Podcasters, should we all boycott Spotify?

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At the end of last week, I published an opinion piece about the pesky

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new skip button in Spotify.

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And when I was talking about it on LinkedIn, I mentioned

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the idea of an industry-wide boycott to keep them in check.

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And then I started thinking more deeply about that idea

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and whether it's even possible.

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Turns out it might not be.

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And after recording it, I started investigating how I'd

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pull my own show from Spotify.

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And because I'd never considered it before, I hadn't realized

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how difficult it is to do so.

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I mean, sure, you can launch a podcast and choose not to have it in

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Spotify in the first place, and the podcast hosting platform Buzzsprout's

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own podcast did indeed make that decision until quite recently.

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But if you wanna take your own show down from Spotify because they're

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just not aligned with you, 'cause they do bad things like, I don't know,

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trying to destroy their creators' very livelihoods by encouraging

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people not to hear their content.

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Well, if that's the case, you're out of luck.

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Turns out that the only way to take your podcast off Spotify is to write

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to Spotify and ask them really nicely to take your podcast off Spotify.

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There's no button, which is quite something from a company that's just

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built a very large button indeed

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This is Podmastery Podcasting Insights, the podcast for people who've seen that

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terrible Steven Bartlett ad on Instagram where he's claiming he can teach you

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how to have a top-rated podcast and decided for themselves they'd rather

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glug a whole bottle of Huel than spend even another second listening to

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any advice from an overrated dragon.

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I'm Neal Veglio, the podmaster.

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Let's get you a step closer to podmastery

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When everyone started offering their thoughts on Spotify testing

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out this stupid skip ads button, I had a very visceral reaction to it.

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And much like the idea that I'm sure every musical artist has had over the years,

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even the ones that could afford to make it, My idea was, well, why don't we all

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just leave as a podcasting collective?

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Then I did some investigating.

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See, last week when I published that idea on a comment in LinkedIn, I

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thought that was where we could start shaping the direction for podcasters.

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And this episode was gonna be all about the good news around that idea.

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But now it can't be.

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The theory of podcasting is that RSS makes you free.

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There's no contract with Spotify, no exclusivity deals, no notice period.

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You never signed anything apart from accepting the terms and conditions

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of being published on their platform, which is a button click away.

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There we are with the buttons again.

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All of that is true, but what it doesn't give you is an exit.

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If your show is externally hosted, the procedure for your exit is this:

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contact support, send your feed and link, and then wait with no published

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timeframe in mind If you're Spotify hosted, you can't remove the show at

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all without deleting your whole account.

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Their own suggested workaround involves publishing a placeholder

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episode and then just deleting the rest of your back catalog around

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it, which is not a workaround.

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That's a hostage situation with a help article and terms and conditions.

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So let's get the shape of this completely straight.

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Spotify have built a one-tap button so your listener can skip past the bits

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where you ask for financial support

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and a support ticket queue for you to leave when they do that.

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One tap to skip you and an email and an unspecified wait time to go.

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It's funny where they chose to remove the friction, isn't it?

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Right now, friction is the only reason that ad reads survive at all.

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The only thing making people listen to ad reads is the pain point of them

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having to bother clicking to skip them

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And if they're doing something else like, I don't know, washing up or

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driving, that's an even harder task.

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So this button removes that friction entirely.

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And from what little has been said about this, It sounds like that

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button can be trained to remove that friction almost automatically.

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It was an easy fix for them to destroy creators in favor of what?

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I don't know.

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Money?

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Encouraging premium subscriptions to utilize this kind of a button And this

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friction to leaving their platform is the same but in the opposite direction.

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And whoever controls where the friction sits controls the outcome.

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And we all know that most creators won't want to suffer FOMO of no longer being

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available on their platform, particularly if there's no easy way to do it or a

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timeframe to measure the result of trying.

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So here's why a boycott fails.

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First of all, you've got the free rider problem.

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The benefit goes to every podcaster alive, including the ones who stayed.

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The cost is borne only by those who decided to leave.

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the rational move for any d- individual is to let everyone else

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do it, and that's not cynicism.

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It's what collective action does without enforcement.

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It's why strikes need strike funds and people calling out, "Scab!" them

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not to stay There's the asymmetric pain and the dominance trap.

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Like the indie with 200 downloads loses maybe a third to half of their audience.

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Spotify, well, all they're losing is one show out of roughly five million, and

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the shows big enough to hurt them have got Spotify money, Spotify deals, and

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ad revenue that a walkout would torch.

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So they can't really do that, can they?

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And the exit runs through their help desk, not particularly publicly.

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A boycott only works as an event, so a thousand shows leaving on the

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same Tuesday becomes a news story.

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A thousand shows individually raising support tickets and waiting an unspecified

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number of days for any human at Spotify to get round to it, that's not an event.

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It's a temporary tech support challenge that only has to exist until they

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update their marketing to discourage it with yet more propaganda or a bribe

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And no press means no pressure, and no pressure usually means nothing changes.

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So the mechanism defeats itself before anyone's even organized anything

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Let's counter the argument that nobody could make this stick because there

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are lots of trade bodies that could technically facilitate a movement.

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You got Audio UK, which is a trade association for professional

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audio production companies.

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You got Podcasters United.

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That's a thing that exists.

