it's not an ad that's read by the host.

[00:09:51] It's an ad that's been produced and there's a voiceover artist that is reading the ad.

[00:09:57] Let's say it's like for Toyota or for Taco Bell or Pepsi.

[00:10:01] You know, oftentimes you're listening to a show and an ad will come in that's almost like a radio ad where you're just listening and someone else is reading it and it's been pre-produced.

[00:10:12] And these ads typically go out into thousands of different podcasts.

[00:10:17] In these programmatic ad markets, you have some control over what ads will go into your show.

[00:10:23] But a lot of times you don't.

[00:10:26] And so you don't know.

[00:10:28] A lot of times it depends on the demographic that you're a part of, like the geography, like where you live in the country.

[00:10:35] And so these pre-produced ads will get fed into your show.

[00:10:39] You're going to get a 50% split of that.

[00:10:42] So if that's something that's of interest to you and you meet the qualifications or it's a goal of yours to eventually meet the qualifications,

[00:10:50] that's what you can look forward to with Spotify for Creators monetization feature.

[00:10:57] Additionally, they're saying that like when you're part of Spotify for Creators, you're going to get, they say, you're going to get like featured more.

[00:11:06] I don't know what that means like within Spotify's podcast world.

[00:11:10] It says there's like customization and that you can control how your show appears within Spotify.

[00:11:17] And just from doing a little bit of research, it sounds like, yeah, they're going to work to push some of those shows that are taking advantage of the monetization feature.

[00:11:26] I guess because they're going to make money too.

[00:11:28] So if like they're pushing it out in their algorithm, you know, then more people are going to see it.

[00:11:34] More people are going to watch it.

[00:11:36] Then it's more money for them as well as you.

[00:11:38] But they obviously care about themselves.

[00:11:40] So they're doing it to benefit themselves.

[00:11:43] But yeah, there's some additional customization features.

[00:11:46] That's all I know when you're a part of this monetization.

[00:11:49] And it has to do with like the way your show is featured and the way it looks.

[00:11:54] Okay.

[00:11:54] Again, so what do I think?

[00:11:56] One, I don't know if I'm going to watch.

[00:11:58] I'm probably not.

[00:12:00] Occasionally, I will.

[00:12:01] Short form clips on video clips on Spotify.

[00:12:03] Will I upload some?

[00:12:05] Yes.

[00:12:05] Probably not going to put a ton of effort in, but I already have some clips that I can upload.

[00:12:10] And I'm actually going to do a YouTube video.

[00:12:12] If you're listening to this, head on over to my YouTube.

[00:12:15] YouTube.com slash at the podcast haven.

[00:12:18] And I'm going to actually do like a screen share where I show you how to log in to your Spotify for creators portal and how to upload those video clips.

[00:12:28] I already did like kind of a test.

[00:12:30] I didn't upload anything, but I just checked it out.

[00:12:32] I'm going to show you how to upload full length videos as well.

[00:12:36] Will I watch a full length video and or clips?

[00:12:39] Sparingly.

[00:12:40] What do I think of the monetization?

[00:12:44] It's not a bad idea.

[00:12:46] Are there other ways to monetize if your show is already like big enough where you would meet these eligibility requirements?

[00:12:53] Yeah.

[00:12:55] And it begs the question like Spotify trying to compete with YouTube.

[00:13:01] If your show is already video and it's fairly big and you're monetized on YouTube, are you going to make more?

[00:13:07] Do you want to be on YouTube and Spotify?

[00:13:11] Probably.

[00:13:11] Probably.

[00:13:12] It's just lots up in the air right now.

[00:13:15] And there's a lot of different thoughts and opinions of people in the industry.

[00:13:19] Yes, it's a good thing, but we'll have to see how it unfolds.

[00:13:24] And really, that's what I wanted to get into today, guys.

[00:13:27] Spotify for creators.

[00:13:29] Some of my thoughts.

[00:13:29] And more importantly, some of your thoughts.

[00:13:32] If you think this is great, then by all means, get in there.

[00:13:35] Make that money.

[00:13:36] Upload those clips.

[00:13:37] Grow your show.

[00:13:39] It was more to just pose the question and the thought of like...

[00:13:43] And to just update you on what's kind of happening in the industry when it comes to Spotify and their place in the podcast industry and what they're doing to push podcasting forward.

[00:13:54] And a lot of it I like.

[00:13:55] Some of it I don't like.

[00:13:56] I would say the majority of it I do like.

[00:13:58] Although there's a few things to be aware of and I hope I uncovered those for you today.

[00:14:03] And hopefully you got some insightful information out of this episode.

[00:14:09] That's it for me, guys.

[00:14:10] I'm Eric.

[00:14:11] Keep listening.

[00:14:12] Keep engaging.

[00:14:13] Keep creating.

[00:14:13] And I'm out.