YouTube Just Got Harder, Spotify Still Doesn't Care

The School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson.

Podcasting since 2005. I am your award-winning Hall of Fame

podcast coach, Dave Jackson. Thanking you so much for tuning

in. If you're new to the show, this is why I help you plan,

launch, and grow your podcast. The website, courtesy of

podpage.com is at School of podcasting.com. Use the coupon

code Listener when you sign up for either a monthly, quarterly,

or yearly subscription. And today we're talking about two

big companies in if we could put up giant quotation marks

podcasting. And so the first one we're going to talk about is

YouTube, and then later we're going to talk about Spotify.

These are things you should know, and basically, people have

asked me over and over and over, Dave, why do you hate Spotify so

much? So today I'm going to answer that question. I love

them as a music service, but I really think they're one of the

last people you want to use as a media host, and I'll be

explaining why. But the first thing we're going to talk about

is the YouTube Partner Program, better known as YPP. And I don't

know, maybe because I'm kind of older. Every time I hear YPP,

this comes to my mind. You down with YPP? You down with YPP? You

down with YPP?

BP.

All right, enough of that nonsense. Yes, the

YouTube Partner Program, and what happened was they changed

the criteria, and I know everybody's like, "Yay, stats!

Yeah, so if you want to be in this program, this is where you

can kinda get paid, and so it used to be. This is what

changed. It used to be you needed 4000 watch hours. That's

now 8000 watch hours in the last year, and so people are like,

"That's going to make it harder. Yep, and this starts february 1

of 2027. So if you're at like 6000 watch hours, you might want

to make a sprint to February, and that's for new people. If

you're already on the YPP, then you don't have to really worry

about it because you're already in the program. So this is for

new people. Now the other thing they did, and this one just

seems crazy, is if to make money with shorts, you went from 10

million views in 90 days to 20 million views in 90 days, and

then once you get there, so you got your 20 million views in 90

days. To maintain that to earn money, you will basically need

to keep hitting 10 million views every 90 days on your shorts.

Now, another one, the subscriber threshold. You have to have 1000

subscribers for these, and that's to get paid. And keep in

mind, the payment threshold is $100. So we'll get to that in

just a second. Now they have this other tier of YPP where you

only have to have 500 subscribers. Now what that gets

you into is YouTube Shopping, which is their affiliate

program. You could have channel memberships, so you could start

a membership site on YouTube that remains at again 500

subscribers, but you do need to have 3,000 watch hours or 3

million short views. And again, if you're already in this, you

don't have to worry about the deadline. So that's the big

deal. Is they made it what appears to be harder for this,

and if you're already in the program, you'll notice when you

log in, you have to basically re up for the new program. So

everybody's like, ah, the the rich are just gonna get rich,

and I get that point because that's definitely what it sounds

like. But when we talk about the rich getting rich, there's a guy

named Adam Ivey, and he's a big. He he watches YouTube like a

hawk. I like him. Like the guys over at Think Media. There's a

bunch of people I like, and I get my kind of source. They are

my source for YouTube stuff. And he had this to say that I don't

think everybody is aware of.

Here's the part that should actually concern you too,

because it has nothing to do with this BS threshold that

everybody's talking about. 67% of creators on YouTube make less

than $10,000 a year. That's two-thirds of people. We have a

whole lot of people that are arguing and upset, fighting for

entry into a program where the majority of the people that are

already inside of it are making less than a part-time job.

That's not YouTube's fault, really, is it?

No, that means we're not charging enough. And

my buddy Steve Stewart, one of the co-founders of the Podcast

Editor Academy, super great guy. He said something the other day,

and I was like, "Dude, that is a bumper sticker. And he's like,

"Don't just sell your audience to sponsors. Instead," Sell

sponsors on how great your audience is, and if we can't

convince buyers how just amazing our audience is and what a great

fit it is for their product, then what are we going to do? We

can't hold a gun to their head and go, "No, you're going to pay

me more. And so that's where I get worried about advertising

and the whole CPM, which is basically means price per 1000

downloads. And Dan had this other great point as he was

going through this announcement from YouTube about the YPP.

