Spotify and Stripe sign podcast monetisation deal

Spotify has partnered with financial payment platform Stripe to help podcasters accept payments, and launch recurring revenue streams.

Podcasts have undergone something of a renewal in recent years, and like other digital channels received a boost from the global work from home phenomena ushered in by the pandemic.

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Getting a handle on the scale of the global market is hard. PWC and the IAB estimate US podcast revenues will hit $US2B in 2023. Australian revenues are much smaller. in 2020, Deloitte estimated the size of the local market at just $47M.

Spotify recently launched Podcast Subscriptions, a service it says enables podcasters to offer paid monthly content. Stripe provided the payment infrastructure for Podcast Subscriptions, enabling Spotify to expand the feature to support dozens of currencies for thousands of creators across more than countries. 

With Stripe, creators can accept payments from fans anywhere in the world, in their preferred currency. For example, a podcaster in Paris can now receive their payouts in Euros, even if their fans are paying for their monthly subscriptions in dollars from Hong Kong.

A spokesperson for Spotify said the company was able to streamline both payment acceptance and identity verification for its podcasters by using Stripe Connect. When new podcasters sign up with Spotify, Stripe handles the onboarding requirements for them to get paid.  

In partnering with Stripe to launch Podcast Subscriptions, Spotify has also used a number of other Stripe products including Stripe Billing, Stripe Invoicing, and Stripe Radar. 

Michael Mignano, Global Head of Talk Verticals, Spotify said Spotify Podcast Subscriptions make it easy for creators to establish and manage an important new revenue stream and for listeners to seamlessly subscribe to content that they enjoy.

Meanwhile, Mike Clayville, Chief Revenue Officer at Stripe said, “Platforms like Spotify are making it easier for creators to quickly generate recurring revenue from the thing they love doing the most: sharing their stories.”

The Spotify deals adds to other similar relationships for Stripe, including those with Clubhouse, Medium, Patreon, Substack, TikTok and Twitter.

Stripe claims that creators on just 50 Stripe-powered platforms have earned nearly $10 billion in revenue, while the popularity of long-form storytelling has skyrocketed.