Podcast in Russian Spotify

[grrrvahrrr]

Country

Russia

My Question or Issue

So Spotify launched in Russia, however i don't seem to able to find any podcasts on the app. Are there plans to add them later or are they availible for premium users only?

[Elena · Accepted solution]

Hey there @grrrvahrrr!

Thanks for reaching out to us and welcome to the Community!

Right now podcasts are not available for our users users in Russia but we understand that they are an important part of Spotify.

We are working to get our podcast offering up and running as soon as we can.

If you'd like to show your support for adding podcasts to our catalog in Russia, we recommend suggesting it on our Ideas board so that it could get +Votes from other users as well. Take a look at this page to see how to post an Idea.

If you're interested in how ideas work and how your feedback reaches the right teams here, check this page out.

Let us know if there's anything else we can do for you. We'd be happy to help.

[maxim_dv]

What is the problem to make podcasts that are available to other countries accessible for Russian users? I won't be listening Russian podcasts anyway. I just want my podcast that i already subscribed. Like Rich Roll podcast, Shame on you, Blank Check etc.

[GeorgeFeb]

That's ridiculous not to mention a discriminatory part.
We can listen to all the pods we want on Google Podcasts for free and watch everything on YouTube. Even Fascist YouTube don't have this discrimination towards Russia.

So why the hold up?

[EazyE2]

Any update as to when Podcasts will be available in Russia?

If they are not available when The Joe Rogan Podcast become exclusive to spotify on January 1st what will you offer so the Russian Market can listen to it? 

[GeorgeFeb]

Podcasts should've been available worldwide from the beginning.

Complete and total discrimination. My bet is that Swedish folks still have a war grudge, lol.

[Elena]

Hey there @EazyE2, @maxim_dv and @GeorgeFeb,

Thank you for your posts. 

We can confirm that we're still working on adding podcasts to our catalog in Russia.

There is already an existing idea about this here and recommend leaving a +Vote to support it. We always take new ideas and feedback into consideration to improve the app.

Thanks for the feedback, we appreciate it. We're always one reply away if you have any further questions 🙂

Cheers!

[Asgoret]

Hi @Elena !

Is there any new information? If you are searching for some talk-head for the loud announcement it won't be working in Russia because we haven't any talk-head like Rogan or somebody on his level.

There is a lot of podcasts that already very interesting in your base (e.g Zavtracast, The New Stack Makers). All you need is to enable podcasts). 

[GeorgeFeb]

Hey, switch to the USA in your account and listen to JRE, no probs. Although you'd either have to use a free account or pay ten bucks for premium. I use a free account specifically to listen to Joe - exactly what I do atm, ha-ha.

[leonidt]

You can't exactly do that, you have to use an American credit card, Spotify region depends on where your payment method was issued.

[GeorgeFeb]

If you want a premium account, then yes!

But after 14 days you'd have to use a VPN like you're in some USA city coz Spotify thought you were abroad, mmm, such a clever service, ha-ha. Not a problem, but I use a free VPN and since videos can't be switched off, my traffic goes through the roof. Abominable implementation of the videos on Spotify. Seems like even when I listen in the background it eats too much traffic. I thought it doesn't, but I was wrong. There's simply no option in the app's settings to turn the videos off. Tremendous.

Anyways, talking about the podcasts for the Russian peasants, still no go, Elk? Still angry about that Russian-Swedish war? How woke, ahahahahah.

Ok guys, carry on.

[Mihail]

Hey everyone,

Thanks for reaching out.

We understand where you're coming from and will make sure all your feedback reaches the right teams. We always aim to improve and you can be sure that your voice will be heard. We're constantly working on expanding the content availability in different regions, se we recommend keeping an eye on the app, as well as on our Newsroom. Make sure to also upvote and subscribe to the idea that @Elena posted, if you haven't already.

Keep in mind that accounts must be set to the actual country you reside in, otherwise log in and synchronization issues might come up. If you're using Premium, the payment method must also match the country your account is set to. Note that VPN is not supported and if you're using one, issues are expected behavior.

Hope this was helpful for you. If you have questions, you know where to find us.

[skalle]

wondering why it takes so long ;\
goverment should not have any issue with podcasts ;\
its just weird, 6 months of asking and all we got - we understand issue ;\

[leonidt]

What's even more ridiculous is that we can still listen to Rogan with a free account. Get a paid one, Rogan gone.

[GeorgeFeb]

That's so preposterous we can't have a Podcasts for Russia, Ukraine, and many other countries while all the pods are available for all the countries via Google Podcasts and other services. I'm all Google either way, and I like Google Podcasts even though the app is quite limited, but still has everything I need.

[GeorgeFeb]

@skalle hey mate, logically they should launch the pods for Russia sometime in January. Just a thought.

Obviously the podcasts should've been available worldwide from the beginning.

[skalle]

This topic created in july 2020?

Mid-april right now, still nothing except "we understand issue", "Russia is important part of spotify community" or "create and vote for topic in Live Ideas"

I mean, we know we're not the biggest market, we know we're not even in top5 and have regional subscription price, but we all heard spotify launch in Russia was kinda succsessful (premium subcount in Russia is well above expected?)

And we still didn't even get date or normal response, is our issue in work? Is that in queue at least?

[Jeremy]

Hey @skalle,

if it was up to us, all the content on Spotify would be available for everyone around the world. Please do understand, that setting up different licensing agreements, ensuring content creators are being reimbursed accurately for content streamed in different regions, creating the necessary technical infrastructure and also navigating the different regional legislation and copyright authorities is not a simple task.

To answer your questions - bringing more content to different markets is always a continuous effort. This is not a project with a start and end and something that can be put in a queue.

Once content is actually released, the work continues backstage to ensure it can also stay up.

We cannot give a clear deadline when or if something is going to be available in a given country simply because this is not entirely dependent on us and we cannot speak for any of the other parties involved. So besides a "As soon as we can", we can't really give you another answer.

Hope you understand.

Take care!

[leonidt]

Can someone from Spotify explain how come your original programming isn't available worldwide? Joe Rogan, specifically. This is your own product, exclusive to your platform since January this year. What sort of limitations do you experience that won't allow streaming your own show to your subscribers? This is blatant discrimination, you just cut us out from accessing the product we are paying for.

[rxln]

It's real fascism and discrimination against nationalities. The exclusive podcast is promoted as free and accessible to everyone, but not available in Russia and other CIS countries. Other countries can easily get it, but it's just redirecting to the main page for us.