Now I've watched multiple people in the last few

days put this up. I tell people don't worry about it. Right?

YouTube word for word wrote that they are broadening revenue

opportunities for creators rather than relying solely on

the ad revenue. Then they put a list of what they mean by it,

such as bonuses for YouTube shopping, incentives for brand

deals, earning boosts for starting and then growing

trends. It's crazy because YouTube just told 3 million

partnered creators that ads are not the model going forward.

That they're pushing money towards ecom, they're pushing

money towards partnerships to people that are actually

building something real with their channel, their brand,

their following, not just individual videos. They also

said they expect to pay creators more in 2027 than they did in

2026. So it's not like they're getting cheap. It's not like

they're reducing our percentages, they're just moving

money somewhere else and telling us exactly where it's going.

And I'll have a link to that video out at

schoolofpodcasting.com/1049. And that doesn't mean I'm poo-pooing

YouTube. YouTube may not be a way to make money from

advertising. It's a great way to make money, if you have your own

products and services, take that traffic and monetize that. But

more reports are coming out over and over and over. This one from

Sounds Profitable called the Podcast Atlas, and on slide 23,

it says clips led me to watch a specific episode, so we're not

really talking about YouTube videos. We're talking about

clips that 30% often or always it leads people to a specific

episode, or if you go up to at least sometimes that's 81% They

had another question: Clips lead me to become a regular listener

again, 33% a little higher, often or always, and 84% maybe

sometimes. So it appears that shorts, at least, are some of

the time leading people to your show. And now, when they say the

show, that doesn't mean your audio. They didn't. I have to go

back and look at the rest of the report. But it is a discovery

tool if you have the time, if you have the equipment, if you

have the budget, and if you have the desire to be on YouTube.

I've always said if you don't want to be on YouTube, don't.

The podcast police are not going to come knocking on your door

and you know drag you away because you're not on YouTube. I

my biggest worry, as always, is the fact that if you try to add

YouTube and it's too much of a lift, instead of getting rid of

just the video portion, you get rid of your whole podcast. That

would be a tragedy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just want to again.

A lot of this is just to help you set expectations. I

currently have 3523 subscribers, and if you're new to YouTube,

you're like, oh, so you have 3000 views on all of your

videos. Nope. My last one that came out August 7, how to make

your podcast stand out? Had 41. You've recorded 10 episodes, so

why haven't you published any? Had 30. Now these have been out

since that one's been out since july 28. What is your website

about? Came out on july 24. That had 42 plays. You know, so if I

go down to if I look at the live items, I know I'm going to have

more than that because we have probably 30 people watching.

Yeah, that at 101. But remember, I have 3,500 and change

followers or subscribers. So these all have over 100, but

it's still nowhere near the 3,000 people that have followed

my show, so just when you see those numbers, the number that

really counts is how many views did you get and how far did they

watch. And you might be saying, "No, actually, Dave, the number

that counts is how much money did you make on those? I make,

and I did the math somewhere around $2.49 per 1000 views. So,

like on august 1, I was talking about going from being a

recorded show to live. We had 115 views on that video, and I

made 25 cents. So with this in mind, the money you make from

YouTube ads is icing on the cake. Do not plan your grocery

budget on the money you're earning from ads on YouTube.

Now, in just a second, we're going to have some AI children

come and join us as I tell them the story of Spotify. Yeah,

yeah, yeah. The school of podcasting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

someone's at the door. Hey, kids. Hi,

mr. Davi. Hi, mr. Dave. Hey,

mr. Dave. Tell us about Spotify. I

don't know. Please,

please, please.

All right. All right. So, in May of 2015,

Spotify, which is a great music app decided that they wanted to

get into podcasting. Now, instead of rolling it out to

everyone, they decided to find a few close friends that they

called partners, and they said this is about a growth

opportunity, not monetization. And they went out, and companies

like Libsyn and Blueberry, they were going to be partners, and

the only way to get into Spotify was to go through their

partners.

