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The New York Times reports on how podcasts on Spotify are taking a new approach to using licensed music to avoid copyright issues. Spotify allows creators to use full songs from Spotify’s music library for free, with Spotify taking a greater cut of ad revenue.
It’s a hybrid format, which Spotify calls “shows with music” or “music and talk" and allows premium Spotify listeners to hear the full song mentioned as opposed to snippet.
Danyel Smith, former editor of Vibe, and her husband Elliot Wilson made a podcast called Relationship Goals with a lot of music, and when she made a new show for Spotify called Black Girl Songbook, she knew something had to change or else they would lose many of their episodes.
“Full songs are where the magic is,” Smith said. “There’s nothing like teeing up a song that means so much to me and that I know will mean so much to others if they just have the opportunity to hear it.”
Courtney Holt, a vice president at Spotify commented:
“We think more people want to have these types of content-based conversations around music,” he said. “It ultimately drives more music engagement, it drives more artist love, and it makes Spotify that much more sticky.”