Spotify is lowering its eligibility criteria for podcasters to monetize their videos on the platform, lowering the minimum episode requirement to three, the minimum hours of consumption to 2,000, and the limit of engaged audience members to 1,000 in the last 30 days.
When the company introduced 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 stream 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 watched their Spotify videos, along with a share of the ad revenue earned by users on the free tier.
The company is also introducing new sponsorship tools that will allow creators to update, schedule and measure sponsorship spots that hosts read in video ads. These tools are coming to the Spotify creator app and Megaphone, the company’s podcast hosting and monetization suite, in April.
Doubling down on its video strategy in an effort to better compete with YouTube, Spotify is now launching a new API that will allow creators to use their existing platforms to publish and monetize video podcasts on Spotify. At launch, tools such as Acast, Audioboom, Libsyn, Omny and Podigee have adopted this API, the company said.
The new moves come as Spotify looks for new ways to attract users and capitalize on revenue from streaming subscriptions. The company said since the launch of the partner program, consumption of video podcasts on the app has nearly doubled, and that the average Spotify podcast user streams twice as many video streams per month as before the program launched.
But that could just be because the streaming service is showing more video content.
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The company is also opening a podcast and video recording studio in West Hollywood. Spotify said the studio will serve as the base for its Ringer podcast network and will open the studio to select creators from its partner program. The company already has studios across the art district in Los Angeles, New York, Stockholm and London.
