Spotify started pouring a whole lot of money into the podcasting space in 2019, making headlines by purchasing entire production studios and signing lucrative exclusivity deals with Joe Rogan, among others. The intention was to draw in paying subscribers via desirable long-form content, but now that experiment may be winding down, as reports indicate that the streamer is dropping the paywall for a number of high-profile podcasts.
The impacted podcasts all come from Gimlet Media, a studio that Spotify purchased during its 2019 spending spree for $230 million, as reported by . Spotify confirmed this move but hasn’t indicated which Gimlet podcasts are moving to a free-to-stream model, aside from the hit . Gimlet produces podcasts like and . The company further partnered with the streaming giant to create a host of Spotify Originals like and
This not only eliminates the subscription-based paywall for Spotify listeners but opens up podcasts to be shared on other platforms. The end result should be more choices for consumers.
“Given our position as the leading global podcast platform, we are expanding our windowing strategies to increase the audiences and ad sales potential of our shows,” a spokesperson for Spotify told . “In this case, we’re pursuing broad distribution for some of our original podcasts like This will be done on a case-by-case basis and over time.”
As indicated above, the reasoning here involves expanding ad sales. If a podcast is tied to one subscription-based platform, that narrows the listenership which, in turn, reduces the demand for ad placement. This move does not necessarily spell the end of podcasts as a driving force behind Spotify subscriptions, as the company already allowed some established Gimlet shows to be widely distributed after the 2019 acquisition. This could be just another experiment as Spotify looks for the perfect marriage between subscriber growth and ad revenue.