What Spotify will do in Italy
The novelty of Spotify in Italy not only affects users but also podcast creators: until 2023 there will be no commissions. Here are numbers and details
The Paid Subscriptions Spotify, or subscriptions to pay the note platform audio streaming on demand, also will arrive in Italy, while in some thirty other markets, after the launch in the US a few months ago.
WITHOUT COMMISSIONS, UNTIL 2023
Even the creators of Italian content, therefore, will be able to offer users subscriptions to their podcasts and, potentially, generate greater income. In fact, the entirety of the revenue linked to the subscriptions will go to the podcasters. But not always: until 2023, when Spotify will introduce 5 percent commissions.
THE ITALIAN PODCAST MARKET
It is not clear exactly how many podcast audience numbers are in Italy or how many total users of this type of content are. Part of the problem, Il Post explained in an in-depth study, lies in the difficulty of defining what a podcast is: often the term is also used to refer to audio books or radio programs offered on a delayed basis.
According to Ipsos, a company that deals with market research, last June in Italy 9.3 million listened to podcasts (no audiobooks and not even catch-up radio ). According to the estimate made by Alessandro Piccioni, founder of the Tonidigrigio communication agency, in August over 25 thousand podcasts in Italian were available on the platforms; of these, more than 10 thousand had been published in 2020. In the last year, Spotify's podcast catalog – the company said – grew by 89 percent.
As far as the audience is concerned, the numerical and interpretative problem remains: after how many minutes or seconds can one legitimately speak of "listening"? The presence of different platforms – in addition to Spotify there are Audible from Amazon or Apple Podcast – also makes the comparison complex, as the parameters used are not known.
THE NUMBERS OF SPOTIFY
Most of Spotify's revenue comes from premium subscriptions (paid, ad-free when playing songs and playlists): in the third quarter of 2021, they reached $ 172 million, slightly more than analysts' forecasts (171.7 million). ). About 40 percent of Spotify's premium users are located in Europe (the company is Swedish), while 29 percent are in the United States.
Ad revenue increased to € 323 million. The monthly active users were 381 million.
Spotify began offering podcasts in 2018: its catalog currently has 3.2 million podcasts, up from 2.9 million in the previous quarter.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/spotify-podcast-abbonamenti-italia/ on Thu, 18 Nov 2021 14:15:15 +0000.