Right now, there’s a handful of live audio chatroom platforms on the internet. We have Clubhouse, Facebook Live Audio Rooms, Twitter Spaces, Spotify Live (formerly Greenrooms), and Amazon’s upcoming Amp. Spotify Live had a fund from which it paid creators on the platform. Now, according to The Verge, Spotify just shut down its Spotify Live fund, and it did so rather quietly.

Usually, if a company pulls the plug on something like a creator’s fund, you’d expect them to announce that. However, Spotify did so rather surreptitiously. Rather than a blog post or press release, Spotify informed people via email. The email informs creators who registered for the fund that Spotify “[plans] to shift toward other initiatives for live creators”.

Why did Spotify shut down the Spotify Live creator fund? Who knows?

We’re not sure just why the company brought the ax down on the program. When The Verge reached out for comment, Spotify didn’t respond. We don’t expect to get an answer soon because of how quietly the company has been about it so far.

One can guess that the number of people using Spotify Live is below what the company expected. While Spotify is a popular platform in and of itself, there’s some stiff competition from Clubhouse, Twitter, and Facebook. Maybe Spotify just isn’t doing the numbers. Because of this, paying the creators might actually be a loss for the company.

Plenty of people were probably really looking forward to earning income through their live podcasts. It’s even worse for people who gained enough of a following to warrant the income.

Did anyone get paid yet?

One question on everyone’s mind is whether anyone was paid yet. The answer to that is most likely no. There was a webpage that said payouts would begin sometime this year. Later on, the same webpage was updated, and it said sometime later in the summer; around June.

Spotify said that it’s going to shift toward other initiatives for live content creators, so there could be another program or venture in the works. Right now, we’re going to need to wait and see what the company has up its sleeves.