Guidelines for Music + Talk episodes

Music + Talk is available to creators in the following countries and regions:

Music + Talk episodes are only available on Spotify.

To ensure your episode gets published on Spotify, please be mindful of the following guidelines: 

1. Follow the Spotify for Podcasters community guidelines and the Spotify Platform Rules. Your Music + Talk episode should have a substantial amount of talk, and your show metadata (episode titles, episode description, show description, and cover art) should not contain content that violates our community guidelines or content policies. These include, but are not limited to, content that:

• Violates local laws or regulations
• Infringes the intellectual property rights of others
• Contains visually sensitive imagery or pornographic content
• Promotes hatred, harasses or puts individuals in harm's way
• Incites violence against an individual or groups of individuals 

2. Make sure that you have permission to use the content in your episode. Music used in episodes must be licensed appropriately. Episodes containing music that is not added through the Spotify for Podcasters’ music tool may result in your show being taken down.

3. You cannot monetize Music + Talk episodes with Spotify for Podcasters' monetization options. You are allowed to include your own ads, if you'd like, but you'll need to follow the below points:

• Your baked-in ads should be marked as ad segments in your episodes, which can be done by going to your episode builder, hitting the 3 dots next to the segment name and select Mark segment as ad. You can also mark this segment as an ad in all your episodes to save time.
• There must be at least 60 seconds of ad-free talk content on either side of the ad
• There must be at least 10 minutes of ad-free talk content between ads (irrespective of how much music separates the ads), and no talk ads are permitted in episodes that have less than 10 minutes of ad-free talk

4. Impersonation of an entity, artist, label, or creator is not allowed. Please use artwork and content that you have permission to use, and make sure that you’re not misrepresenting your affiliation with an organization or individual. You can indicate that you're not affiliated with an entity by adding words such as “parody”, “fan account”, or “commentary” to your metadata.

5. Content that crosses the line from critique or the expression of an opinion into targeted bullying or disparagement will not be tolerated. Please review the Spotify for Podcasters community guidelines and the Spotify Platform Rules to ensure that the content that you’re creating does not seek to attack an individual or group in a way that may be harmful to our platform and community.