Spotify Creators Get Paid More | Jordan Newman (Head of Content Partnerships)

0:00What a lot of these creators are seeing when they're thinking about the boost in earnings is a mix of both those advertising RPMs and then the audience driven payments, which are quite significant. And so I think what folks have found is the payments are actually really consistent and far more consistent than advertising, which is subject to seasonality and demand and all the other ingredients that impact RPMs. So this is actually something that I think has been pretty stable. Welcome to Crater Upload Your Creator Economy podcast. It is Lauren Schniffer and it is 2026.

0:32Jordan Newman:And I'm Joshua Cohen. Lauren, that beautiful background you're in would have you believe it's a different year. It would. It would. So I, as one does, you know, use, I'm very into using, you know, AI for very strategic sort of purposes and not just like the slop that we're seeing everywhere. And I'm really into making it obviously AI. And we're going to get into this a little bit. And, or if it's not AI, making it obviously not. In other words, mistakes. And so, listen, I said a background to ChachiPT that represents the new year and it said 2024. And so that's the way AI feels about this new year, that it's 2024.

1:10Jordan Newman:What did you do for New Year's Eve? Nothing. My break, as you might be aware, was pretty kind of not great because like everybody got the flu. And so traveling with the flu with kids is great. And so we just stayed home and I just cooked a lot of food and didn't make it to midnight. And if you want to hear a play-by-play of that, just give Lauren Schnipper a ring. If you talk with her for more than 30 seconds, she'll give you the whole rundown. Sure, sure. Josh and I have the same birthday, and he actually didn't say happy birthday to me this year. That's not entirely accurate. Actually, it's actually completely accurate.

1:43Jordan Newman:On the year's eve, you know what a lot of people did? Went and saw the Stranger Things series finale. Yeah, that was a thing. That was a thing. And here's what's interesting about this, and why I wanted to bring it up. So it brought$25 to$30 million approximately into the box offices. But people, in order to go see this movie, they didn't buy tickets. They actually bought concession vouchers to then use at the theaters. So for popcorn? For whatever they wanted. Popcorn, hot dogs, sodas, icies, and more. By the way, I went to a screening, side note, dear friend of mine, fortune theme star, big comedian, and she had a screening of her last special.

2:26This is like six months ago. And they had like all this like movie theater kind of like goodies and stuff. And so I'm like, I got my milk duds and my popcorn. And I realized that the milk duds in the movie theater on the occasion I get them, I've probably been there for two years because hers were so fresh and like you could actually bite into them. They're not supposed to like crack your teeth. Side note, go on. I was like, it was like a revelation. I'm like, this is amazing. They were real McDonald's, but they were like milk cents but they were like purchased probably that day go on

2:55Jordan Newman:so the finale was released in around 600 to 620 theaters about 1.1 million vouchers were sold to reserve the seats wow what is interesting here is like why they did it this way so one basically all of that revenue is going straight to the movie theaters so it was a gift to theater chains from Netflix so that's one reason it was a way for Netflix to ingratiate itself to movie theaters sure Another reason is Netflix just wanted to have as mass of a marketing event as possible. So they're not going to orchestrate some complicated distribution deal with these distributors. They just want to get it out into as many theaters as possible and have it create as much PR opportunity as possible for the series finale and the excitement and hype and et cetera.

3:43Jordan Newman:What they also didn't have to do because of this was they don't have to pay any residuals to any of the actors or any of the creators of the show. which presumably the Duffer brothers and all the major actors on the show were at least tacitly okay with this. They haven't come out saying they were against it, but at least tacitly okay with this because they realized it would be a huge marketing opportunity and really cool to see this series finale in theaters. But I think it just shows this kind of ingenuity that Ted Sarandos has and a willingness to kind of play around the edges of rules with Netflix in terms of theatrical releases.

4:16Jordan Newman:I wonder if this could be an interesting just precursor to the different types of just economic machinations that Netflix and theater owners are going to go through once Netflix owns Warner Bros. Well, it's so funny because everybody has been circling this article from New York magazine that's called All My Friends Are Leaving L.A. And it was written by a woman named Lauren Banz, who's a TV writer who's still based in L.A., but she was talking about all her friends leaving L.A. And there's a scene in this sort of article that she wrote where she's in a coffee shop in Larchmont, which is like kind of a bougie area in Los Angeles.

