Spotify wants a bigger piece of the money fans spend directly on the creators they love. On Tuesday the streaming giant switched on Memberships, a paid subscription feature that lets podcasters charge their most loyal listeners for extra perks, and it’s aimed squarely at the territory Patreon has owned for years.

For anyone who earns from a fan subscription, whether on OnlyFans, Patreon or anywhere else, it’s another sign that the “pay me directly” model has gone fully mainstream.

How Memberships works

According to TechCrunch‘s Sarah Perez, creators get to choose what members receive: bonus audio or video, fewer ads, early access to episodes, or any mix of those. The feature first got a preview at Spotify’s Investor Day in May and is now rolling out in 34 markets, the U.S. included.

Fans will see the offer on a show’s Spotify page, where they can sign up, pay and get the exclusive material right away. Perez reports that Spotify told TechCrunch the memberships are bought on the web rather than through in-app purchases.

According to The Verge‘s Jess Weatherbed, podcasters can set their own prices and split their perks across several tiers. Spotify is also giving them tools to grow a paying audience, including targeted promotions and free trials, plus community extras like member badges and welcome clips. Creators who already run paywalled content on another service can bring it over through Spotify’s Open Access feature.

The 90% split

The headline number for creators: they keep 90 percent of what members pay. According to Engadget‘s Jackson Chen, that lines up with the 10 percent platform fee Patreon charges, and the tier setup looks a lot like Patreon’s membership levels and YouTube’s channel memberships.

For comparison, the standard OnlyFans deal leaves creators with 80 percent of their earnings, so Spotify is pitching a richer split than the best-known fan subscription site.

Not every show qualifies. To be eligible, a podcast has to be hosted on Spotify for Creators or Megaphone, rack up at least 100 consumption hours and 100 listeners or viewers, and have at least three published episodes.

Who’s in at launch

Perez lists a handful of shows offering memberships from day one, including “The Adam Friedland Show,” “Making Sense with Sam Harris,” “Shawn Ryan Show,” “The Sculpt Society” and “Two Hot Takes,” while YMH Studios is adding memberships to 12 shows across its network.

According to Like & Subscribe‘s Natalie Jarvey, “Two Hot Takes” host Morgan Absher has close to 1 million followers on Spotify but had to use Patreon when she launched a fan membership three years ago. She told Jarvey her Patreon memberships have become “a big part” of her podcast income, and she’s now adding a monthly bonus episode for fans who pay $4.99 a month through Spotify. “People just want more content, so that’s what I’m offering,” she said.

Jarvey frames the launch as Spotify’s answer to YouTube, which pushed podcasting toward video and forced Spotify to fight harder to keep its top talent and their fans close. She notes Spotify started sharing ad and subscription revenue with podcast partners last year and paid out more than $100 million in that program’s first quarter. Spotify’s head of content partnerships, Jordan Newman, told her Memberships are meant “to help creators build sustainable businesses.”

Not Spotify’s first try

Engadget’s Chen points out this isn’t Spotify’s first attempt at paid podcast content. The company launched a paid subscription option for exclusive episodes back in 2021, then followed it with its Partner Program in 2024. The Verge describes Memberships as a separate, more Patreon-style system that sits alongside ads and the Partner Program rather than replacing them.

The takeaway

The fight over creators has turned into a fight over fan wallets. Spotify is betting its giant audience plus a 90 percent cut will convince podcasters to stop sending listeners off to Patreon. If it works, expect more big platforms to copy the playbook that subscription creators have been running all along: give your biggest fans something extra, and let them pay you directly for it.

Image: Shure MV7 microphone, photo by Panos Sakalakis, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).