Understack was announced on Thursday is introducing some new features for podcasters to its platform. More specifically, the company is launching a Spotify integration that will allow podcasters on Substack to sync and distribute all of their free and paid episodes to Spotify’s streaming service. In addition, Substack introduces new custom audio transcriptions and subtitles, along with improvements to mobile clip and video sharing.
The release of the new features comes as Substack announced that podcasters on Substack collectively earn more than $100 million in annual revenue, and that number has more than doubled in the past year. The number of active podcasters on the platform has also more than doubled over the same period.
The new integration with Spotify will make Substack’s podcasts discoverable through the streaming service, making it easier for podcasters to reach more listeners. In addition, the integration will allow existing subscribers of Substack podcasters to listen to paid episodes on Spotify. Substack says the integration with Spotify has the potential to help podcasters earn more, as free listeners will be incentivized to upgrade to a subscription.
Podcasters on Substack can set up a Spotify integration by going to their podcast settings, opening the Spotify drop-down menu, and clicking “Sync to Spotify” to create a new stream with all current and future episodes. Paid episodes are marked with a padlock, and listeners must link their Substack account to Spotify to listen to paid episodes directly on the streaming service.
Image Credits: Understack
Creators can go to their Spotify for Podcasters account to see data about streams, unique listeners, play time, demographics and more. Substack plans to make this data accessible through a creator’s Substack podcast statistics page in the future.
As for the new custom audio transcripts and subtitles, podcasters can now upload their own transcript instead of using the one automatically generated by Substack if they wish. Video podcasters can also choose to upload a separate audio track and free preview for distribution in podcast RSS feeds instead of using the default extracted from the uploaded video.
Additionally, podcasters and their listeners can now share a link to a podcast video at a specific timestamp or download a clip to post on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok and X.
Substack says it’s making it easier to watch video podcasts on mobile, as video posts on iOS and Android now have a built-in player. This new feature allows users to read and watch at the same time, while maintaining their position in a partially watched video to watch again later.
The new features are available to all users starting today.
