Should You Remove Your Podcast From Spotify?
Spotify seems to be the lead news story these days. This could be because other current events aren’t fun to discuss. It’s been a while since we’ve had a dog saves kitten news story. Celebrity fights get a lot of attention on social media. It’s easy for reputable news sources to waste column inches on them. For podcasters, who have a vested interest in audio platforms, though, this is important. So, let’s take a quick look at Spotify and how good it is, or isn’t, for podcasts. Should you remove your podcast from Spotify?
What’s Wrong with Spotify?
Spotify offers an ad-free music listening experience for its premium subscribers. They also have podcasts that are “Spotify originals and exclusives.” On Spotify, podcasts are supported by ad revenue. This means that Spotify can afford to have content by President Obama or many other people whose time and thoughts are high in demand.
This tells me that Spotify believes uninterrupted music is a privilege worth purchasing. But, Spotify doesn’t extend the same respect to podcasts.
Spotify’s mission statement is “to unlock the potential of human creativity—by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by it.” Every time a track streams on Spotify, the artist (or the artist and record company) make less than a cent. To be more precise, they make about $0.003 to $0.0084 per stream, with an average payout of $0.004 per stream, according to Freemusic.com.
If a track were streamed 250 times on Spotify, eight to nine times a day in a calendar month, the artist would make a dollar. That takes more than a dollar’s worth of self-promotion. This is not an opportunity to live off your art.
Podcasters can submit their work to Spotify and earn the privilege of exposure. People can die from exposure.
Spotify also gathers loads of user data. in order to sell more ads. They publicize this like it’s a good thing. In a 2017 ad, Spotify said, “Dear person in the Theater District who listened to the Hamilton Soundtrack 5,376 times this year, can you get us tickets?” Listening to music and podcasts can be a private, vulnerable moment. The idea of a big company using your private moments to sell advertising is pretty painful.
But Everyone Loves Spotify! Right?
ZDNet reports that Spotify has 406 million active users. Some people really like Spotify for a simple reason: they can listen to podcasts and music with the same app. Particularly if you’re starting in podcasting or your following is modest, you want your podcast to be available in as many directories as possible. If your podcast is already there, you might want to remove your podcast from Spotify. But, you run the risk of losing a lot of potential listeners.
Are Audiences Burnt Out from Advertising?
Spotify Premium listeners will not have the same experience listening to podcasts that they do with music. They’ll have advertising, which they’ve paid to avoid. If you monetize your podcast with ads, whether dynamically inserted by your media host or promotional copy that you read, the audience has even more ads. It’s a disincentive to listen to podcasts on Spotify.
Your audience can get advertising fatigue pretty quickly. When that sets in, it’s much harder for your podcast’s message to have any meaning.
Your Podcast, Your Principles
Imagine that another podcaster on a directory you share says something horrible. It might be the kind of thing where, if you were sitting next to each other on the same bus, you’d stand up and find somewhere else to sit. The thing is, this doesn’t change the bus’ route. You could get off at the next stop. But then you have to walk or find a different way to get to where you want to go.
Podcast directories, such as Apple, Spotify, iHeart Radio, and more, have millions of users and billions in revenue. They really don’t care if your podcast isn’t in their directory. Besides, with hundreds of thousands of podcasts existing on the Internet, it’s impossible to find a directory that only has podcasts with a particular combination of values and ethics. Honestly, this would be pretty boring.
However, if what you get out of your podcast is connection with your audience, your podcast is available on as many directories as humanly possible, and the amount of work you put into it far exceeds the amount of money, emotional fulfilment or professional advancement you get back, and you don’t like Spotify’s principles, you should do what’s right for your own value system.
If You Choose to Remove Your Podcast from Spotify, Here’s How
First, you have to do more work to promote all of the other directories where you list your podcast. So, do that. If the call to action in your outro mentions Spotify, take it out. Talk about where your podcast is listed, and play up the attributes of the directories you do like.
Make sure your podcast website has an embedded player. Most media hosting companies can help you make a player that you can embed in a post or page on your website. Your audience on Spotify, big or small, want to find your next episode. Make it easy for them.
In your media hosting service, find your RSS feed for Spotify, and delete it.
Next, contact Spotify for Podcasters customer support. You need your podcast’s RSS feed, and the email address you use to maintain that RSS feed, plus a link to your podcast on Spotify. You’ll need to be able to verify ownership of the feed. You can use the Spotify For Podcasters contact form. They’ll take care of the rest.
Your Time, Effort and Ideas Are Valuable. Do What’s Right for You.
In 2014, pop music juggernaut Taylor Swift wrote, for The Wall Street Journal, “Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is.” Ms. Swift’s relationship with streaming surfaces has been rocky, but it’s rocked in her favor, when she said no.
Content creators deserve better than being the bait for shareholders’ hooks. You don’t have to be Taylor Swift to take charge of your podcast distribution. Value your work, and share it with the audiences who will appreciate it.
