Spotify started testing a premium podcast service back in April this year. In the meantime, Apple announced a Premium Podcast service wherein creators could directly charge users for the subscription. Now Spotify is opening up access to Podcast subscriptions for all US creators. With the help of Spotify’s anchor tool, creators will mark select content as subscribers-only.

The music streaming giant says it learned a thing or two during the testing phase. Spotify has tweaked pricing and functionality as per the feedback. Previously, creators could choose between $2.99, $4.99, or $7.99 subscription tier. However, Spotify learned that creators wanted more flexibility and thus offered 20 price points starting from as low as $0.49 and as high as $150.

In the future, Spotify would highlight previous pricing points of $0.99, $4.99, and $9.99. Meanwhile, the remaining 17 price points will be listed below. There is a good chance that listeners might prefer other podcast apps. For this reason, Spotify has added an subscribers-only RSS feed that can be used on other podcasting apps. Furthermore, Spotify will allow creators to download a list with the contract addresses of their subscribers. The feature is intended to help creators engage better with audience and maintain a direct relation. Most importantly, creators are not locked to one platform.

Typically creators are wary of putting up their content on any platform. They fear losing their audience if they are banned or blocked from using the platform. Spotify lets creators download customer databases, which is reassuring as they can directly stay in touch with their listeners. Spotify will extend premium podcast subscriptions to Internationa creators.

It would be interesting to see how well the Spotify premium podcast would fare, especially since Apple’s Podcast Subscription is off to a bumpy start.