Spotify Will Give Podcasters Their Subscribers’ Contact Details

Spotify announces plans to broaden the number of people who can offer subscription podcasts and have their shows play on its service. The streaming platform has been testing its new podcast subscriptions in the US since earlier in the year with more than 100 shows. Today, the company announced that all US-based podcasters can use Anchor, its podcast creation and distribution platform, to sell subscriptions for exclusive episodes that’ll be available both through a private RSS feed and within the Spotify app, which doesn’t otherwise support private shows over RSS. The music streaming platform earlier announced it will spend $1 billion between now and April 21, 2026, to repurchase its own shares

The company explained this through a blog post, “We understand that creators want to own their relationships with listeners, and we intend to empower that.” The streaming service is also giving those podcasters more pricing options – up to 20 amounts they can charge their listeners – as well as “the ability for creators to download a list of contact addresses for their subscribers so they can further engage with their subscriber bases and offer even more benefits.” This means Podcasters can stay in touch with their group and also take that list elsewhere if they ever leave Anchor. However, listeners have to opt-in first.

Spotify also announced that it plans to expand the Podcast Subscriptions program to international users starting September 15 of this year. As it has been since the subscription product first launched in April, Spotify won’t be taking a cut of revenue until 2023. Spotify said its model is built to maximize revenue for creators, who will receive 100% of subscription revenue minus payment processing fees until when the company plans to implement a 5% fee on subscription revenue. Although there’s still no button to subscribe to shows directly inside Spotify, though, meaning that if a listener wants to subscribe to an Anchor podcast, they’ll have to navigate to an external website, likely through a link in a show’s notes, to do so. This means podcasters have to continue to shout out where listeners can find the link to subscribe, which adds friction to the process.

Consequently, the new direction by Spotify may not go down well with music artists and the music industry. If podcasters can own their relationship with listeners on Spotify, why can’t artists? who has long coveted this kind of data from Spotify and other streaming services? Another way to look at this, listening to an artist on Spotify, or even following them, does not constitute consent to be added to their mailing list. Spotify is right to be thoughtful about what customer data it shares with third parties on privacy grounds, although that wouldn’t stop it – for example – adding a ‘join this artist’s mailing list’ button option for profiles. Also, note that a podcaster doesn’t get someone’s contact details if they just listen to or follow their show: it’s only if they pay to subscribe to it. That’s a tier (or level of engagement) that doesn’t currently exist for musicians.

In contrast, Apple Podcasts’ subscription product, which it launched in June and from which takes a much higher cut of revenue, comes with an in-app button. Apple won’t, however, provide podcasters with any specific contact information for their subscribers. All of these solutions are leading up to a world in which podcasters might operate multiple backends if only to be present on every platform. Apple Podcasts requires podcasters to use its backend and manually upload episodes to it if they want to take advantage of the in-app button, while Spotify requires people to host on Anchor to make listening on Spotify possible.

Spotify is also working on a technology called Open Access, which works with third parties to bring paywalled content into the app, but those partnerships are currently preliminary, with most partners still developing the technology and integrating it. It does feel instinctively unfair that podcasters can get their listeners’ contact details and musicians can’t. But if we look at the podcasting subscriptions partly as a trial run for things that could later roll out to Spotify’s much larger community of music artists. Well, who knows if this might turn out to be a more positive story.