Podcasters, should we all boycott Spotify?
episode
Podmastery: podcasting insights and advice for indie creators
17 min
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Why did I initially propose a Spotify boycott for podcasters?
I know. At the end of last week, I published an opinion piece about the pesky news skip button in Spotify. And when I was talking about it on LinkedIn, I mentioned the idea of an industry-wide boycott to keep them in check. And then I started thinking more deeply about that idea and whether it's even possible. Turns out It might not be. And after recording it, I started investigating how I'd pull my own show from Spotify. And because I'd never considered it before, I hadn't realized how difficult it is to do so. I mean, sure, you can launch a podcast and choose not to have it in Spotify in the first place. And the podcast hosting platform BuzzSprout's own podcast did indeed make that decision until quite recently.
But if you want to take your own show down from Spotify, because they're just not a lot of.
Yeah. Well if that's the case, you're out of luck. Turns out that the only way to take your podcast off Spotify is to write to Spotify and ask them really nicely to take your podcast off Spotify. There's no button. Which is quite something from a company that's just built a very large button, indeed. I'll chart him inside. This is Podmastery Podcasting Insights, the podcast for people who've seen that terrible Stephen Bartlett ad on Instagram, where he's claiming he can teach you how to have a top-rated podcast, and decided for themselves they'd rather glug a whole bottle of Huel than spend even another second listening to any advice from an overrated dragon. I'm Neil Velio, the Podmaster. Let's get you a step closer to Podmastery.
When everyone started offering their thoughts on Spotify testing out this stupid skip ads button, I had a very visceral reaction to it. And much like the idea that I'm sure every musical artist has had over the years, even the ones that could afford to make it, my idea was, well, why don't we all just leave as a podcasting collective? Then I did some investigating.
How can a podcaster actually remove their show from Spotify?
See last week when I published that idea on a comment in LinkedIn, I thought that was where we could start shaping the direction for podcasters. And this episode was gonna be all about the good news around that idea. But now it can't be. The theory of podcasting is that RSS makes you free, there's no contract with Spotify, no exclusivity deals, no notice period, you never signed anything, apart from accepting the terms and conditions of being published on their platform, which is a button click away. There we are with the buttons again. All of that is true. But what it doesn't give you is an exit. If your show is externally hosted, the procedure for your exit is this: contact support, send your feed and link, and then wait, with no published time frame in mind.
If you're Spotify hosted, you can't remove the show at all without deleting your whole account. Their own suggested workaround involves publishing a placeholder episode and then just deleting the rest of Your back catalogue around it, which is not a workaround, that's a hostage situation with a help article and terms and conditions. So let's get the shape of this completely straight. Spotify have built a one-tap button so your listener can skip past the bits where you ask for financial support, and a support ticket queue for you to leave when they do that. One tap to skip you, and an email and an unspecified wait time to go. It's funny where they chose to remove the friction. Isn't it? Right now, friction is the only reason that ad reads survive at all.
The only thing making people listen to ad reads is the pain point of them having to bother clicking to skip them. And if they're doing something else like I don't know, washing up or driving, that's an even harder task. So this button removes that friction entirely. And from what little has been said about this, it sounds like that button can be trained to remove that friction almost automatically. It was an easy fix for them to destroy creators in favor of what, I don't know, money?
What does Spotify’s “one‑tap skip” button reveal about platform control?
Encouraging premium subscriptions to utilize this kind of a button? And this friction to leaving their platform is the same but in the opposite direction.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why did I initially propose a Spotify boycott for podcasters?
0:00–2:25
2
How can a podcaster actually remove their show from Spotify?
2:25–4:44
3
What does Spotify’s “one‑tap skip” button reveal about platform control?
4:44–6:33
4
Why does the free‑rider problem make a collective walk‑out ineffective?
6:33–8:44
5
Can trade bodies like Audio UK or Podcasters United enforce a strike?
8:44–10:48
6
What lessons does the Neil Young‑Spotify protest teach us about leverage?
10:48–12:38
7
How does my own conflict of interest affect the boycott proposal?
12:38–14:48
8
What single call‑to‑action can podcasters use instead of a platform boycott?
14:48–17:20
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Podmastery: podcasting insights and advice for indie creators
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