Spotify & YouTube Aren't Great for Podcasting

Spotify and YouTube don’t necessarily have the independent podcaster’s best interests in mind.

Recent reporting from James Cridland at Podnews highlights Spotify’s evolving advertising strategy, including the introduction of skippable ads alongside options for advertisers to purchase non-skippable placements. It’s another reminder that many of the biggest podcast platforms are increasingly focused on advertising, monetization, and serving the largest shows and podcast networks.

YouTube presents a similar challenge. Beyond changes to creator monetization, the platform also allows creators to pay to promote their videos—or podcasts—directly within YouTube. That creates a pay-to-play dynamic where views and subscriber numbers can be amplified through advertising in a way that doesn’t really exist across traditional podcast directories and apps.

But none of these things are what make a podcast great. They don’t create meaningful conversations, loyal audiences, or stronger communities—and they don’t necessarily make life any easier for the small, independent podcaster.

In today’s episode, I share more of my thoughts on where podcasting is headed, how these platforms are changing the game, and what it means for independent creators.

Follow The Podcast Setup at thepodcastsetup.com.

https://podnews.net/article/spotify-unskippable-ads-and-auto-skips

https://www.schoolofpodcasting.com/youtube-spotify/

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Buzzsprout Video Publishing

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to another episode of Matt Has a Podcast about podcasting. Coincidentally, today it'll actually be published to YouTube and Spotify. I've been saying now for a couple of episodes that I haven't done that because I've been really testing out this podcast, trying to leverage Apple's new video, well I'll say big air quotes, new video platform, right? They've had it out for a while, but now they support HLS. I did this uh sponsorship with BuzzSprout to start publishing those videos um to Apple. And um so I was holding off. Plus, I was being lazy because I was like, I don't want to do two different or three different uploads to YouTube, Spotify, Apple, and like then send into Buzzsprout, do all this other stuff. But once again, coincidentally, Buzzsprout has now launched uh the ability to publish the single video file that I upload to my Buzzsprout account, uh, not only to Apple, but now to YouTube and Spotify. It's fantastic. And I'll have a uh video coming out soon on the uh podcast setup newsletter and YouTube channel um that goes through how I set that up in Buzzsprout, and you can kind of see it in real time. It'll be a sponsored video by them. Um so fantastic. They're they've been great sponsors so

Walled Gardens Problem

SPEAKER_00 1:13

far. But that's not the meat of today's discussion, unfortunately. Um, because as uh we're gonna just talk about two of these, you know, I don't want to say titans of podcasting. That's not the right phrase, but these two large corporations that have seeped into podcasting over the last uh, you know, whatever it's been five to eight years with Spotify. And now, of course, YouTube really trying to push into the de facto podcasting spot, uh, rightfully so for like discovery and and sort of like consumption. But there are two major, you know, issues that I've always had with Spotify and certainly with YouTube, and that is the walled garden effect that they've always had as their main agenda, right? Uh and I don't, again, I don't hold it against them. It's part of how they operate as a business. They need people in the platform, in the app, in their ecosystem to consume content. Uh, and it's just sort of the opposite of what makes podcasting

Spotify Skippable Ads

SPEAKER_00 2:14

so great. And I don't want to turn this into a super technical conversation because a lot of this is just me riffing off the cuff. Um, because I had another video scheduled, uh another episode scheduled, but James Cridlin published a great uh breaking news piece today on how uh last week he published that Spotify was uh launching a new feature called uh skippable ads or something like that, where you where it would identify when an ad was playing and it would present the user the ability to skip that ad, um, you know, all done probably agentically and and machine learning so that it would know where that ad would end and you would just press that button and skip it. It didn't skip it automatically, but you could skip it. But what he broke in today's news, this is Monday, August 17th, is that Spotify is selling inventory for um unskippable ads from them. So a you you could host uh, I guess a dynamic ad or buy a dynamic ad from a competitor ad network uh that is not Spotify, and uh or you have your baked-in ad reads that you do as a host, and it would identify that in the AI uh through AI systems, and then it would present that AI skippable button. Press that button, you skip that ad, which effectively is saying, hey, that monetary value that you received as the podcast creator is uh sort of just getting bypassed. Not sort of, it is, it's getting bypassed. And now the the end user is not listening to that ad. And your advertiser or sponsor comes to you and says, Hey, you know, the money that we're giving you to sponsor uh this podcast is just not working out for us. Uh that coupon code that we gave you, just not working out for us. That landing page we told people to go to, no one's going to it. Uh and of course, Spotify is just one uh listening app uh for podcasts, for the entire podcast industry, but it does have an effect. Now, there is an argument that's that YouTube does the same thing through YouTube Premium, and uh there's a lot that's happening in the news with YouTube Premium and the YouTube monetization uh that's sort of getting squeezed a lot more now for creators. But you were still getting paid out uh with that ad. Uh you you were still getting paid out as a YouTube premium user uh that you didn't have ads and you know you just didn't see the ad, but the person who is watching that ad was, or could have been watching that ad was paying for a premium. So that little piece of the premium fee went to you, the podcast creator. Um but Spotify is saying, no, we'll we'll we'll sell you an ad that people can't skip, which is really dirty. Like it sounds illegal almost to be like, hey, we we are a media company, you consume content through this platform, and ads that were sold here, uh you you could make the case that we say, well, we we put a button in that said you could skip it, and then only like a week later say that we've got ads that we'll sell you that you can't skip. Like that seems illegal, uh, but we'll figure out, you know, in in terms uh we'll figure out through James Reporting and stuff like that. But he looked at the end user license agreement, the EULA, and uh it's all fair uh in terms of uh in terms of their terms that you agree to as uh as a as a consumer. So we'll see how this plays out if Spotify keeps it. Um and then the biggest so that's that's just like you know, in the world of big podcasting, this is what's going to happen. These big players are gonna try to push people to consume this content on their platforms, and they're gonna they're gonna write the rules of their own. And it's uh it's super unfortunate.

