Spotify's Upcoming "Open Access Platform" is as Surprising as it is Awesome

This week I heard Spotify had announced some new features to enable paid podcasting on their platform. “Cool,” I thought, “but fairly straightforward and predictable.”

Boy, was I wrong!

My initial (lazy) read of Spotify’s announcement was that they were letting podcasters put episodes behind a paywall in their app, kind of like what Apple just announced, but higher friction since they need to avoid in-app payments in order to avoid the Apple 30% tax.

And, to be clear, they are doing that. But they’re also doing something way more interesting called the “Open Access Platform” which I think represents a new model for the creator economy that other platforms could copy and, if we play our cards right, could unlock a new wave of growth for creators, collectives, and publishers of all sorts.

Here’s how they pitch it:

Are you a creator or publisher who has subscribers elsewhere? We’re also working on technology that will let your listeners hear your content on Spotify using your existing login system. This gives creators with existing subscriber bases the option to deliver paid content to their existing paid audiences using Spotify, retaining direct control over the relationship.

The way this works is really simple, technically, but pretty amazing, strategically.

Let’s say you’re the New York Times, or The Athletic, or Ben Thompson—anyone with a paid subscription content business. You will soon be able to build an integration that lets your subscribers connect their Spotify account to your system, which will let them listen to your subscriber-only content inside Spotify, while costing you $0 and allowing you to retain complete control over the customer relationship. All you need to do is use an open standard called OAuth that every web developer is already familiar with. Sounds pretty good!