Spotify signs ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ to an exclusive multi-year deal Spotify also bought podcast tools like Anchor and other ad technology and hosting services.

To date, that's included buying up content producers like Gimlet Media, The Ringer and Parcast, as well as signing top creators like Joe Rogan, Addison Rae, Kim Kardashian West, DC Comics, Michelle Obama and The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, among others. This is an area where Spotify has plenty of room to grow, considering the significant investment it has made in podcasts over the years. If Spotify chooses to paywall podcasts behind subscriptions or à la carte payments, then they're no longer really podcasts - they're a new sort of premium audio program. Of course, that would change the meaning of the word 'podcasts,' which today refers to freely distributed, serialized audio programs that get distributed via RSS feeds. The answer seemed to indicate that Spotify is considering some of the ideas in that recent survey - of getting consumers to pay for some podcasts, instead of accessing them all for free or having them bundled into their music subscription. 'And you should definitely expect Spotify to follow that strategy and that pattern,' Ek added, more definitively. 'I believe, in fact, that we will have all business models, and that’s the future for all media companies - that you will have ad-supported subscriptions and à la carte sort of in the same space, of all media companies in the future.' I’ve said this before, but I don’t believe that it’s a one-size-fits-all,' he said. 'I think we’re in the early days of seeing the long-term evolvement of how we can monetize audio on the internet.

However, it's clear that investors also want to know what Spotify is thinking when it comes to recouping its sizable investments in podcasts.Īsked if Spotify thought customers would be willing to pay for podcasts, Ek on the earnings call responded that he believed there were several new models that could be explored. (Spotify said the same when asked to comment on the news at the time.) Update your settings here to see it.Ī survey, of course, is only meant to gauge consumer demand for such a subscription, and doesn't indicate that Spotify has a new product in the works. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences.

Spotify plans for podcast subscriptions