Indie Monetization Squeeze

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Um in the world of open podcasting, you know, there's only a handful of champions that have large apps, uh, like Overcast, uh, which is Marco Arment, and Pocketcast, which is owned by Automatic. Now, again, Automatic is very close to the work that I do in my career covering WordPress. And, you know, there's there's a bunch of other smaller apps that come after those two sort of like bigger independent apps, if you will. And and the challenge there is, you know, Automatic's doing a really good job with PocketCast. They're they're covering a lot of like the open standard stuff. I mean, automatic is largely known as an open source company, so that's a good thing that they're aligned with that open source stuff. I would say that Marco Armin is much uh at Overcast is much more um opinionated on podcasting 2.0 and the features that they um incorporate into Overcast. But what's being left behind is like, how does the indie podcaster like myself and maybe like you, how do we survive uh monetization? Like, we don't even have a platform that allows us to get um uh a fast track to monetization. Sure, you can go and jump into Buzz Uh Buzz Brout has their own ad network, um, but you need a lot of downloads in order to make some real money. So a lot of these headlines, like it doesn't apply to us on the monetary side. Like we're like, hey, well, we're not making that much money anyway. But what it does do is it squeeze squeezes us even further to where it frustrates podcast listeners, um, it frustrates indie creators who might be in the middle who could monetize, but maybe they're getting squeezed out. And then all that happens is this plumbing and this architecture and this technology gets built for you know the comp the big comedy podcasts, the sports podcasters, the news networks, um, the big YouTube celebrities and the big, you know, YouTube podcast shows that are out there. And it kind of all just gets built for them. And somewhere along the line, they make some kind of agreement about skippable ads, not skippable ads, who gets the money, who doesn't get the money. And at the end of the day, as an indie podcaster, we're just left going, I'm never gonna make money in this space. This is a whole different discussion that that I could have, but I think you can. Uh, and I think you just have to work harder at it. Um, and you have to build relationships and you have to sell more than just the ad spot uh in order to uh survive as uh indie podcaster slash creator. So there's that. That's what's happening with Spotify. That's not a a really good, a really good look, and I don't know if it'll last. It it really sounds dirty, and I just can't see them continuing, and I can't see them not getting some kind of lawsuit from some ad network, even though it might be in the legalities of their terms of agreement. I I I I gotta see this one that gets uh this one gets fought a little bit more. But here's the thing

