The Swedish Company Spotify launched on Tuesday a paid subscription platform for podcasters in the United States and plans to expand in other regions in the coming months, a week after Apple unveiled a similar service.
The company said in a statement that, “A podcaster could mark episodes as subscriber-only and publish them on Spotify and other podcast listening platforms.”
Spotify, the world’s most popular paid music streaming service, said it won’t take a commission from podcast creators’ subscriber revenue for the next two years and planned to charge a 5% fee starting in 2023.
Online stores such as Apple’s app store usually charge developers a fee for purchases made on their platforms.
The Company has selected 12 independent podcasters to publish subscriber-only bonus content in their existing podcast feeds, and they will also expand the program to more creators over the coming months.
National Public Radio (NPR) will publish five ad-free shows for paid subscribers from May 4, including “How I Built This with Guy Raz” and “Planet Money”.
Spotify has been boosting its podcast muscle by spending more than half a billion dollars in buying podcast networks Gimlet and Anchor, and podcast ad company Megaphone.
The new subscription tool is built by using Anchor’s platform.
The company is also testing a system where content publishers on other platforms with existing subscriber bases can deliver paid content using Spotify.