So they were making friends. That's nice.

Well, it was nice, and the partners were

saying, "Hey, we host media files. We'll just host the media

files here, and then we can put the content into your music app.

And Spotify was like, nope, we want to host the media files

because we don't trust you.

Why didn't they listen? That seems rude.

Yeah, it does seem weird, doesn't it? But all

those companies, all their partners, went back to their

engineers, and everyone had to design a special interface just

to tie into Spotify, it took a lot of time and it was expensive

for those companies to pay all the engineers. And then, after

everything was in place for a little bit and it was working,

Spotify changed their mind.

So, what happened to all the money you spent? You

mean it was all gone and you had nothing to show for it? Oh my!

Oh my is right, but wait, there was more. In

2019, Spotify bought a company called Anchor for 150 million

dollars, and what was interesting is now instead of

having the partners, they were in direct competition, and the

new competition was free.

Wait, why would they do that? That's not very nice.

And another thing that's not very nice is now

everybody was making these free podcasts, and most of them

sounded like this. Hey, is this thing? Is it? I don't know. The

lights are blinking, and they were there forever, and it was

just making all sorts of podcasts litter all over the

place. The other thing they did that seemed so nice is they

would ask people, "Would you like me to submit your show to

Apple for you? And most of these unsuspecting people said, "Sure,

that sounds great. They then found out later that there were

additional stats that you could get from Apple Podcast, but you

couldn't see them because your show wasn't under your Apple ID.

It was under Spotify's. Yeah, and when the people found this

out, they got very upset. But instead of yelling at Spotify,

they yelled at other podcast consultants. Poor

mr. Dave.

Yeah, there was a big mess that myself and other

podcast consultants didn't make, but we got to clean it up. Then,

in 2021, they bought a company called Wooshka, and Wooshka's

just fun to say, isn't

it? Whooshka,

Whooska,

and they had already bought a company called

Megaphone in 2020, and they just rolled wushka into megaphone,

and they had this great feature where radio stations could take

their broadcasts and turn them into podcast, and it was super

easy. And then Spotify shut it down.

But what about all the people who were using it?

Oh well, never mind those people because in

2021 Spotify bought a company called Betty Labs because there

was this new thing called Clubhouse and everybody was

going crazy and so they bought Betty Labs because they're gonna

follow the bandwagon and get into this live platform that

became Green Room.

Well, that sounds fun.

Well, and then shortly thereafter, they

announced the new era of podcast monetization. They announced

paid subscriptions, the open access platform, which is kind

of funny because they're not always the most open platform,

and they announced the Spotify Audience Network for creators.

Now, mid 2021, that green room project that they bought, well,

it launched along with the Creator Fund. Yep, the Spotify's

Clubhouse competitor went live, and the Creator Fund. It's

announced to pay live audio creators, though the payment

mechanic. They weren't really disclosed.

Wait, so how do you get paid?

Oh, little Teddy, don't worry about this because

shortly thereafter they announced Music Plus Talk. They

said you could play music in your podcast. Well, easy. There

was some little bit more to that. It was you could play

music in your podcast, but the only people that could hear it

were on the Spotify app, not on the website. Oh, and only if

they were a paying subscriber to Spotify, and only after they

listened to the episode. But that's all right, kids. Wait, in

September of 2021, they announced that the future of

podcasting is interactive, and they launched Q and A's and

polls.

Wait, so how do you get paid?

Oh, Teddy, don't worry about this because they're

going to save a lot of money in January 2022. What did they do?

They invested a lot of money a couple years ago in a thing

called Studio Four, and they decided they were going to shut

it down and lay off everyone who worked there.

But what about all the people who were using

it? Kids are so cute. But here's the good news:

that green room thing that really wasn't working very well,

and nobody really left, you know, Clubhouse to start using

it. They figured it out. They had the wrong name, and they

decided to call it Spotify Live, and Spotify also confirmed that

that creator fund never ultimately launched. Apparently,

and they just decided to you know shut that down too.

Wait, so how do you get paid?

