Is Spotify a major threat to YouTube?
Youtube has been at the top of the game since it launched back in 2005. The platform completely revolutionized “home videos’ and allowed people the creative freedom to create whatever they wanted and the ability to share it with the world. People purley made videos for fun for the first 4 years up until 2009 when the platform introduced ads. A large majority of Youtubers were making huge sums of money from ads from their videos.
A large majority of Youtubers were making huge sums of money from ads from their videos. competition or a threat as it became such a beloved and trusted platform. This was up until May 2020 when the music streaming platform Spotify made a $100,000,000 deal with one of Youtube's most popular and entertaining personalities Joe Rogan.
At the time of writing this blog, Joe Rogan has built up 8.5 million subscribers on his Podcast Youtube channel “The Joe Rogan Experience”. His podcast is by far the most respected and talked about the podcast on the platform for many different reasons, such as getting multi-billionaire company owners like Elon Musk to drink whisky and smoke Marijuana live on the show while asking him questions about Alien life and how he's able to manage Tesla, SpaceX and the Boring Company all at one time.
Joe Rogan is by far one of YouTube's biggest hits and he has been snatched right from under them by the 21 billion dollar music streaming platform Spotify. Spotify has more active users than any other music streaming service. The app holds a podcast section where subscribers can listen to their favourite ones. However, there are no visual videos whatsoever on the streaming platform. When the news was released about the deal between the two giants it left a large number of Joe Rogan fans worried and confused as they were scared that they would not be able to view Joe's podcast visually which is one of the most entertaining aspects about his show.
Spotify then released a statement saying that the visual aspect of Joe's podcast would be carried over to them as well and all of Joe's content will strictly be exclusive to their app only. This was a huge blow for YouTube. A lot of speculation has surrounded whether Spotify will only do this with Joe or if they will make more deals with YouTubers by bringing them over to themselves.
Spotify is clearly trying to evolve itself and become something bigger than just a music streaming service. There are huge benefits for Spotify in bringing Joe over to them but what's in it for Joe other than the money?
It's likely that Joe could be wanting to expand his name and image by creating a solid brand around himself, with being directly exclusive with Spotify they will be able to push his image and name as more of a brand, other than just using YouTube as a simple way of broadcasting his podcast and having to do all of the work and publishing himself. Where will this leave Youtube? As of now, they have taken one mega giant from but will they take more? Will Spotify become the new YouTube?
Soucre- https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/may/24/spotify-podcast-deal-the-joe-rogan-experience