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Uploading a video podcast to Spotify is now easier than ever, and a quarter million of podcasts now do so. Having a podcast with video on Spotify just makes sense and is now easier to accomplish, especially when:
- You are already publishing your podcast on Spotify anyway.
- Already have a video of your podcast – for example, if you livestream it.
It used to be that only specific celebrities could have a video podcast on Spotify. So I was pleased to hear on the Marketing O’Clock Podcast on Sept. 3, 2021, that I could now submit my own show as a video podcast. I did that right away and was approved to add the Business Storytelling Podcast in audio and video on Spotify. Today, everyone can upload their video podcast to Spotify. As of late 2023, there were 100,000 video podcasts on Spotify. By mid-2024, that number had climbed to 250,000.
The feature is available to all Spotify for Podcasters users (As of November 2024, Spotify for Podcasters is now Spotify for Creators). I currently use it for all of my podcast clients.
What are video podcasts?
At the simplest level, a video podcast is simply a video version of a podcast. Video podcasts allow brands and creators to show off their personalities and build relationships with their audiences.
Read next: Doing live audio monitoring correctly during a podcast or livestream
Podcasts are usually thought of as audio-only and distributed via major podcast channels – like Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, etc. And that’s how many companies that dabble in podcasts think of them. But of course, there is more.
There’s really no reason not to record your podcast on video as well. If for no other reason than to upload the video file to YouTube and now Spotify.
In addition, if you livestream your podcast, which I highly recommend, you can simply use that video file and upload it to Spotify.
How to make a video podcast on Spotify
You can use Restream or StreamYard to produce your podcast. From there, upload the video to Spotify for Creators or another hosting provider that supports video podcasts. Once uploaded, the video and audio versions are distributed to Spotify.
Read next: Where to host podcast for free?
How to watch a video podcast on Spotify?
Spotify video podcasts can be watched on desktops and mobile apps. It’s not necessarily super easy to find, and it took me a while to find the video version on the iPad app. Once I clicked on the episode cover art, the video started playing. But there was no indication given that I should consider clicking there.
This video shows how that looked:
You can also embed them on your website, but know that as of this writing, they don’t play back correctly on Chrome. From a desktop computer, go to the episode on Spotify, click on share, and then grab the embed code
Read next: How to find podcasts on Spotify
How to publish your video on Spotify
It’s pretty simple through Spotify for Podcasters. When you start with a new episode, simply click on New Episode and upload your video file.
Make sure that this is the final version that you want to use as you can’t edit it or even preview it once it has been uploaded.
Use this online video trimmer. I usually don’t edit my live-streamed episodes but trim out the beginning countdown, which I use on the livestream to give me some time to get the show started.
From there, publish the episode as you normally would. Spotify for Podcasters will publish the video and audio versions to Spotify and audio-only to all the other podcast channels.
Replacing existing episodes with videos on Spotify
Spotify now also allows you to update existing episodes with video. So these are published episodes that, to this point, only have audio. But now, you can go in and replace existing episode’s audio file with a video file. Here’s how that looks within Anchor.
That’s a bit of a judgment call on whether or not that’s a worthwhile exercise. If you have existing episodes that perform really well, maybe it’s worthwhile to go back and update the episodes with video if it makes sense.
But if you have hundreds of episodes that would be a lot of work to go in and upload video for all of them. Plus you have to find the correct video files as well.
Are people watching video podcasts on Spotify?
Based on my podcast, the numbers are pretty low, but I wouldn’t expect them to be super high out of the gate.
Here are some examples of episodes that had a decent number of audio listeners and a handful—literally—of video viewers.
The number of video viewers can also depend on where the majority of your listeners are tuning in from. If it’s Apple, where the video isn’t available, that number will be lower. If most of your website visitors come from Safari or Edge, that might be one way to increase the video views.
It just makes sense to take advantage of this feature. I’ve never been a fan of limiting podcasts to just audio, so this is another evolution.
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