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WGA East has genuinely unionized audio shops, but that's employees

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organizing against an employer, a completely different mechanism

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from independent business owners coordinating against a distributor.

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And then you've got The Podcast Academy, which seems very good at

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giving out awards and not much else

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What none of these bodies has is the one thing that a union needs,

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the power to make members act together and then bear a cost.

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No strike fund, no binding vote, no mechanism.

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Advocacy and networking are both genuinely useful, but not with this

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And here's the aligned precedent that I think some people are thinking about

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that is kind of relevant to this.

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In January 2022, Neil Young, the musician, pulled his entire catalog

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from Spotify over concerns with the content that top podcaster Joe Rogan

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was putting out there on the platform.

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And then Joni Mitchell followed, Nils Lofgren, India Arie.

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All global press this with household names and real cultural weight.

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But then just two years later, in March 2024, all were back

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and Joe Rogan is still there.

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So nothing actually changed.

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So my point to you is that if Neil Young can't move them, a coalition

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of indie podcasters with a shared Google Doc and lots of signatures

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probably isn't going to either.

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Let's talk about my personal dilemma because, you know, let's be honest

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about this, everyone's got skin in the game, and I fully realize that

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even bringing this up puts me in a slightly uncomfortable position.

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Namely, that in order to advocate for a boycott, I'd probably have to lead it.

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I'd have to participate, and that's an expensive principle to maintain.

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So our network at Podnos, the Indie Creators Network, ICN, I could

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technically get buy-in from the member podcasts to join in pulling

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out eventually, and then I've gotta wait for Spotify to action the email

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whenever they decide to get round to it.

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But the Podnos client shows on my top-tier packages, they're not mine to

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pull, and they belong to clients who quite reasonably refuse to lose half

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their audience for a principle that their podcasting agency talked them into.

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So within a week, I'd be the bloke who called for a walkout and then

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didn't walk, and that's exactly the kind of BS move that this show exists

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to literally take the piss out of.

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Selling the feeling of action instead of the action.

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Yeah, we're not gonna become that.

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Sorry

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So here's the fundamental problem here.

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RSS gives you freedom to publish.

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Nobody can stop you making the show.

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Nobody can refuse you a feed.

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No gatekeeper decides whether you're allowed to exist

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But what it does not give you is control over where you end up.

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Open distribution means anybody can pick your feed up, including

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people you probably rather didn't, and getting them to put it down

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again is a request, not a right.

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So that's the actual trade in play here: freedom to publish, no control over

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distribution, and they're not two separate problems you can fix one at a time.

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They're the same thing viewed from either end

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So here's the question.

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If someone offered you the swap, i.e., a body with real collective

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power, but you got that in exchange for needing permission to publish,

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you probably wouldn't take it, right?

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Nobody would.

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We chose this, and mostly we chose right.

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podcasters should unite against the behemoth of Spotify

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is a lovely LinkedIn post.

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It's also, if you follow it all the way down, a request to be governed

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So where then is our leverage?

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Well, here's the deal.

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It's not with me and it's not with you.

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The injured party in all of this at the moment is the advertiser who paid

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for something they didn't get, and the networks like Acast, Audacy, The

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New York Times, whose sold inventory is being suppressed by a competitor.

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So now we've got contracts, money, lawyers involved.

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All podcasters have is a gripe and social media posts

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Oh, and let's not forget the hero in this story, the press,

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namely James Cridland at Podnews.

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Now, James did more damage to Spotify in one week of his reporting

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than any boycott would have.

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That's the reality of this here.

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20 people posting on LinkedIn that they are gonna pull their shows from Spotify

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with nothing more than a supportive like on the post is definitely not

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gonna compete with tens of thousands of people reading James informing them

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of how bad the platform's behaving

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So here's the truth in all this.

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The fight is very real, it just isn't ours to win, and pretending

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otherwise wastes the energy we could be spending on the things that are

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If collective leverage isn't available, individual leverage is all there is,

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and you have exactly one asset no platform can skip, reorder, throttle,

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or algorithm away from existence, and we'll talk more about that in a moment

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and in a moment, I'll play you a trailer from one of our Podmastery community

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members, which is incidentally exactly the sort of thing that no algorithm is

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ever gonna recommend to you, which is kind of the point of having a community.

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Join the waitlist now, podmastery.co/waitlist

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Okay, so because I like to leave loose ends tied

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On your next episode, here is something you can think about doing to combat this.

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Change one call to action from your next episode from a

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platform action to a direct one.

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So not follow the show wherever you're listening to this, not leave

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us a rating or review, and not check us out on YouTube, which is very

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tempting at the moment because everyone else is trying to grow on YouTube.

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But all three of these are numbers that Spotify, Apple, and Google own

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and can devalue, re-weight, or take away from you whenever they fancy.

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You're asking your listener for a favor in somebody else's currency.

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Swap that out for something that comes back to you.

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Maybe a reply, an email address, a name on a list Nobody has ever built a skip

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button for an email I hope you found this episode informative and inspirational.

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If you did, please do make sure that you get signed up to the community

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waitlist, podmastery.co/waitlist.

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I'm Neal Veglio.

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Go make your next episode with the right call to action that

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hopefully will bring you luck in your continuing journey towards pod mastery