Youtube is paying podcasters on its platform to make video versions of their content

According to a new report by Bloomberg, YouTube is offering certain content creators on its platform up to $300,000 to get them to convert their audio podcasts into video format. This comes after the company hinted several times at its efforts to drive more podcaster traffic toward the streaming site.

Between adding listening controls for video playback, and hiring Kai Chuk, a new “Podcast lead” to clean up the listening experience and take it in a new direction and even making background listening free in certain regions, the idea of Google Podcasts merging with Youtube has never looked more certain than today.

Bloomberg says that people who have “knowledge on the matter” (likely the content creators themselves, who have been asked not to be identified) have revealed to them that YouTube is offering $50,000, $200,000, and $300,000 “grants” to podcast networks for what could be used to help them buy the equipment necessary to convert their content to a more visual format.

At the time of writing this, Google declined to comment on the claims Bloomberg made, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that these are true. We also have no idea what sort of terms or conditions (strings attached) there may be with these grants. Will content creators be required to output a certain amount of videos or maintain a certain upload frequency in order to “pay their dues”? Maybe we’ll find out as this whole thing unfolds.

I’ve personally abandoned Google Podcasts already and subscribed to all of my favorite shows on YouTube in an effort to move over early, and there are very few shows that I used to listen to there that are not already on YouTube.

The only difference in this type of long-form content on YouTube at this time is that it’s audio-only with a static image for the video as it plays, but I’ve never truly cared about this. If YouTube wants to help content creators add a visual aspect to their shows instead of simply moving over all podcasts and asking them to add a static image, that’s also fine. However, I think it’s unnecessary but cool. What about you? Do you think this is a worthwhile investment, or do you just click the screen off with YouTube Premium and listen to podcasters on the video site instead?