Trending News! 15 things you need to know about Spotify & Apple Podcast Subscriptions! 🎧
Both companies just dropped major Podcast Subscription news!
WELCOME to $5.vc, your source of differentiated startup intel!
* We break down the new market indicators & behavioral consumer trends we're tracking, then figure out the unlock to growth & revenue.
** Follow our new Twitter for upcoming OPEN DMs / Q&As. 👍
ICYMI in the last 10 weeks we covered:
LinkedIn drops the ball, Link-In-Bio is now here!
Hyper-Casual Social Casino SMS Text Gaming is FIRE!
Post-Purchase Branded Customer Experiences prints money!
NFT-based Artwork AND Fractional Investing!
Twitch for Hosted Live-Streaming TV!
THIS WEEK’S DOPE NEW STARTUP IDEA COVERS:
* Apple + Spotify + Podcasts + Paid Subscriptions 🔥
WHAT WE KNOW:
* The Market Indicators & Behavioral Consumer Trends we've identified.
>> [ apple just changed the podcast game! ]
Apple leads the next chapter of podcasting with Apple Podcasts Subscriptions
- thanks apple! https://twitter.com/apple
Apple today unveiled Apple Podcasts Subscriptions, a global marketplace for listeners to discover premium subscriptions offered by their favourite creators alongside millions of free shows on Apple Podcasts.
Also next month, listeners will be able to discover channels, which are groups of shows curated by creators with unique titles, descriptions, and artwork. Just as they can with shows, listeners will be able to browse free channels, which make it easy to find more shows from their favourite creators, as well as paid channels and channels that provide additional benefits for subscribers.
The new Smart Play button helps listeners automatically start episodic shows from the latest episode and serialised shows from the beginning of each series. Listeners can also now save individual episodes, which are downloaded for offline playback, making it easy to bookmark podcasts to listen to later from Library.
>> [ apple has dope features but wants is cut! ]
Apple Podcasts Subscriptions is launched
- thanks podnews! https://twitter.com/Podnews
Apple Podcasts will take a 30% commission of the subscription price for a subscriber’s first year, dropping to 15% for additional years.
As a podcaster, if you want to list Freemium or Paid podcasts, there’s also a US $19.99/year fee.
There is no exclusivity clause: so you can make your show available for subscription on other platforms as well, if you choose to, and assuming they don’t have exclusivity themselves.
Want to offer a free trial? Sure, you can do that (there are a set of durations offered by Apple).
Paid podcasts are hosted by Apple, not by your podcast host.
Podcasters can set pricing, and availability, by country. Apple Podcasts is available in 170 territories.
>> [ spotify ups its podcast game just days later! ]
Spotify Ushers In New Era of Podcast Monetization With New Tools for All Creators
- thanks spotify! https://twitter.com/spotifynews
Today, we’re rolling out a paid subscription platform for podcasters that gives them maximized revenue, wide reach, and discoverability. The program begins rolling out in the U.S. today and will expand internationally in the coming months.
This feature will be available to creators through Anchor, allowing podcasters to mark episodes as subscriber-only and publish them to Spotify and other podcast-listening platforms.
For the next two years, this program will come at no cost to the creator, meaning that participating creators receive 100% of their subscriber revenues (excluding payment transaction fees). Starting in 2023, we plan to introduce a competitive 5% fee for access to this tool.
>> [ spotify and facebook team up in 27 markets! ]
Facebook adds a podcast player in its app, powered by Spotify
- thanks james! https://twitter.com/JamesCridland
Today, Spotify and Facebook are introducing a new miniplayer experience that allows listeners to enjoy music and podcasts from Spotify directly within Facebook on iOS and Android, without switching between apps.
Driven by social discovery, Spotify say that the miniplayer experience will improve how users share and engage with songs and podcast episodes–all without having to leave the Facebook app.
The new integration is rolling out in 27 markets - Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, South Africa, Thailand, Uruguay, and USA.
THE DOPE IDEA:
* Distilling the market indicators & consumer tailwinds into a dope idea.
** This week we revisit Pod Tarts, a dope idea pulled straight out of the Archive, where we tackled: Podcasts + Discovery + Short-form Content 🔥 — copied below in its entirety.
Podcasting is getting BIG.
Most notably, Spotify is investing hundreds of millions of dollars to tap into its upside potential — and with its most recent acquisition of Megaphone at $235 M is now at a grand total of $935 M in total investments since 2019. But podcast discovery is still in its infancy — Shuffle is definitely one way to go — but there is a fantastic opportunity to come at this from the perspective of curation.
PodcastHosting.org reports that as of January 2021 there are over 1,750,000 podcasts and over 43 million episodes. (ref.)
The play here would be to become the go to platform for one specific genre of podcasting content — in short, to become the expert resource in that category. To explain this concept further, let’s use the example of sports.
At a high-level, attempting to cover all content even in a single sport would be a big ask, much less all sports that are being played at a national level — in this example, we’ll focus in on one specific sport, American Football.
High-level considerations should include:
What organizations to cover? (The NFL? Focus in on the AFC or NFC? College Football? Do all the various conferences/geographies come into play? etc.)
What kind of content? (Pre, Post, and Game coverage? Training Pre & Post Season? Gossip outside the game? What about Sports Betting? etc.)
What type of audience to build? (Football diehards & fanatics only? Sports fans in general? Student athletes? Aspiring pro athletes? Gamblers? etc.)
Opportunities around content curation & distribution:
As mentioned, leveraging TikTok, Twitter, or other social media channels is a great entry level strategy. Let’s not forget, right now Amazon roll-up companies like Thrasio, which just raised another $500 M, has acquired near 100 Amazon Businesses since 2018 (ref.) — but long before this, media companies had started rolling-up businesses, making investments, and/or acquiring brand-relatable social media channels across Instagram, FB, Twitter, and more.
Another good direction to go in would be to create a micro-podcast series — literally a podcast about all the other podcasts in a specific niche. Essentially, taking all the best 15 second highlights, quotes, and outtakes from the top 10 podcasts from said niche in a given week — and assembling that into a quick 2 1/2 minute micro-podcast episode.
The most ambitious thing to do here would be to start from scratch and create an interest-driven site or app that focused exclusively on one particular topic. What makes this sort of endeavor interesting is all the flexibility that comes with owning & operating an independent platform. Using the aforementioned American Football example above — if the niche is NFL Gambling Podcasts, then adding a sports betting calculator, a winnings leaderboard, or even a hyper-casual mini football game would all drive deeper user-engagement across the entire platform.
That all said, with so much new podcasting content that is coming into the fray and being generated everyday — anyone that can do something to help with its curation would be in a fantastic position to benefit.