The Platform That Built Its Name on Writing Just Went All-In on Video
Substack started as a writer's sanctuary. Back in the early 2020s, the platform positioned itself as the antidote to algorithmic chaos—a place where writers could build direct relationships with readers who actually wanted their long-form work. No ads. No algorithm deciding what deserved visibility. Just writers, readers, and the written word.
Then something shifted.
By early 2025, Substack had quietly become something different. Video posts arrived. Livestreaming capabilities rolled out. Short-form video feeds launched. And now, in January 2026, the company announced a dedicated TV app—a full-screen, couch-ready platform for consuming Substack video content.
On the surface, it makes sense. Video is where the audience is. Platforms like YouTube and Patreon have built massive creator economies around video. If Substack wants to compete for both creators and viewers, video isn't optional anymore.
But the Substack community's reaction tells a different story.
The top comment on Substack's official announcement: "Please don't do this. This is not YouTube. Elevate the written word." Another popular response: "You guys have gone from saying Substack is the best home for longform writing/writers to 'Substack is the home for the best longform—work.' I get trying to evolve, but this just seems like another venture capital-fueled idea."
This backlash isn't just nostalgia. It's a fundamental tension about what Substack is becoming. And it raises a much bigger question: Can a platform succeed by trying to be everything to everyone? Or is Substack losing the thing that made it special in the first place?
Understanding Substack's Original Value Proposition
When Substack launched in 2017, the creator economy didn't exist yet. Patreon was still early. YouTube had been around for a decade but felt like a place for vlogs and music videos, not serious long-form commentary. Twitter was imploding in terms of visibility and revenue opportunities for creators.
Substack identified a specific gap: writers and commentators who wanted to build sustainable income directly from readers without platform interference. No algorithm. No feed competition. No content moderation disputes.
The mechanics were elegant. Writers could post essays. Some content stayed free. Some went behind a paywall. Readers could subscribe at varying price points. Substack took a cut (currently 10% on paid subscriptions), and creators kept the rest. It was direct, transparent, and fundamentally about the relationship between creator and audience.
This positioning worked. By 2022, Substack had over 500,000 active publications. By 2024, the platform claimed millions of active readers. Notable writers like Anne Helen Petersen, Kashmir Hill, and dozens of other journalists, essayists, and commentators moved significant portions of their audience to Substack. Some quit their traditional media jobs to build independent newsletters with Substack audiences.
The platform's brand became synonymous with serious writing. Long-form. Thoughtful. Subscriber-supported. In a media landscape fragmented by algorithms and attention-hijacking notifications, Substack offered something rare: a place where depth mattered.
But growth has limits. After reaching a certain scale, audience acquisition becomes harder. Creators inevitably hit saturation points. And the company needs to justify its $750 million Series C valuation and previous funding rounds. One way to do that is to expand what the platform is for.
Substack's active user base is significantly smaller compared to major platforms like YouTube and Instagram, highlighting its niche status. Estimated data for Substack based on available information.
The Video Evolution: From Experiment to Core Strategy
Substack's pivot to video didn't happen overnight. It happened in stages, each one presented as a natural extension of the platform rather than a strategic pivot.
2022: Video Posts Arrive
Substack started allowing creators to embed videos in their posts. This felt incremental. A writer could include a short video essay or clip alongside their written piece. Still text-first. Still long-form focused. Video was just another media type you could use.
2023-2024: Monetization and Livestreaming
Then Substack began treating video as a standalone format. Creators could post video content directly, without written text. Livestreaming capabilities rolled out, letting creators broadcast to their audiences in real time. Both features became monetizable—creators could earn revenue from viewers who watched their video content.
At this point, the platform had made a subtle but significant shift. Video wasn't a supplement to writing anymore. It was a separate content type with its own revenue model. A creator could build a successful Substack publication purely on video.
March 2025: The Short-Form Feed
Then came the move that really signaled the strategic shift. Substack launched a TikTok-like short-form video feed in its mobile app. Infinite scroll. Algorithmic discovery (despite the platform's original anti-algorithm positioning). Twenty-second clips and trending sounds.
This was no longer about supporting long-form creators. This was about competing directly with TikTok and Instagram Reels. The company added a feature explicitly designed to maximize engagement through algorithmic recommendations rather than direct creator-to-subscriber relationships.
