Greetings from Prague. Spotify put out two numbers this week that pull in opposite directions. First it bragged about a record margin and the highest operating profit in its history. And quietly, at the same time, it started testing a button that lets a paying listener skip, in a single tap, the very ads that keep the rest of the podcast business alive. I held the two figures side by side and they only made sense once I looked at whose ads that button actually skips.

Spotify has started showing some Premium users a Skip Ahead button on podcast ads. One tap moves the listener past the entire ad break, straight to the show. Today people skip fewer than a tenth of ad breaks by hand, according to the firm Bumper, because it takes nine taps. Now it takes one.

The button is limited to paying users and to a handful of markets so far, among them the United States and Britain.

So why would the platform undercut the podcast advertising it spent years building its audio portfolio on?

Because not all of that advertising is its own. Semafor noticed that the button spares the ads Spotify sells itself and hits the ones publishers sell. What is at risk is host-read and dynamically inserted advertising, the kind that funds networks and independent shows. Advertisers paid a premium for unskippable space precisely because it guaranteed the whole audience heard the message.

Spotify built its podcast business by buying exclusives like The Joe Rogan Experience and the studio The Ringer. Now it hands paying listeners a way around the ads, and the test runs only on the slice of the audience that already accepts paying for a better experience.

Creators reacted fast. Tommy Vietor, co-founder of Crooked Media and host of Pod Save America, wrote at Spotify: "Very cool of @Spotify to try and destroy the podcast industry. What a great partner!" Podnews called the feature a significant threat to ad-funded shows.

The size of the bet shows in the American numbers. US podcast ad revenue reached roughly 2.86 billion dollars in 2025, up 17.6 percent year over year, according to a joint IAB and PwC report. European networks sit on the same model. Acast, with 140,000 shows and more than 600 million dollars paid out to creators, is among the networks whose ads the button showed up on.

Spotify is betting that a paying listener skipped the ad anyway and this just makes it faster. Networks and independent shows are betting on exactly that break. And the button works only inside Spotify. Shows that also route their audience to Apple Podcasts or YouTube keep their ads there.

Five things you need to know

  • Spotify passed 300 million paying subscribers, the first large audio streamer to do so. The real story sits under the milestone. Operating profit of 655 million euros, up 61 percent year over year, and a gross margin of 33.4 percent, the highest in the company's history. Full article
  • From 1 February 2027 YouTube doubles the entry bar to its partner program for new applicants, from 4,000 to 8,000 watch hours, or from 10 to 20 million Shorts views. Existing creators are not affected. Full article
  • Roughly 497 million dollars flowed into the creator economy in the first seven months of 2026, a quarter less than a year earlier. More than four fifths went to a single round of the AI music firm Suno. Newcomers were left with 4 percent of the capital. Full article
  • Disney and TikTok opened Marvel and Star Wars characters to creators, and fan videos will also run in Disney's own Disney+ Verts feed. The same day, Disney said its streaming profit had more than doubled year over year to 712 million dollars. Full article
  • The British government is cutting around 500 million pounds from the BBC over three years and, from spring 2027, will ban under-16s from the main YouTube. The YouTube Kids app is exempt. Both measures land on children's animation. Full article

Creator agencies are turning into studios

StudioB, a production company founded by creator Brandon Baum, made a series called Spot a Fake Fan for Virgin Media O2. According to a Digiday report from 7 August, it grew from 50,000 organic views to a million per episode and gathered 43 million views. The brand footed the bill, and the output ran like a returning TV show. That is the pattern Digiday now describes across the market.

Budgets move into programming. Kyle Hjelmeseth of the agency G&B Digital Management launched &Beyond Creators' Studio, which develops 10 to 12 formats at once. His executive producer Cyndi Steele frames the difference from one-off deals through return. "It is something that feels always on and continues to talk to the audience for the year," she told Digiday. Executive producer Colin McRae summed up the shift on LinkedIn: "Creator agencies are becoming studios. Brands are financing entertainment. Creators are building media companies." The question of what to make this quarter, he says, turns into what this audience will come back for next week.

Authorship is the expensive part. Once AI makes finding creators and editing versions cheaper, the idea and the taste do not get cheaper. "When execution becomes cheap, authorship becomes expensive," McRae writes. That logic has already consolidated in Europe. On 8 June, Accenture announced the acquisition of the creator and social agency Whalar, moving more than 170 people across five countries, with Whalar folding into Accenture Song. For a European brand director, the line item changes. Instead of a campaign booked by the quarter comes a relationship with a studio that holds the format, the audience and the production together.

Best of CreatorsHub (and other stuff)

Labels license AI music, the stars say no

The three largest labels have signed deals over the past year to train AI on their music. Their stars refuse to give consent. "Madonna does not want her music trained on," her manager Guy Oseary said on The Tim Ferriss Show. Singer SZA reacted to her music being trained on with a post on Instagram: "There's nothing you could ever say to me to make this okay."

The difference is what a label owns. It can sell rights to a recording it holds, but it cannot sell an artist's name, voice and likeness without consent. Warner settled with Suno, Universal with Udio, Sony is still litigating. Spotify builds its remix tool entirely on opt-in and added a deal with Merlin, which represents 15 percent of the global recorded-music market. Whether anyone wants such remixes at all is still unknown. "This whole thing could be a pet rock," lawyer Jordan Bromley told Bloomberg. Labels hold the signed deals, but not the one raw input the model rests on. That input is the consent of the names people know.

Number of the week, 45.2 billion minutes

That is how many minutes Bluey sent to viewers, making it the most-watched title across all of streaming for the second year running, according to Nielsen. It carries 154 episodes, most of them under ten minutes. The half-year top five in kids' streaming for 2026 is led by Bluey, followed by SpongeBob, Gabby's Dollhouse, PAW Patrol and Ms. Rachel.

  • Ms. Rachel came to Netflix straight from YouTube, where she had over 13 million subscribers, and generates more than a billion minutes watched per episode.
  • SpongeBob is growing. Among adults 18 to 34 it ranks second, and the animated comedy has become comfort TV for Gen Z.
  • Moana in the same table dropped 64 percent, from 11 to 4 billion minutes.
  • New names on the chart arrive from outside, from YouTubers and from Sony, not from the big studios. Brands like the Czech Mateřídouška and Ábíčko hold that same audience memory, but still lack the step to a returning video show.

Deals of the week

  • Berlin's Passionfroot raised 15 million dollars in a Series A led by Insight Partners, and has raised more than 21 million in total.
  • AI music firm Suno raised 400 million dollars at a 5.4 billion valuation, in a round led by Bond Capital.
  • Accenture is buying the agency Whalar and placing it under Accenture Song, terms undisclosed.
  • Spotify signed a licensing deal with Merlin for AI covers and remixes.
  • YouTube and NBCUniversal teamed up, and from early 2027 Peacock Premium will be part of a bundle with YouTube Premium.

Next week I'm watching whether Europe's networks speak up on Spotify's Skip Ahead. Until then, greetings from Prague.

By Tereza Tiller