Oh, Teddy, you're so funny. Then in March of 2023,

since they rebranded the green room. Hey, let's rebrand Anchor

because that'll make it a whole lot better. So they renamed it

Spotify for podcasters, and then in April of 2023, Spotify Live,

that thing that they had just rebranded. Yep, they shut it

down entirely after two years of the original Green Room launch.

But what about all the people who were using it?

Oh, little Jaina, they had other things to work on

like that. Great, hey, you can play music in your podcast

thing-the music talk. That, along with the anchor app, yeah,

let's ditch those two. We'll just shut them down and tell

everyone to go to Riverside.

But what about all the people who are using it?

I don't know, little Jaina. Sure, looks like

they just don't care because also in July of 2024, you know

how everything was going to be interactive. Yeah, they shut

down the Q&A and polls and they replaced them with comments.

But what about all the people who were using it?

Oh, the innocence of a child! And of course, along

the way, they changed Spotify for podcasters to Spotify for

creators because you know that podcast word has things to do

with RSS and sure they're an open platform, but they kind of

hate RSS because it sends people away from the Spotify app, which

is where Spotify always wants everyone to go. Case in point:

if you use them as a host and upload your video, the video is

only available on Spotify. The transcripts that they make only

appear on Spotify. This is why myself and many others refer to

Spotify as the walled garden. That and the fact that when they

were at Podcast Movement, they had a giant booth, and when you

went to walk into the booth, that's right, you needed an

appointment. So even their booth is a walled garden. But that

leads

us to 2026.

Well, they've come out with a button that lets

you skip ads. Now, from what I've seen, I'm only seeing this

in video, but the fun part of this is Spotify is selling

advertisements, so they're making money on one side of it,

and this skip ahead button is only available for premium

members, and so they're making money on that, and they're

getting paid by the the advertisers to get their ad in

front of their audience, and then they're getting paid

because everybody thinks there's too many ads. Well, that's a

that's a generalization. A lot of people feel there are too

many ads, like me, and they then give you a button to skip by it.

So that's almost fraud to the advertiser. And the difference

between this and the skip ahead button on YouTube is on YouTube,

yes, the advertiser still kind of getting the short end of the

stick, but the creator is still getting paid through the YPP

program. And I forgot to put in there-I forget what year it was,

maybe a year or two ago. Spotify added audiobook. Which sounds

great, except in the app, there's no way to make a

bookmark. Hello, and one of the benefits we'll put in giant

quotation marks for Spotify is by having the audio books with

music. They can bundle them together, and it's hard to

believe they found a way to do this, but by bundling the audio

book and the music together, they are paying the musicians

even less. You suck.

So, mr. Dave, why in the world do people use Spotify

to host their shows?

Wow, you guys are still here. Well, that's a

really good question.

Buzzsprout has free hosting for 90 days.

That's right.

Red Circle has a free plan.

Yep, that's true as well. As does RSS.com. Now,

in general, I like to pay for my hosting. Why? Because then you

have leverage with their support. If they're not treating

you right, you can say, "Look, you need to fix this because if

you're paying, if you're not paying, what are you going to

do? All right, that's it. I'm not going to not pay you

anymore. You don't have any leverage. Plus, pay the worker

his wage. This person in this company is doing all the things

to make your podcast possible. Say thank you by giving them a

small amount of money every month, and that, my friend, is

just some of the reasons why I really dislike Spotify as a

media host. Oh, just one more thing: Why would they announce

things that they don't build or that they don't do? Because when

they announced the green room launch, it boosted their stock

by 60 million, the the Spotify market cap. So they made money

off a promise that was never fulfilled. Thanks for dropping

by, AI children.

Bye, mr. Dave. Bye, mr. Dave. Bye, mr.

Dave. Bye,

mr. Dave. Bye, mr. Dave.

We'll see you later. And if you're thinking

still, I'm not sure why. But if you were thinking, but Dave,

Spotify is free, and I only need 1000 downloads a month to get

into their program, RSS is also free, and you only need 10

downloads in the last 30 days. I'm just giving you the

knowledge. That's really the whole point of this episode. Is

just so you know that look, YouTube may not be the way to

monetize, but it's a great tool to maybe help people find you.