YouTube Boosted Views

SPEAKER_00 9:06

like so a lot of people are on the spating on Spotify, and and what's being forgotten here, in my opinion, on the YouTube side, uh aside from this new monetization structuring, which um I'll link up Dave Jackson's podcast. He does a really good job at breaking this down, or I'm sure you can find more information on how they're changing like the monetization aspects of a YouTube channel, like how many more subscribers you need, how many more views you need, etc., etc. But YouTube isn't, I mean, for obvious reasons, YouTube isn't uh in the best light in any of this stuff. They don't have podcasters, uh, you know, true open source podcasting in mind to begin with. And what YouTube has has always had, which I haven't heard a lot of people criticize in the podcasting space, is that you can advertise and let's say promote or boost, like Facebook does, YouTube videos. I've seen this countless times in the you know, in the WordPress space, where suddenly a YouTuber comes along who says, Hey, I'm gonna start creating you know WordPress videos or WordPress podcasts, and they just pump advertising money into it right inherently inside of YouTube, and their shows or their episodes go to like 10,000, 30,000, 100,000 of views, and it's just all artificial, it's just artificially pushed. And they have the ability to say, oh well, look, look how much like we've got the most popular podcast on on YouTube for WordPress, let's say. And this could be happening in any category on YouTube. So that's a thing that had that I don't see a lot of people criticizing, and I don't know if because it's the blend of advertising, uh, it's like a blend of advertising, so it's just like, well, they're just paying for ads. But this is a thing that artificially stimulates view count, not only view count, but subscriber count. Um, you can, if you suspect, it's very easy to see this stuff, by the way. Like you see a YouTube channel with a low subscriber count, but then videos have insane views and no comments. Like you just look at that graph and you go to yourself, wait a minute, how how is this channel with so little uh subscribers get views on these videos that are astronomical, but at the same time they get no comments? Well, it's because they're getting artificially pushed. Um and yeah, by no means is the podcast the like whatever, the open podcast industry safe from stuff like this. There are uh you know countless agencies that you can go hire that will get you air quotes, downloads and follows and impressions um on your podcasts uh in very gray market ways, right? That are just as questionable as YouTube, but YouTube just bakes it in. And that we haven't seen that come up yet. Um, I mean there I think there are some bigger podcasts that have been criticized about that. But like when we're voting for video in this whole podcast industry, when we're voting for video, YouTube's the largest. We all know that. So you're voting for hey, I just want to start a YouTube channel, um, which is unfortunate. And YouTube's baking in these features that help gamify the system. So you've got Spotify, who, you know, now they'll they'll skip ads for you, they'll sell you non-skip skippable ads. Again, I think that's illegal, uh, but I'm not a lawyer. And now you you know you have YouTube, which doesn't really care about audio or your the openness of your podcast. They killed Google Google's uh podcast app. That's all you need to know. They brought it out back and shot it and got rid of it on Android devices to in favor of YouTube music and YouTube so that they could sell ads. That should be the obvious thing that they don't really care about podcasting like you and I do. Um they just want you on the platform, and they're gonna call it podcasting so you can get on the platform. Uh one for their ad network, and two, you can buy ads to push your stuff, which just creates this huge artificial weak foundation um for publishing. And it just creates this system that you just want followers, you just want view counts, you don't care about the content, the connection, etc. Maybe not everybody, but for those of us who create podcasts um as part of our career, and we're pushing hard to find our own ways of revenue and create value for not only listeners but sponsors, it's it creates this foundation that is um that just drains everyone's uh energy. It's just not a good, it's just not good for the ecosystem. But um, these are the things

Apple As Counterweight

SPEAKER_00 14:02

that happen. Big companies come in, they try to figure it out. And and Apple, God bless them, we've got this HLS video. It's still an API connection to send that data to Apple. Uh, they still have the right of refusal, they can still do all this stuff. We don't know what's going to happen with Apple. But the one good thing is, if anyone's going to take on Spotify and YouTube, which I've said before, it can be Apple. I'm not, I'm not saying they will. I'm not like, come on, Apple, let's do this together, because I know that those chances are very slim. But in terms of just bank accounts, I mean, Spotify is not even on the map when it comes to bank accounts of Apple and Spot and YouTube. Uh, but Apple could come in and level the playing field. And that's what we need. We like we need that innovation. Like, it's a devil we know versus a devil we don't in

What Makes A Podcast

SPEAKER_00 14:50

this situation. So I wanted to get that out there in this episode because I think it's very important when you when you sit back and think about what a podcast is. In my last episode, um, I talked about community and how important that is. In the first-ish episode, I talked about how portable uh a podcast is. A podcast doesn't always have to be RSS, though it is for me from a technology standpoint, it can be. I mean, for me, it should be because it's portable. If you can find another platform and you can pick up the pieces of your podcast and move it from one place to the next, and people can tune into it anywhere they want, okay, that's a podcast. It just happens to be RSS. Um, if another technology comes out that does that, or you've structured your podcast in a way that can be perfect. Um, and then to augment that experience, it's community. It is people who are you know listening to this, connected to this, and you have an interaction with that, uh, with that community. Because if you're only distributing to one platform and that platform goes down, you don't get access at access to it anymore. You're you're you have a community that you can talk to. This Spotify stuff is a perfect example of that. You might go, ah man, all of my listeners are on Spotify, but this whole like skippable ad thing is gonna impact my business, and I'm sure as hell not gonna buy ads now for Spotify so that you can't skip them. You have a community connected to your podcast. You can say, hey, we're not gonna be on, we're not gonna be on Spotify anymore. Here's why. Follow me on these platforms, right? And I think that's what makes a true podcast. And audio versus video. Like we can have that discussion, but go back to the last episodes uh for that stuff. So I wanted to bring that, I wanted to surface that in this episode. It's not the most informative, it's more of a uh soapbox moment, but not great things happening with Spotify, and not great things have ever really happened with with YouTube, other than, yeah, big distribution, great search. For the large part, it works. I don't really have any technical issues with YouTube. Nothing really drives me nuts about that platform. Um, and I just use it as like another social media platform. That's how I see it. I see it as another social media platform for this stuff. I don't see it as a home base, uh, particularly for um for the content that I like to produce, which is uh audio uh and uh podcasts and new newsletters and blogs and stuff like that.

Wrap Up And Links

SPEAKER_00 17:21

That's what I got for you today in episode three, four of uh Matt has a podcast about podcasting. You can find more uh at uh thepodcastsetup.com. Join that newsletter. That's where I write and pontificate about podcasting uh almost every week, a couple, every other week or so, uh, just like this podcast. All right, we'll see you in the next episode.