Podcasters make abysmal returns today. If Spotify can pay them more than they make today while offering listeners an ad-free experience, that seems like a win-win-win.

I don't really think that's true. If you have a popular podcast like ATP, based on their ad rates, they're pulling in well into the six figures, for each host. Obviously that took years and years of work and an existing reputation, but it's not impossible.

I'll definitely emphasize the "if" in "if Spotify can pay them more" - I don't know what share of podcasts, if any, could be monetized more effectively through a paid subscription platform like Spotify than through ads. ATP is about the last podcast I'd expect to be in that boat because their subscribers are such high-value advertising targets, so I don't think they're representative.

For a generic or small following podcast, this could be a game changer. For the established or top 10 podcasts in a genre, it won't sway them from being on as many platforms as possible while directing listeners to their merch/patreon/etc.

Spotify going into podcasts will be like uber in the early 2010s, it'll make a handful of people decent returns while they burn through their cash hoping for dominance. If they achieve dominance they'll start the squeeze, if they don't they'll just dump the market.

What makes you say ad-free? Not even paying customers get ad-free podcasts on Spotify.

Wishful thinking, mostly. But Spotify seems like the most likely path to non-ad-based monetization of the “bottom 90%” of podcasts, despite the fact that Spotify isn’t currently going down that path.

I'd pay a higher subscription price if Spotify could get me my podcasts without ads.

Most podcasts do ad reads in the show, and that's usually how they make their money.

And which is not something Spotify will change. Did you read the article? It goes into detail about that, the only thing that would probably change here is that the ads won't be read by podcasters anymore but inserted by Spotify ad-tech. They can't pay podcasters without getting a lot more money than they get from current subscriptions, they are still loosing money on their music subscription service. That's the entire point of their podcast pivot. Make more money. They have no money to hand out to podcasters. Podcasts won't be ad-free on Spotify, no matter if you're paying or not.

It's been a huge benefit to consumers though. I can listen to more music than I can think of, and the price of it is almost nothing.

Stealing music is also GREAT from the consumer perspective, and the artist makes approximately as much money as they do from a Spotify stream.

Yes, but with the rise of streaming, artists have changed where they get their revenue from. Gig tickets feel far more expensive now, but this way people are able to legally listen to and discover SO much more music.

Spotify pays more per listen than radio or YouTube.

That still sounds like a bad model for paying artists. If I sign up for Spotify and only listen to a few artists I'm fond of, those artists get next to nothing of my subscription fees. Instead I'm subsidizing the payouts to artists like Drake. Who I have nothing against, I'm just not listening to his work.

I'm pretty sure Spotify does pay artists a fraction of the subscription revenue, based on the number of listens relative to other artists.

That’s the problem. The subscription fees should go towards what one listens not average over all artists or some other kind of formula spotify came up with. This could be like micropayemnts and i think would change the dynamics quite a bit

I've always wondered why it isn't done like this. It doesn't seem like it would make a difference to Spotify. Is it the record label forcing the current model?

Exactly. People complain how little it pays but forget that they're just a drop in the stream of how much people are listening to.

The best case to expect is an average Spotify user listens to about 500 songs a month (25 hours) and has an ARPU of about $5 (https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/31/spotify-108-million/). There cannot possibly be more than $0.01 (1c) per play available to pay the artists. Spotify paying out 37% of that actually looks pretty good.

That's as high as the users will go, it seems; the equilibrium point against piracy or other music services.

Do they actually pay per listen? I thought they used one of those bullshit, gameable-by-default algorithms of your song streamed relative to all music streamed on the platform.

And a third Tidal and a fraction of album sales. They are the worst-paying of the major music streaming services.

Tidal, the one that was having financial troubles right?

And who buys albums nowadays? I made some digital download purchases, but now they don't make much sense.

Smaller artists get paid less on Spotify but bigger artists get paid more (not sure about the details)

I buy albums, at concerts and online, and I tend to prefer artists who can actually put together a whole album of music worth listening to. I have little patience for Spotify's exploitative pricing model.

> They are the worst-paying of the major music streaming services.

Per play, yes, not in total. But they compensate by getting artists a lot more plays than others.

But significantly less than CD sales used to.

> Spotify managed to make musicians abismimal returns

I think that's very subjective. Spotify pays musicians the equivalent of what a user would actually pay the musician, which is basically nothing. We are to blame. As OP said:

> Our unwillingness to support content creators is what ruins things and puts everything behind an explicit paywall.

That's 100% true with most users. It has to be a very small % of users that will actually go out and purchase music that doesn't exist on Spotify for free/apart of their subscription. At the end of the day, the users just don't want to support content creators. Spotify isn't to blame for that.

> Spotify managed to make musicians abismimal returns, why would it work any differently for podcasts?

There needs to be some reason for podcasts to move from where they are currently to Spotify. That reason is generally more listeners, more money or both.

I can't imagine my favorite podcasts taking spotify revenue seriously unless spotify also moves in on patreon.