Supporting Cast becomes the first podcast subscription platform to deliver gated video on Spotify

Supporting Cast, the leading podcast subscription platform for top-tier podcasters, today announced that it is the first and only subscription podcast hosting platform to deliver gated, subscriber-only video on Spotify using Spotify’s Distribution API. Subscribers who connect their Spotify account to a publisher’s Supporting Cast-powered account can now watch exclusive video episodes natively in the Spotify app alongside the rest of their audio and video library. 

The launch extends the Spotify integration model that Supporting Cast pioneered with Spotify Open Access in 2021, which allowed paying subscribers to listen to exclusive, ad-free episodes inside Spotify. With video now flowing through the same entitlement system, Supporting Cast publishers can offer a single subscription that delivers premium audio and premium video  wherever the listener prefers to consume it.

“Our partners initially built subscription programs focused on gated audio to monetize their podcast audiences,” said David Stern, CEO of Supporting Cast. “Now that they’re investing in video, we expect this medium will follow a similar trajectory. Our competitors are largely focused on driving video consumption in their proprietary apps, while Supporting Cast and our partners expect growth in the open ecosystem where Spotify Open Access is a key pillar."

LAUNCH PARTNERS

Two journalist-led independent podcasts are first out of the gate: Libero, launched in 2025 by a collective of leading football writers from The Athletic, The New York Times, and The Independent; and Legacy, hosted by historian Peter Frankopan and journalist Afua Hirsch, which reexamines the lives of historical figures. Goalhanger (The Rest Is Politics, The Rest Is History), Vox Media, Jim Harold’s Campfire, Filmspotting, and Betches Media will follow later in Q2 with their own subscriber-only video on Spotify published via Supporting Cast.

“As an industry, podcasting still has a lot to learn about video content, but we’ve consistently found anything that brings our audiences closer to the hosts they adore drives subscription growth,” said Jim Harold, creator and host of The Paranormal Podcast. “Video is a key driver of that growth because it helps audiences envision themselves in the room with us. With so much of our audience consuming content on Spotify, Supporting Cast’s new integration means that subscribers won’t have to leave the app to listen to the shows they love. What’s more, potential new subscribers can be introduced to the gated content within the app where they’re already consuming their favorite shows.”

WHY IT MATTERS FOR THE INDUSTRY

Spotify announced its Distribution API on January 7, 2026, naming five hosting partners at launch, all of them serving the open, ad-supported video market. Supporting Cast’s integration is the first to use the Distribution API for entitlement-gated, subscriber-only video, opening a new monetization surface for premium podcasters who want the reach of Spotify without giving up the recurring revenue of a direct subscriber relationship.

The release also closes a long-standing gap in the subscription podcast market. While Spotify for Creators technically allowed publishers to upload gated video by replacing a previously published audio episode, the manual workflow made it impractical at scale. That meant that publishers wanting to offer premium video had to either maintain a separate paid YouTube channel or members-only website, fragmenting their audience, or accept that premium subscribers on Spotify would only ever access the audio version of their content. Supporting Cast’s integration unifies the experience with one subscription that unlocks both audio and video where the viewer already is.

HOW IT WORKS

Publishers upload or attach video to any episode in the Supporting Cast admin and either publish the episode immediately or schedule it for future publishing. If the publisher has connected a feed to Spotify via Supporting Cast’s existing integration, episodes with video are automatically delivered to Spotify as video; episodes without video continue to deliver as audio. For the podcasters, there are no extra workflow steps and no double-publishing errors. When it comes to measuring the performance of the content, podcasters only need to track one place as Spotify analytics for video appear alongside audio metrics in the publisher’s Spotify for Creators dashboard.

For listeners, the experience is seamless: Spotify subscribers who have linked their Spotify account to a Supporting Cast publisher’s premium feed see video episodes appear in the app exactly the way free episodes do, and can choose at any time to watch or to dismiss the screen and continue listening as audio.