Some creators loved it. Short-form video creators from other platforms could build audiences on Substack. The discoverability helped new creators get visibility without needing to already have a following.
Others felt betrayed. The core appeal of Substack had been the rejection of algorithmic feeds. Now the platform had built one.
Estimated data shows high concern levels regarding Substack's shift to video, with platform identity and algorithmic influence being the most significant issues.
The TV App: Full-Screen Video Ambitions
The TV app announcement takes this evolution to its logical conclusion. Substack is no longer positioning itself as a platform for long-form writers who happen to use video sometimes. It's positioning itself as a streaming platform, period.
Here's what the TV app offers:
For Viewers:
- A "For You" algorithmic feed highlighting video content
- Recommended videos based on viewing history
- Different feature access depending on subscription tier
- Paid content previews for free subscribers
- Dedicated sections for specific publications
Coming Soon (According to Substack):
- Audio posts and read-alouds
- Enhanced search and discovery
- In-app subscription upgrades
The feature set is deliberately structured to echo YouTube and Netflix more than it echoes early Substack. There's a "For You" feed (YouTube's algorithm). There's tiered access (Netflix's subscription model). There are "publications" that operate like channels (YouTube's creator channels).
Substack even updated its brand messaging to accommodate the shift. The new tagline: "Substack is the home for the best long-form—work creators put real care into." Notice the deliberately vague dash. Not "long-form writing." Not "long-form essays." Just "long-form work." Video included.
The company's official blog post framed the TV app as the natural next step: "Now these thought-provoking videos and livestreams have a natural home on the TV, where subscribers can settle in for the extended viewing that great video deserves."
It's a logical argument. Video content does deserve a dedicated viewing experience. Watching Substack videos on a phone is cramped. A TV app solves that problem.
But the community's reaction suggests the logic isn't resonating with early Substack believers.
Why the Community Is Pushback: The Core Value Proposition Problem
The backlash isn't really about video existing on Substack. It's about what video represents in terms of the platform's identity and values.
When people chose Substack, they weren't just choosing a distribution platform. They were choosing a philosophy. A platform that rejected algorithmic manipulation. A place that favored depth over virality. A space that paid creators sustainably rather than forcing them to chase engagement metrics.
Video changes all of that.
Short-form video inherently rewards engagement metrics. It's designed to be meme-able, shareable, algorithmically boosted when it goes viral. The monetization is built around watch time and recommendation metrics, not direct subscriber relationships. A creator's short-form video succeeds not because their subscribers intentionally sought it out, but because the algorithm decided it was worth pushing into others' feeds.
This is fundamentally different from the Substack newsletter model, where a subscriber consciously chooses to open a creator's content each time it arrives.
Several commenters made this exact point. One wrote: "The whole appeal of Substack was that it was anti-algorithmic. You chose what you were interested in. Now you're basically building a second YouTube."
Another critique focused on resource allocation. Early Substack was a lean operation with limited engineering resources. Those resources went toward features that supported long-form creators: better writing tools, subscriber management, payment infrastructure. Now those resources are being diverted to video infrastructure, player optimization, and algorithmic recommendation systems.
From a creator perspective, this raises a practical concern: Is Substack still the best platform for text-based writing? Or are the company's incentives now shifting toward creators who produce video content that performs well algorithmically?
Another layer of the backlash connects to venture capital expectations. Substack has raised significant funding (the Series C round valued the company at $750 million). VCs don't want a platform that's "sustainable and profitable for writers." They want exponential growth. They want network effects. They want a dominant platform in a specific category.
The problem is that Substack was already dominant in the "creator-owned newsletter" category. To grow from there, the company needs to expand into adjacent categories. Video streaming. Podcasting. Maybe eventually social media.
But each expansion dilutes the focus and strains resources. And it moves the platform away from the specific value proposition that made early Substack unique.
One commenter framed it sardonically: "So Substack is now competing with YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Patreon, and LinkedIn. What could go wrong?"
Substack's growth from 2017 to 2024 shows a significant increase in both active publications and readers, highlighting its success in the creator economy. (Estimated data)
Competitive Dynamics: Why Substack Feels Forced Into This
Here's the thing though: Substack's expansion into video isn't irrational. It's actually a pretty rational response to competitive pressures.
