Earlier this week, I watched Spotify CEO Daniel Ek give his latest pitch to video podcasters, many of whom have a hard time seeing anything other than YouTube as their primary source of distribution and revenue.
Spotify has been working to increase the amount of video on its service for nearly a decade. There are now more than 300,000 video podcasts on the service. Overall time spent watching video is growing faster than audio-only listening time. With video podcasts playing an increasingly important role in culture, Spotify thinks it has an opening to more directly compete with the dominance of YouTube.
Ek will need to convince video creators that Spotify’s new engagement-based payouts can replace and even exceed what they make on YouTube. Many big podcasters — some of whom were in the audience with me while Ek made the pitch this week at Spotify’s Los Angeles HQ — are skeptical and worried about cannibalizing their existing audiences and businesses. After his keynote, I spoke with Ek to hear more about why he thinks this approach to video will work.
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