4:53And all of a sudden, this big giant black Escalade kind of parks illegally. And out walks Ted Sarandos and like walks into the coffee shop. And she was like, in the scene that she sets, it's not, I wouldn't go so far as it feels like a horror movie, but like, it just is like this, like Goliath has now walked in. And this is before they announced the merger, you know, with Warner Brothers. And like, just like how this person who was like, changing everything and making like, like the numbers are staggering. Like the amount of writing jobs that are available is like next to nothing relative to the amount of available writers.

5:25Like they were talking she was talking about how in, you know, pre the strike, it was like, you know, make it be alive in 2025. Everybody thought 2025 would be the year that things would get better. And it's honestly just gotten worse. It's it's really upsetting just because like the downfall of Los Angeles, the industry is it's it's, you know, the trick down effects, the bars that don't have people in them after they're shooting TV shows and this and that. But I don't know. I just the image of this guy like walking into this coffee shop like, you know, like and everybody was just like it was like a cold whiff of air.

5:56It was just very I just I don't know. It's really seared in my brain. I highly recommend reading it.

6:01Jordan Newman:Sounds like a good premise to an A24 film. Yeah, kind of. Fascinating. Well, happy New Year, Josh. Happy New Year, Lauren. So we are coming into our sixth anniversary, which is actually insane. And we're still here. We're doing it. We're alive and I'm excited to be here. We have Jordan Newman on today, who's the head of content partnerships at Spotify, which is awesome. They just announced a ton of new initiatives, specifically around podcasts, but video in general. And people making money, like a lot of money on video podcasts on Spotify. So he's going to go through all of those. We really like broke it all down.

6:33So excited for that. But before we get to that, I just want to quickly talk about Adam Asori, sort of head of Instagram, did this huge. I don't know if it's a manifesto, but it was a huge note on threads that you have to click on to see it bigger. Just talking about AI. And I actually found it very interesting. And dare I say, I've been talking about some of these things. I did a post on LinkedIn on December 31st. Just talking a little bit about the AI slop that I'm just seeing on LinkedIn specifically. And how it's just starting to get really grating when you just see posts. regardless of the content that are so clearly manipulated by AI.

7:11And the formatting is so obvious every time. And it's just started, it's making me cringe so badly. And so I'm just sort of craving imperfect content, whatever that looks like. And he's kind of talking about this. And a few things that he said that I thought were really interesting, talking about creators, it's like he said, everything that made creators matter, the ability to be real, to connect, to have a voice that couldn't be faked is now suddenly accessible to anyone with the right tools. Deep fakes are getting better and better. AI is generating photographs and videos indistinguishable from captured media.

7:41The feeds are starting to fill up with synthetic everything. And in that world, here's what I think happens. Creators matter more. The bar is going to ship from can you create to can you make something that only you can create. And that's the new gate, the raw aesthetic. And that's what I sort of like focused on the raw aesthetic. And like, I thought this was interesting, too. He said, unless you're under 25 and use Instagram, you probably think of the app as a feed of square photos. The aesthetic is polished, lots of makeup, skin smoothing, high contrasted photography, beautiful landscape. The feed, that feed is dead.

8:11People largely stopped sharing personal moments to feeds years ago, which I thought was very interesting. Like nobody's really put, this happened to Facebook a while ago where like nobody really is doing personal moments. The personal moments, if they're happening on Instagram or happening in stories. And he was just talking about how like, quote, but flattering imagery is cheap to produce and boring to consume. People want content that feels real. He said savvy creators are going to lean into explicitly unproduced and unflattering images of themselves in a world where everything can be perfected.

8:40Imperfection becomes a signal. And I just think this is like so interesting. He also talked about how like they're in a race against like they're going to get worse at distinguishing like what is an AI image. We're more what they should be focused on. It sounds like what they're doing, which I really like, is like actually calling out what's real and is not using AI as opposed to what is using AI. And that's going to be like actually easier to sort of potentially kind of do versus those that have AI. And I just want to say like, I don't know if you read my LinkedIn post because it basically says this.

9:15Like I don't want to like, I mean, I'm like kind of a big deal. But like I 100 % am on board with this. Like, I just feel so strongly that, like, it's starting to really, for those of us that are, like, forever online and consuming content, whether it's on LinkedIn, whether it's in our feed, like, super polished content is starting to just be really gross. And, like, I'm over it. Like, I just, it's so obviously, even if it's just a quick filter, even if it's just whatever, like, who cares anymore? Like, it's just so boring. And so I think we're going to see this sort of like people that lean into really raw, authentic content anywhere or who is going to win right now.

9:52And then I'm sure we'll see a pendulum slip the other way. But like I'm here for it.

