Spotify Is Putting Some of Its Biggest Podcasts on Netflix

What actually counts? TV at all these days? This question is becoming more pressing by the day, especially now that Netflix has announced a new partnership with Spotify to bring the latter's curated list of video podcasts to the streaming platform.

It's a formidable lineup, mostly made up of The Ringer, the network founded by Bill Simmons. Spotify acquired in 2020and who has been particularly active in video in recent months. The slate coming to Netflix includes expected sports programming such as Bill Simmons Podcast (ransom, presumably, for Any environment) And The Zach Lowe Showbut also more culturally oriented fares such as Revisited Items, The Big PictureAnd The Dave Chang Show. In addition to The Ringer, the deal includes podcasts that were acquired as a result of Spotify's 2019 acquisition of Parcast, including podcasts under the generic title true crime And Serial killersboth of which would likely play well with Netflix's recommendation algorithm. They will be available on Netflix in the US early next year, with other markets to follow over time. More titles are expected to be added later.

For Netflix, this move didn't come out of nowhere. The company is constantly experimenting with expanding the definition of “content” on the platform, including video games and digital video programs created on YouTube, such as popular children's YouTuber Miss Rachel. It's also long dabbled in the podcast fringe, primarily producing the company's signature shows tied to its television projects, not unlike how HBO is using podcasts to deepen engagement with shows like Gilded Age And The Last of Us.

But the world of podcasts has changed dramatically over the past few years. The rapid rise in popularity of video-centric programs completely changed the environment—and Netflix executives were watching. “The lines between podcasts and talk shows are getting pretty blurry,” co-CEO Ted Sarandos. told investors back in April. “As video podcasts grow in popularity, I suspect some of them will end up on Netflix.” Around the same time, Axios reported that it looking for a podcast hostsignaling a deeper structural movement in space.

With Spotify, things are a little more complicated. The deal represents both a retreat and a reinvention. After spending years and billions of dollars to become a dominant player in the podcast space—buying Gimlet Media (now shuttered), Parcast (also largely shuttered) and The Ringer, and inking exclusive deals with Joe Rogan and Alex Cooper (who later left for SiriusXM)—the Swedish platform continued its turnaround to video in search of more lucrative advertising dollars and a better business model for their podcasts. But YouTube's sudden incursion into the podcast space, fueled by the medium's broader pivot to video, has effectively trapped Spotify; it didn't take long audience research reports to show that more podcast listeners now rate YouTube as their top platform of choice, surpassing Spotify. By bringing its video podcasts to Netflix, Spotify can expand the reach of its shows without incurring the costs of competing video distribution. It's a way to turn original content into syndicated inventory, licensing your productions to a market and audience ecosystem that indicates a greater affinity for visual programming.

Both companies are, of course, responding to the same gravitational pull: YouTube. The platform has become the default center of gravity for the creator economy, gobbling up categories like music, gaming, education, and now podcasts. In recent months, YouTube has quietly reinvented itself as direct competitor To Netflixposition, additionally confirmed your own claim that the platform reaches more viewers on TV than on phones and computers. So for Netflix and Spotify, this partnership isn't a marriage, but a kind of mutual protection pact: Netflix gets a new vein of low-cost, ever-relevant conversational content that helps it compete in attention spans with YouTube, and Spotify gets a new distribution vector that can keep its investments in video and podcasts fresh.

The most intriguing question is how far Netflix is ​​willing to go and whether it is considering adding what has long been considered the most popular podcast in the world: The Joe Rogan Experience. (Spotify doesn't own Rogan's show, but has an exclusive distribution deal.) Or, indeed, whether it will lean toward tapping into the most culturally influential podcast genre we have: politics. Given Netflix's aversion to anything that resembles news programming, it's unlikely they'll have much interest in it. At least for now. But give it time, and it could be a bad fiscal quarter.