Spotify is lowering its eligibility criteria for podcasters wanting to monetize their videos on the platform, dropping the minimum number of episodes to three, minimum consumption hours to 2,000, and the threshold of engaged audience members to 1,000 in the last 30 days.
When the company launched its partner program to monetize video content last year, creators had to have published 12 episodes, reached 10,000 hours of consumption in the previous 30 days, and had at least 2,000 people streaming their content in the last 30 days to be part of the program.
The program pays podcasters based on the number of premium users who have watched their videos on Spotify, as well as a share of advertising revenue generated by free tier users.
The company is also introducing new sponsorship tools that would allow creators to update, schedule and measure sponsorship spots played by hosts in video ads. These tools will be available in April on the Spotify for Creators app and Megaphone, the company’s podcast hosting and monetization suite.
Doubling down on its video strategy in an effort to better compete with YouTube, Spotify is now launching a new API that would allow creators to use their existing platforms to publish and monetize video podcasts on Spotify. At launch, tools like Acast, Audioboom, Libsyn, Omny and Podigee adopted this API, the company said.
These new initiatives come as Spotify seeks new avenues to attract users and grow its streaming subscription revenue. The company said that since the launch of the partner program, consumption of video podcasts on the app has nearly doubled and the average Spotify podcast user streams twice as many video shows per month as before the program launched.
But that could just be because the streaming service is releasing more video content.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026
The company is also opening a podcast and video recording studio in West Hollywood. Spotify said the studio would serve as a base for the Ringer podcast network and would open the studio to vetting the partner program’s creators. The company already has studios in the Los Angeles arts district, New York, Stockholm and London.