Spotify, you now know why I'm not a big fan of them as a

podcast hosting service. I'm not a big fan of them as an audio

book either. Hello, let me make a bookmark. So, so many people

use them, and I say stuff all the time, and people ask why.

Now you know, and the last thing I thought I would put in here is

my buddy Ray Ortega. We used to do the podcasters roundtable

with Daniel J. Lewis from the Audacity to Podcast, and he put

out a quick little two-minute video that I just thought I

would play because it's going to answer the question: What's a

podcast?

What's a podcast, and why the heck am I still asking

this question almost 20 years after I started podcasting? The

first reason is I finally came up with the absolute shortest

definition possible, and two, it's still important for you as

a creator to know the difference. So first off, what's

the most classic definition of Of a podcast, a podcast is a

series of episodic audio or video content that is

downloadable on demand via an RSS feed. But let's strip away

every single word that is not necessary in order to absolutely

define what a podcast is. First of all, does a podcast have to

be a series? No. You could still have a podcast, and it's not a

series. Sort of redundantly, does it need to be episodic? No.

You could have one episode is about the history of World War

II. The next episode could be what is a podcast. Neither of

those necessarily build on top of each other, but they are two

episodes inside a feed. Does it need to be audio or video, yes,

and it could also include a PDF and ePublication.

All right, I got to jump in there, Ray, to save

you because James Cridlin will hunt you down and thwart you. It

turns out Apple doesn't play PDFs and EPubs anymore, so

that's not entirely true. It was true in the early days, and

there may be other apps that still do that, but for the most

part, nobody's putting a PDF in a podcast. So let's get back to

Ray.

Doesn't need to be downloadable on demand. Yes, but

those are redundant to our final factor RSS feed. An RSS feed is

built and specifically for podcasts so that when a new

episode comes out, it is downloaded. Downloaded

automatically in the background, and of course you can stream it

at any time you want. So, what is the absolute most basic,

simple definition of a podcast? A podcast is an RSS feed with

audio or video content. That's it. Or if you prefer, audio or

video content inside an RSS feed. I think an RSS feed with

audio or video is probably the shortest and most accurate,

since the audio and video is a lesser included of the RSS feed

in order to be a podcast. But that's super nitpicky, and I'm

just trying to decide which way I like to say it. But that's it.

That's the shortest possible definition of what a podcast is,

which leads to the second reason I'm still talking about this,

and if you want to see the end of that video,

you got to go to the show notes, schoolof podcasting.com/ 1049,

or just look for Ray Ortega on YouTube. So yeah, again, the

only reason I even worry about this is it messes up the stats

when you go and look and it you see a report that shows YouTube

videos and then podcast videos, and I'm like, how are we telling

those two apart? Because it seems very, very blurry. So

that's the only reason I care. If you're going to be at the

Empowered Podcasting Conference next week and you see a guy with

a black jacket and a pod page shirt, trip him and say hello

because that's me, and I'm always happy to meet my

listeners. I will probably ask you about why you listen to this

show so I can make it better for you. And if you're not going to

be at the Empowered Podcasting Conference and would like to

chime in, simply go to schoolofpodcasting.com/slash

con. I'm Dave Jackson. I've been helping podcasters for over 20

years. I can't wait to see what we're gonna do together. And

until next week, take care. God bless. Class

is dismissed.

And he's a YouTuber that talks about

YouTube. His name is Dan Ivy, and his name is not Dan Ivy.

It's okay. It's Adam. Oops. And he's a nose and then knee. Yeah,

easy for me to say, oh man! And he's a no-nonsense kind of guy.

His name is Adam Ivory. It is not Adam Ivory. It is Adam Ivey.

Okay, and his name is Adam Iveney. It is not. What is the

deal with my mouth, Adam Ivey? Adam Ivey. Adam Ivey. Adam Ivey.

Adam Ivey.

Yeah.