Over the past few years, our Spotify team has unveiled several listening experiences that take you beyond the standard formats of playlists and podcasts. Your daily commute and Get up, for example, integrate both music and speech in dynamic settings, tailored to your day. But to truly unlock an ecosystem of new ways of listening, we knew we had to enable the creation of new audio formats. So when we started testing Music + Talk shows last fall, we rolled out the listening experience on top of the ability to create this content – giving everyone the ability to organize pieces of music directly into their narration.
Platforms like Anchor and Spotify for podcasters have made it easier to create podcasts. (In fact, Anchor made up 80% of new shows on Spotify in 2020, or over a million new shows.) And to truly build the future of audio, we want to give everyone the opportunity to push further. his creativity, even beyond the existing concept of podcast: to make audio experiences that had never been possible before. We see these possibilities as the “future formats” of audio – and we believe that the best way to build an ecosystem of audio content is to allow its creation, by everyone.
We started this journey with the rollout of Music + Talk shows and their corresponding authoring tools in Anchor. But that was only the beginning. Today at Stream On, we shared several new and upcoming features to enable the creation of future audio formats. Read on to find out more.
Let your written words travel further with the Anchor + WordPress partnership
Today, we announced a new partnership between Anchor and WordPress to give content creators the ability to scale their work and reach new audiences through the power of audio. With this new tool, available now, bloggers can publish their written content as a podcast with just a few clicks and podcasters can create a website for their podcast just as easily. This allows a whole new group of creators – those who have historically focused on the written word – to access a whole new audience via audio and share their voices on Spotify. Check Anchor and WordPress blogs to learn more.
Cultivate direct connections with listeners with new interactivity features
Historically, podcasting has been a one-way street – from creator to listeners – with little opportunity for direct comment. But with Spotify and Anchor, the creative and listening technology comes together in the same ecosystem, allowing for a back-and-forth. This allowed us to create interactivity features such as Surveys and Q&A, which we tested in partnership with a small group of beta creators. We’ll be expanding this group to more users in the coming months, and creators can sign up. here express their interest in participating in future tests of interactivity features.
Combine audio and visual narration with video podcasts
In the coming months, we’ll start testing the ability for creators to add video to their podcasts when posting through Anchor, meaning these creators will have the power to complement their audio with visual. Us first started testing Video podcasts on Spotify in July of last year and have since been iterated on the offer. Later this year, more and more creators can expect to access this feature as we expand testing through tools that will live in Anchor.
New models to monetize your work on Spotify
Going forward, we’ll also begin testing an ability for podcasters to explore new sources of revenue through paid subscriptions supported by their listeners. Recently, some podcasters have started to generate income by offering bonus content exclusively to paid subscribers – and soon they will be able to do the same on Spotify, where their content can easily be discovered by fans around the world. Creators can register here to learn more and express your interest in this feature.
We’re excited for what’s going to happen and to see creators take advantage of these new tools as they are released over the coming months. Ready to experiment with your own future format now? Try Music + Talk, a broadcast format that allows creators to incorporate songs from Spotify’s music catalog directly into their narration. Find new music and talk shows, including those from Maggie Rogers Notes from the archives, Maluma One week fr Jamaica, et Hulu’s The ultimate noise playlist-in the Music + Talk Hub sure Spotify and create your own show on Anchor.
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