Spotify lowered its video podcast monetization thresholds on January 7, 2026, cutting the minimums by roughly 80 percent. Creators now qualify for the Spotify Partner Program with 3 published episodes, 2,000 consumption hours and 1,000 engaged audience members over the last 30 days. The previous bar was 12 episodes, 10,000 consumption hours and 2,000 listeners.

The program pays podcasters based on Premium users who watch their videos, plus a share of ad revenue from free-tier listeners. Spotify said monthly video podcast consumption has nearly doubled since the program launched, and the average podcast user now streams twice as many video shows per month as before. The company also disclosed it has invested more than $10 billion in the podcast industry over the past five years across creator earnings, engagement and infrastructure.

New sponsorship tools arrived alongside the thresholds, letting creators update, schedule and measure host-read sponsorship spots in video ads through the Spotify for Creators app and Megaphone. The program runs in 19 markets across the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and Europe, a footprint Spotify then expanded toward 35 regions in September. Hosting through Spotify for Creators remains free with unlimited storage and bandwidth, though Spotify keeps 50 percent of revenue on ads it sells against a show.

The takeaway is that video podcasting now has a monetization on-ramp comparable to YouTube’s lower tiers. Shows already filming video for YouTube should distribute the same files to Spotify to stack a second revenue stream, and the lowered thresholds mean new shows can qualify within their first year instead of their third.