Spotify’s new podcast strategy explained

Visit https://podnews.net/update/spotify-q423-results for all the links, and to get our newsletter. Spotify released its Q4/23 results. Total revenue grew 16% Y/Y to US$3.9bn; all the company’s figures met or exceeded expectations, with the company now having 602mn monthly users. The company lost $81mn in the quarter, a better figure than was flagged in December. Spotify’s podcasting business was close to breaking-even in Q4, Daniel Ek said in an earnings call. He also outlined the change of strategy: “While some of these exclusivity deals worked, generally it wasn't aligned with what the creator wanted. The creator wants to have a broader audience. With these new deals, we are in a position where we're better aligned with the creator. We can both deliver the growth rate and we are equally incentivized to drive our audience growth. And of course then also drive revenue growth because we both share in that upside. Today, Spotify is in many cases the number one podcasting player already. Exclusivity makes sense when you're the smaller playing, trying to gain scale: [but] when you're the bigger player, the additional value of the exclusivity is far smaller than it is about being aligned. From a values point of view, this is better aligned with who we are at Spotify too.” As Spotify appears to have newly discovered, the open RSS feed is, says entrepreneur Anil Dash in a blog post, “the kind of technology that's supposed to be impossible: open, empowering tech that's not owned by any one company, that can't be controlled by any one company, and that allows people to have ownership over their work and their relationship with their audience.” - while Ernie Smith at Tedium suggests there’s something to be learnt from RSS’s podcast success by the rest of the media, too. Classifieds - your job or ad hereWho grew 50% moving from Patreon to Supercast? 🤔 — Hidden Forces switched from Patreon and grew subscribers 50% in 3 months with a frictionless sign-up experience. Dozens more include FoundMyFitness and Canadaland. Click to see the case studies.🙌 So many ways to take part in Evolutions 🧾 — The podcaster conference of the spring is almost here, and there are so many reasons to be there. Check out our TEAM DISCOUNTS and PAYMENT PLANS, and use code PODNEWS to stack on even more savings!Noma — Transcribe your podcast episodes to text with chapters and publish like Medium. Protect all your devices — NextDNS is the new firewall for the modern Internet. It protects you from all kinds of security threats, blocks ads and trackers on websites and in apps, and provides a safe and supervised Internet.Apple has released a new developer beta of iOS 17.4, which will brin