9:57Jordan Newman:Isn't this kind of like a debate, though, about whether or not free will exists? Like, sure, you can believe free will exists. But if you don't believe free will exists and you are really ardent in those beliefs, you could say that the idea of arguing about whether we have free will or not was predetermined. So I think that it relates to this AI debate because in the future, isn't the AI just going to be able to create unpolished images? Yeah, but I think it's going to be like it's like and whether or not it is true and you can determine if it's true. But I think it's like starting to be like a bit of a flex to not use AI, like very proudly being like, I'm not using it.

10:42And I think it's maybe less about whether or not AI is going to be able to do it, but whether or not you are going to publicly say like, I am in a world where I'm not going to do that. Right.

10:50Jordan Newman:But isn't the AI going to quickly become so good that it's going to be able to replicate those types of images and videos as well? Of course. But I'm sort of just talking about, you know, like, I hate the word authenticity, but like, you know, authenticity and like people what people are going to do. And like people are I think there's going to be creators and people and individuals who are going to stand on ceremony and say this is what I am standing up to do or not do. I don't know. Listen, it's all terrifying. I don't know. I mean, you know, you and I were at Adobe Max. And the thing that like, you know, terrified me the most was not like the fact that they could immediately turn a you know, a bird, a beautiful bird into a, you know, into a bird with flowers instead of wings, which I thought was like amazing and beautiful, but like zero use case for that.

11:35It was more the fact that like, there's a photo, there's a photograph of a guy and his eyes are kind of this way and you could turn it this way. And there's no possible way for you could tell it that that's not real.

11:44Jordan Newman:Yeah, 100%. And that's what's scary. And so, and the, the lack of accountability, the lack of discussion around, like, we should all be noting that or like, making that more visible and is is what you know kind of makes me quake in my boots a little bit but it's going to also I think you know I mean I think about this as you know like as it relates to kids and like how they're learning to like create whether or not it's a first draft or whatever I just think we're going to get into a world where things are going to become a bit more analog potentially because people are going to be like you've got it what are we doing if we're all just like pumping a thing into, you know, into AI.

12:22I don't know.

12:22Jordan Newman:I just think in a world where you're able to do the kind of stuff you just described and in a world where Meta, Instagram's parent company, is contributing to that world and bringing it further and further into reality, that the idea that somehow we're going to fight AI with this authenticity and real and not picture-perfect images is a cute short-term kind of solution and strategy for these creators to employ over the next, I don't know, somewhere between nine and 36 months. But then after that, the AI is going to be good enough to just replicate that as well. Oh, you're so depressing. Okay. And also what I thought was really interesting, our writer, Sam Gattell, pointed this out when he covered the story for Tube Filter.

13:10Jordan Newman:He said, The Threads essay feels like Mosseri's version of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address from the White House, in which he famously warned Americans about the rising threat of the military-industrial complex. Like Mosseri, Eisenhower recognized that the system he helped build now poses a threat to his constituents. Wow. And how did that shake out for him? I mean, I think not so great. Yeah. Okay. Welcome to 2026. All right. Next up, we've got Jordan Newman from Spotify. Jordan Newman, head of content partners at Spotify. Thank you so much for being on Creator Upload, first podcast of the year.

13:53Thank you guys so much for having me. I'm a longtime listener and viewer, so really excited to be here. Well, as most people know, we only have major fans on the podcast. So you have passed the test.

14:02Jordan Newman:Thank you so much. So let's get into it. Spotify just basically this week has announced tons of updates to your partner program, which was launched last year to help creators build sustainable businesses by unlocking multiple revenue streams. What one year in new announcements? Tell us what's new. Yeah. So we actually announced a bunch of things so I can just run through some of the most exciting things. The first one is we announced expanded eligibility for the Spotify Partner Program. And so we essentially lowered the threshold across all dimensions, making it a lot easier for creators to join our partner program earlier in their journey.

14:40And I think it's probably worth just mentioning for a moment what's included in our partner program because it's only a year old and not everyone is super familiar with it. But basically, the way it works, and some of it will be pretty familiar, but the way it works is that it offers creators multiple revenue streams. It includes ad monetization on Spotify Free and other podcast platforms. And for video podcasts, it includes audience-driven payments from Spotify video engagement. And so the way it works is that when a Spotify premium subscriber is watching your show, they'll enjoy that experience uninterrupted by dynamic ads.

15:19And for the creators, instead of earning ad revenue, you'll earn based on how much your fans are watching. So you get those two revenue streams, one based on advertising, one based purely on consumption, which creates a really sort of wonderful way to earn on Spotify and beyond. So the announcement was really expanding this program to more and more creators, which we're really excited about. A couple other announcements, too, but I'll pause there in case you have any questions. Yeah, no, I do. I have questions. So a couple of things. So, you know, so can you explain exactly what the eligibility thresholds are and why did you decide to sort of open it?

