Spotify wants to pay YouTubers millions for their videos

Back when Spotify first began testing video podcasts in 2020, YouTube creators and their content were at the forefront of its push. Not only did it pay $100 million for The Joe Rogan Experience, but it tapped career creators like Zane Hijazi and Heath Hussar to bring video episodes of their shows to its platform. Fast-forward four years, and Spotify now has 250,000 shows with video content on its platform.

But it wants more–and to get more, it’s going back to YouTubers.

The company is offering seven-figure sums of money to creators if they’ll upload their content to Spotify as well as YouTube, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

The deals aren’t exclusive, and Spotify reportedly isn’t looking for any kind of rights acquisition or production deal–not surprising, as it consolidated podcast production last year in a round of reorganization that cut 200 jobs and brought its previous acquisitions Parcast and Gimlet under a single banner, Spotify Studios. Instead, it’s offering the aforementioned lump sum payment, plus marketing support, if creators will upload their videos and make them free to watch.

Bloomberg reports that the amount creators are being offered “can vary significantly depending on the talent.” It didn’t say how long the deals are.

Spotify wouldn’t share specific details of the (reported) discussions it’s having with creators. “The popularity of video is surging on Spotify, but our making deals with creators is not new,” a spokesperson told Bloomberg. “From The Comment Section to our recent renewals for What Now? with Trevor Noah and The Joe Rogan Experience, Spotify has worked with podcasters and creators on shows that include video for several years. Per those agreements, we never comment on the individual details as we have a wide array of partnerships.”

The platform’s pursuit of video creators isn’t a surprise, though. After its first-ever NewFronts appearance this past May, Ann Piper, its Head of North American Ad Sales, told Adweek Spotify was “ready to play in the digital advertising pool and compete for more than audio budgets.”

And, in August, we saw a pitch deck where Spotify was selling brands hard on video ads. “Our video ads are only served to your audience when we know they’re engaged with the app and looking at the screen,” it said in one slide. With Spotify going after more marquee advertisers who normally would spend video ad budgets on YouTube, TikTok, or even traditional TV, we’re not shocked it’s now trying to recruit equally marquee creators on whose content it can run those ads.

We don’t know whether Spotify can be successful here. It’s been competing with YouTube in the video podcast arena for several years now, with YouTube notably struggling (though video podcasts do better on its platform than audio-only shows). But with this move, it’s fully stepping onto YouTube’s turf, asking creators to upload not podcasts, but the sort of standalone VODs YouTube has hosted since 2005.

Spotify says it’s ready to play–we’ll see just how hard that play is.