Spotify Adopts Apple HLS for Video Podcasts to Enable Cross-Platform Distribution

Spotify announced today that Spotify for Creators and Megaphone will adopt Apple's HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) protocol, the same technology Apple introduced for video podcasts in iOS 26.4. Once that rollout completes, Spotify-hosted shows will be able to distribute and monetize video on Apple Podcasts without any changes to existing setups, TechCrunch reported. Separately, creators on five supported third-party hosting platforms can already publish video directly to Spotify now.

Whether any of this applies depends almost entirely on where a show is hosted. As of November 2025, nearly half a million shows and over 390 million users had streamed a video podcast on Spotify, per TechCrunch. The infrastructure behind that scale is expanding, but along specific, platform-supported pathways.

Spotify for Creators HLS video podcasts: who gets what, and when

Two separate developments are bundled in today's announcement, with different timelines.

Creators on five supported third-party hosts can already publish video podcasts to Spotify and earn revenue through the Spotify Partner Program. Spotify's Distribution API is now officially supported by Audioboom, Audiomeans, Podigee, Podspace, and Libsyn, Engadget reported today. Libsyn moved first among the group, announcing two weeks ago that its creators could publish video to Spotify immediately. Libsyn also confirmed it is a partner in Apple's HLS video rollout, with that support described as "coming soon." Spotify did not say today when the other four supported hosts will follow on Apple Podcasts, so their status on that front remains unconfirmed.

The HLS upgrade for Spotify for Creators and Megaphone, which is what enables distribution to Apple Podcasts, has no confirmed timeline. Spotify plans to complete it later this year, Engadget notes, and confirmed that audio-only RSS feeds will remain available for listeners using apps that don't support HLS. Until then, the "publish once, reach both platforms" benefit for Spotify-hosted creators is still a future state.

Feature access across the five supported hosts is not uniform. Spotify says "API partners can choose which of these features they'd like to support in their platforms," per Engadget, meaning monetization programs, video analytics, and workflow depth will vary by platform. Creators on hosting services outside the Distribution API have no direct path to Spotify video distribution at this point.

On the Apple side, the partner network was already broad before today. By two months ago, nearly every major hosting company with more than 2% of new episode market share had committed to delivering HLS video to Apple Podcasts, according to Triton Digital. Acast, Omny Studio, ART19, Simplecast, PodBean, and Captivate are already in or committed to Apple's program, with Transistor, Audiomeans, RSS.com, and Podigee also named as incoming partners. Spotify completing its own HLS integration connects its hosting stack to that same delivery layer.

What HLS actually changes for creators

HLS is not new technology. Apple built it to solve a specific mobile video problem: the protocol automatically adjusts resolution in real time based on available bandwidth, so a listener moving from home Wi-Fi to a weak cellular signal gets a degraded stream rather than a stalled one, per TechCrunch. Microsoft, Google, and Twitch all use it, Engadget reports.

For podcast creators, three capabilities are relevant. HLS allows seamless switching between video and audio-only streams within the same feed, which matters for audiences who watch at home and listen while commuting. It supports offline downloads for video episodes. And it enables dynamic ad insertion, where ads are swapped into streams programmatically rather than being baked in at upload time, Engadget notes.

That last capability is what open-standards advocates cite when discussing HLS's appeal for monetization. Spotify has also announced additional creator earning options alongside the HLS upgrade, including direct sales and new partner integrations, per TechCrunch. The company also lowered its eligibility requirements for video monetization earlier this year, extending access to more creators before this distribution expansion arrives.

The openness question: Apple's proprietary format as the new default

HLS is proprietary technology built and owned by Apple. It is not open in the way RSS is, the foundational standard that has kept podcasting distributed and platform-independent since its beginning. As HLS becomes the default delivery format for video across both Spotify and Apple Podcasts, Engadget warns that it "could concentrate power in the podcast industry in a way it wasn't before."

The Podcast Standards Project has proposed a path that would preserve distribution independence: embedding HLS streams inside RSS feeds using the podcast:alternateEnclosure tag. In the project's framing, this approach would give creators adaptive streaming while keeping their feeds genuinely platform-agnostic, rather than tying delivery to any single platform's infrastructure, per the Podcast Standards Project last year. Fountain's beta had already implemented HLS video via alternate enclosure as of last year, and Pocket Casts was listed among apps building toward the same approach.

That case is unproven at scale, and the evidence for it comes primarily from standards advocates and hosting stakeholders with clear incentives to promote RSS-compatible alternatives. Whether HLS-in-RSS achieves meaningful adoption, or whether most creators default to platform-managed integrations because they're easier, is still genuinely open.

What to watch

Spotify has been building toward this since it launched video podcasts in 2020, TechCrunch reported. Today's announcement adds expanded third-party host support and new monetization pathways to an HLS upgrade that is still months away from completion.

The near-term picture by creator situation: Spotify-hosted shows gain a path to Apple Podcasts distribution and monetization once the HLS rollout completes later this year, with no confirmed date yet. Creators on the five supported third-party hosts can reach Spotify's video audience now; Libsyn is also confirmed as a partner in Apple's HLS program, while the other four hosts' Apple-side timelines remain unannounced. Creators on unsupported platforms have no near-term path to either program.

The one question that will shape how much of this matters is whether the open-standard route gains traction. If the Podcast Standards Project's HLS-in-RSS approach attracts enough app and host support, Spotify's adoption of Apple's protocol could, as that group argues, paradoxically help keep video podcasting distributed across independent platforms. If it doesn't, the format question will have defaulted to Apple's infrastructure without much of a fight.