Spotify Video Podcast Requirements, Explained

Spotify has given podcasters a new reason to get their video right. On 20 October it launched paid memberships, and exclusive video is one of the perks a show can sell. If you are working out the Spotify video podcast requirements before you upload, here is what launched, what Spotify's video specs actually ask for, and how to prepare an episode that meets them.

What Spotify launched

Spotify announced memberships on 20 October, and TechCrunch covered the launch the same day. The essentials:

• Where: 34 markets, including the US, UK, Canada, Australia and most of Western and Northern Europe.
• The split: creators keep 90% of membership revenue, and can set up several tiers and prices.
• The perks: whatever the show chooses, including exclusive audio or video, bonus episodes, fewer ads, early access and access to the archive.
• Who qualifies: shows hosted on Spotify for Creators or Megaphone with three published episodes, 100 listeners or viewers, and 100 consumption hours on Spotify in the previous 30 days.

It joins the Spotify Partner Program, which pays creators for video engagement and which Spotify said in September would expand to more than 35 new markets later this autumn. Our post on removing long pauses from podcast video covers that announcement.

The practical upshot is simple. Video is now something a podcast can sell directly, so the quality of the file you upload matters more than it did.

What Spotify's video specs ask for

Spotify publishes its video specs as a set of recommended values and wider compatible ones. These are the recommended ones, which are the ones to aim for:

• Container: MP4, with one video track and one audio track of the same length. MOV is also accepted.
• Video codec: H.264 or H.265.
• Resolution: 1080p or higher. Spotify encourages uploading the highest resolution you have.
• Aspect ratio: 16:9 widescreen. Other shapes work but may be letterboxed or pillarboxed in some apps.
• Frame rate: 24, 25, 30, 50 or 60 frames per second.
• Video bitrate: 25 Mbit/s constant bitrate for 1080p, 35 Mbit/s for 4K. Any bitrate is accepted if the file size is in range.
• Picture: progressive scan, standard dynamic range in Rec.709.
• Audio: AAC-LC, PCM or FLAC, stereo, at 128 kbps or more.
• Size and length: under 10 GB and under four hours recommended, with up to 60 GB and 12 hours accepted.

Two things the page does not cover: captions and vertical video. Spotify's recommended shape is landscape.

What that means for your edit

Most of those numbers are decided when you export, but a few are decided much earlier.

• Edit in 16:9. If the episode is filmed for Spotify, keep the master landscape. Vertical clips for social come later, from the same edit.
• Check your recorded frame rate. Spotify lists 24, 25, 30, 50 and 60 frames per second. If you recorded at one of those, keep it; many cameras record at fractional rates such as 29.97, so check what yours used.
• Do not add bars yourself. If a shot is the wrong shape, reframe it; letterboxing is something Spotify's own apps may do, and adding it twice wastes the frame.
• Mind the length. A long conversation can run past the four-hour recommendation. Cutting the dead air is the cheapest way to bring it in, and it makes the episode better to watch.

Preparing the episode in flshy

This runs free in flshy, in the browser, and the episode stays on your own machine the whole time: nothing about editing it involves uploading it until you upload it to Spotify yourself.

1. Bring the episode in. Drag the recording onto the timeline. Your browser reads the file off your disk.
2. Cut the long pauses. Open the Audio tab and use Remove silent gaps. Set the minimum gap long enough to keep the beats between speakers, check the proposal, then cut in one undoable step. The reference is remove silence from a recording.
3. Decide about captions. Spotify's specs do not mention them, so this is your call. flshy's captions are burned into the picture, which suits clips for social feeds; for a long episode, remember viewers cannot switch burned-in captions off. Our post on burned-in captions vs closed captions weighs it up.
4. Export. flshy exports H.264 MP4, the container and video codec Spotify recommends, at up to 4K, with no watermark and no length limit.
5. Check the file before you upload. Our guides do not list the audio codec, bitrate or frame-rate settings of an export, so open the finished file in any media information tool and compare its audio codec, frame rate and bitrate with Spotify's list. Spotify accepts other values, but its recommended ones are the safe target.

Then cut the clips

The episode is also your best source of short clips to promote it. Take the moments that stand alone, and reframe them vertical: turning long videos into original YouTube Shorts covers the edit and what YouTube's October update means for clips from your own show, and the Shorts safe zone for captions covers where the words should sit.