Podcasts have become one of the stars of Spotify. We have already seen the different exclusive proposals that have come to the platform from the hands of big celebrities.
Spotify is succeeding with podcasts and may consider offering them on a subscription basis
And the strategy is paying off for Spotify. As mentioned in their financial report, a quarter of their monthly active users choose podcasts on the platform.
In Q4, we had 2.2 million podcasts on the platform. Notably, 25% of our total MAUs interacted with podcast content in the fourth quarter. We continue to see strong growth in podcast consumption, with hours of consumption in Q4 nearly doubling from Q4 2019.
And as repeated in different parts of the report, they see podcasts playing an important role in audience growth. And along with this data, it also looms the possibility that they consider different models to monetize podcasts.
This is not at all surprising, as let’s remember that last year, Spotify released a survey detailing 4 different plans related to podcasts. These plans ranged from $4 to $8 offering access to exclusive podcast content (episodes, interviews, etc), with and without advertising.
Spotify mentioned that this was just one of their many routine surveys aimed at improving the user experience. However, in the Q&A section of their quarterly report presentation, they brought up this topic again, and whether users would be willing to pay for podcasts.
Daniel Ek mentioned that it is still an evolving topic to see how to monetize audio on the Internet, but that there will be different models, either through ad-based subscription or other alternatives, that media companies will implement in the future. And Spotify will undoubtedly follow the same strategy.
A strategy that will be independent of the business model that Spotify implements for music content. Let’s remember that podcasts are now available, without any kind of restriction, both for free users and those with premium accounts. Of course, with ads.