15:53Was it more just because you've like a year in you kind of know it works better or is it like the demand? And like, curious, like, did you just need more content to fill with ads? Like where that sort of impetus came from? No, you know, I think for us, the program's been really successful. We've had a bunch of folks engaging. And, you know, I think what's interesting is we launched this program. And in the time that it's been around, we've seen video consumption on Spotify double. And so it's really clear that this is providing an incentive for creators to put their video on Spotify, distribute it and earn a living.

16:28And so it's sort of a win-win in that creators earn more money, we get more content, and our audience is able to enjoy the content uninterrupted by dynamic ads if they're premium subscribers. And so there's been a lot of demand. We've also spent the last year rolling out the program in more markets as well. So we most recently rolled it out in the Nordics. And so we feel like now is actually the time that it's rolled out pretty broadly to start pulling back and allowing even more creators to join. So the eligibility criteria include, it's basically you have to have a thousand engaged audience members, 2 ,000 hours consumed over the past 30 days, and then three episodes all time.

17:10And we can, you know, it represents a pretty big step change in the thresholds that were there previously. So we expect thousands and thousands of more creators will now be eligible, which is something I'm really excited about for sure. And I should also say we've been hearing from a lot of creators that they want to join the program, but that the eligibility criteria is high, which I think is fair feedback. And so hoping that this allows more people to join in. And then so I'm always curious and I sort of understand it, but like in terms of the folks that are making money based on just time spent, how do you quantify that?

17:43Like, I mean, obviously time spent is thing, but like what is it's not, you know, as kind of, you know, cut and dry as like AdSense and when ads are in there. So how What does that look like? Yeah, I mean, the two sort of two revenue streams. The first is going to be relatively straightforward and familiar, which is advertising. And that's really just a function of how many ad locations are you inserting? And maybe even like, you know, what is your audience makeup? In those situations, Spotify is serving the ads on your show. And, you know, I think that's relatively straightforward. The piece that I think is new and is a little bit more complicated is really these audience-driven payments.

18:25And, you know, I think it's really based primarily on consumption. And so it's simply just how much people are watching your show. So the hours consumed is probably the biggest input to determine how much money you're going to make. And I should also say the payout rate is higher than what you would make from advertising as well. So you will see more coming in than you would previously with advertising. Well, just to push on that a little more, when I look at my insights based and it's on the time spent, am I getting like very, very specific insights? Like you have, you know, 100 hours or, you know, spent on premium.

19:02And so you are going to get X number of dollars. And is that sort of because as we know, AdSense can kind of go up and down depending on the year. Like January is a very. Totally. I think what our partners really like about the audience driven payments is that they are quite consistent. And actually, one of the unique things about the Spotify audience compared to other platforms is that our audience is really consistent. You have people coming back to the same shows week after week after week. As a user, when you sign on to Spotify, one of the first things that you'll see is the content that you've watched or listened to previously.

19:34And while we are focused on discovery, we're also focused on engagement. And so I think as creators, what they often see is actually a very stable audience on Spotify compared to some other platforms. And so when it comes to these audience-driven payments, it's based on watch time. And that time, the time spent is actually quite consistent. And I should say it's based on total consumption time. So that might mean that the user is foregrounding the app or it might mean they're backgrounding the app and still just listening. So long as you've uploaded a video file, you're still getting those payments.

20:06And so I think what folks have found is the payments are actually really consistent and far more consistent than advertising, which is subject to seasonality and demand and all the other ingredients that impact RPMs. So this is actually something that I think has been pretty stable. And we do have a great analytics platform, which gives you obviously your earnings and your consumption time and all of those great things. So you can understand sort of how it all comes together. Great. And then, okay, so finish the updates. I know Josh has a lot of questions. In addition to expanding the eligibility for the partner program, we also announced that we're going to be launching in April new sponsorship tools for video creators.

20:47And really what we're trying to do here is solve this pain point, which is that a lot of video creators are including baked in sponsorships from brands in their video podcasts. And those tend to live in the content forever because it's incredibly annoying to have to go into that episode, strip that baked in ad and replace it with another sponsorship or or remove the sponsorship entirely. And so what we're doing is launching a tool that will allow you to easily remove, replace, or schedule baked-in sponsorships in video podcasts, as well as the means to measure them more effectively. So this is something that we've been getting a lot of questions from our creators, and we believe it's really going to help them on the monetization side.