Spotify vs. YouTube | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Okay, really quickly because Spotify did come up. We're almost out of time. I want to hit this really fast though. This is from Digital Music Digital Music News dot Com again, another one of my favorite sites for this stuff. Spotify has invested more than one billion dollars on podcasting. I think most of that money went to Joe Rogan. So why can't it be YouTube? This is interesting to me. And by the way, you can find this show on Spotify. We uploaded to Spotify, it's on YouTube, et cetera. But it's But I'm not making any you know.

0:29 I mean, Spotify hasn't given me a big contract. They didn't backup brinkstruck up to my home like they did Joe Rogan. But anyway, but I'm not bitter. YouTube continues to steamroll Spotify in the podcasting game, despite the latter's billion dollar investment in the medium over the last few years. By the way, off the top of my head, my gut reaction, people really like the video component rather than just listening to audio more and more so all the time Spotify, it's just audio YouTube. You can watch the video, it says here.

0:58 YouTube has, unsurprised, been the dominating force in the video content space for years, but it's also the leader in the podcast space in a major way. New data from Edison Research shows the Google owned platform has now overtaken Spotify in the UK as the most popular space for video podcast consumption. According to the data, twenty nine percent of weekly British podcast listeners age fifteen plus chose YouTube as the service they most use to consume podcasts, notably twenty eight percent to Spotify.

1:33 So it's still fairly not connected by the way all the podcasts I listen to, I just go to YouTube. That's my you know, so I get it, says here. However, the new still comes as a significant blow to Spotify, which has been investing millions in its podcasting and video infrastructure over the past several years. That includes a partnership with Netflix and buying up podcasting platforms like The Ringer, Grimlet, media anchor Parcast and the advertising publishing infrastructure network Megaphone. Spotify has also secured exclusivity deals with big names in the podcasting space, which have included Joe Rogan I'm not going to get in all the numbers, Alex Cooper, Prince Harry and Megan markle I guess.

2:18 If you're an anglophile, you want that content, I guess. But Spotify founder and then CEO Daniel Eck noted that the company's expensive deals were a drag on margins, which led to a pivot and strategy and resulted in cost cutting and a slew of canceled shows and layoffs that also put the kyash on Spotify's strategy of cutting exclusive deals with big name podcasters. By late twenty twenty four, YouTube was already the go to destination for podcasts, at least for the majority of Americans, according to Edison.

2:51 In October of that year, Edison reported that thirty one percent of weekly podcast listeners aged thirteen and up chose YouTube as the service they most listen to for podcasts. Edison noted quote a few years ago, YouTube might have seemed like an unlikely platform for podcasts, but as the world of podcasting evolves, many podcasters have embraced video podcasting, recording their shows in both audio and video formats. Not only can podcast consumers listen to episodes, but they can also watch video versions of their favorite shows.

3:22 As video and audio content continue to overlap, creators and listeners are benefiting from more dynamic and engaging experiences just a little more Here, it says, despite injecting over a billion dollars into podcasting, Spotify remains out of disadvantages. Podcasting continues to evolve into a video forward format. While Spotify has been investing in expanding into the format, it's difficultiple users who are already used consuming video content on YouTube. Many users have also expressed this interest in the increase in video content on Spotify, which they say they use and want to continue using only to listen to music.

4:05 By the way, note about that,

4:09 I apparently am so disinterested myself in Spotify's video content that I forgot if you notice, if you were listening carefully, you might have caught my mistake. I was talking about Spotify like there's no video on Spotify. There is video on Spotify. I just forget that it's there. I think of Spotify as audio. I don't think of Spotify for video. I think of YouTube for video. And I think that's true for a lot of people, and I think that's part of Spotify's problem. We did talk on the show recently.

4:38 It was a couple of weeks ago. I think about how Spotify is ramping up there, and it's not mentioned in this article, and I'm almost surprised, but I guess they wanted to focus on the podcast element with the article. But Spotify is beginning to ramp up for having for competing directly with YouTube. As far as music videos, Spotify wants to have music videos, and maybe they already have some. I'm not sure. Again, I haven't looked, but they want to, you know, because usually if you're looking for a music video, you're going to go to YouTube.

5:07 Spotify wants to really enhance that component, that part and parcel of Spotify streaming platform music videos and live performances of the artists that they have on their platform. So there's also that part of their strategy. But clearly they've invested. Again, I think Joe Rogan got most of that money, but they've invested enormous amounts enormous amounts of money in podcasting, and it doesn't seem at least in terms of competing with YouTube, it doesn't seem to be paying off for them,