Spotify Launches Podcast Subscriptions and Raises All Plan Prices

• Spotify has a plan to lure in more podcast creators, giving them 100% of the subscription amounts for two years.
• After that, the streaming giant will only keep 5% of the generated subscription revenues.
• The service will also introduce some pricing hikes, mostly affecting Europe-based users.

Spotify is looking to give Apple some competition in the podcasts space, so the popular music streaming platform is launching a paid-subscription podcasts program. The antagonistic element comes from the fact that creators are promised to keep 100% of the subscription fees in the first two years. After that period has passed, Spotify will introduce a cut of 5% in the subscription revenues, which is still pretty low in the field.

The podcast creators will be given the freedom to select price tiers for subscriptions, but there will be three fixed categories, set at $2.99, $4.99, and $7.99 per month. Spotify’s head of podcaster services and tools, Michael Mignano, stated that they felt that these are strong price points based on the platform’s market research, so it would be preferable to give these options instead of putting the burden to the creators. Moreover, he added that creators wouldn’t be bound by any form of exclusivity. Spotify will be a welcoming place for whoever feels like joining, and that’s it.

Spotify’s expansion plans and aspirations to expand to the podcast space go as far back as February 2019, when it acquired ‘Anchor,’ a free podcast creation platform that is very beginner-friendly. Anchor users have already launched over a million new shows on Spotify by the beginning of 2020. Until the end of the year, the number had grown to 2.2 million podcasts, indicative of how “hot” the space is.

In other Spotify news, the music streaming platform is planning to introduce some price hikes that will affect mainly EU-based users. More specifically, the “Student” and “Duo” plans will see an increase of one EUR per month, while the “Family” plan will jump from €14.99 to €17.99 per month.

In the UK, Spotify “Student” is increasing from £4.99 to £5.99 per month, while Duo will also go up by a pound. The “Family” plan will be hiked by two pounds, though, going from £14.99 to £16.99 a month. And finally, in the United States, subscribers will only see a hike on the “Family” plan, which will go up by a dollar, from $14.99 to $15.99 per month.