Consider what's happened to creator economics since Substack launched:
YouTube's Creator Ecosystem Has Matured
- Creators can monetize through ads, Shorts, channel memberships, and super chats
- The platform takes a cut (typically 30-45% on channel memberships)
- But the audience is enormous
Patreon Stayed in the Race
- Patreon added creator monetization tools like exclusive posts, early access, and video integrations
- The platform maintained its focus as a creator support tool
- But Patreon also struggled with growth and never achieved YouTube-scale influence
TikTok Created the Short-Form Video Monopoly
- TikTok created a creator fund that pays based on views
- Pairing that with the ability to build audiences from zero without prior followers was revolutionary
- For short-form creators, TikTok is often still the primary platform
Instagram and Reels Became Serious Competition
- Instagram's Reels feature directly competes with TikTok
- Meta's resources let them iterate quickly
- Creators can build significant audiences on Reels alone
In this landscape, Substack faced a genuine problem: It was capturing a valuable but narrow slice of the creator market. Long-form writers who wanted subscriber support. That's a real market, but it's limited compared to the broader creator economy.
Video creators have multiple options (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram). Podcasters have multiple options (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube). But long-form written creators had fewer sustainable options before Substack—and Substack is still perhaps the best one.
Expanding into video lets Substack grow its audience by capturing creators who are currently on other platforms. A short-form creator making decent money on TikTok might not leave TikTok for Substack. But if Substack has strong monetization, discovery, and a growing audience, maybe they'd use it as a secondary platform.
From a business perspective, this makes sense. From a user perspective (at least the perspective of early Substack believers), it feels like mission drift.
The Instagram TV Parallel: Why Substack Isn't Alone
It's worth noting that Substack isn't the only platform launching dedicated TV apps. Instagram just announced "IG for TV," a new experience letting users watch Reels on television starting with Amazon Fire TV.
This is a broader industry trend. As streaming moves to living rooms and couch time increases, tech platforms recognize that there's value in optimizing content consumption for TV. Netflix proved that TV-optimized video experiences work. Now every platform with video content is pursuing TV-optimized apps.
For Instagram, this makes sense. Reels is already a core feature. A TV experience just extends that.
For Substack, the move is more fraught because video is still relatively new to the platform. Most Substack subscribers still think of it as a newsletter platform first. Launching a TV app when many subscribers don't regularly watch Substack videos on their phones feels premature. It's presenting video as core to Substack's identity before the community has accepted that it is.
But from a competitive standpoint, Substack probably needs to make these moves. If video becomes more central to the creator economy, and Substack doesn't have strong video features, the platform becomes less relevant for creators making career decisions about where to build their audiences.
YouTube leads in both monetization options and audience reach, making it a dominant platform for creators. TikTok and Instagram also offer strong audience reach, while Patreon focuses on monetization tools. (Estimated data)
What the Numbers Tell Us: Growth and Retention Pressures
Substack doesn't publish detailed metrics, but there are some signals about what might be driving this strategy.
In 2024, Substack had grown to over 500,000 active publications and millions of active readers. That sounds substantial, but compare it to competitor scale:
- YouTube has over 2.5 billion logged-in users per month
- TikTok has over 1 billion active users
- Instagram has nearly 2 billion active users
- Patreon has millions of creators and tens of millions of patrons
Substack's growth has been impressive, but the platform is still a niche compared to broader social and video platforms.
For a company that's raised $750 million in funding, being a niche is a problem. Investors expect returns. They expect growth trajectories that justify the valuation. A platform that's "pretty good for writers to build newsletters" is sustainable but not particularly exciting from a VC perspective.
Expanding into video, livestreaming, and short-form content is a way to grow the TAM (total addressable market). Instead of competing just for long-form creator attention, Substack can compete for all video creator attention.
But there's a cost to this strategy: It dilutes focus and confuses brand identity.
Feature Rollout Strategy: A Closer Look at What's Coming
Substack has been cagey about the exact timeline for new features, but the announced roadmap gives us clues about where the platform is heading.
Audio Posts and Read-Alouds
This is particularly interesting because it signals Substack's intent to become an omnichannel creator platform. Writers who don't want to create audio content themselves can have the platform automatically convert text to speech. This dramatically lowers the barrier to creating podcast-like content.
The implementation matters enormously. If Substack does read-alouds poorly (robotic voices, bad pacing), creators will stick with dedicated podcast platforms. If Substack gets it right (natural-sounding AI voices, good segmentation and metadata), creators might be tempted to use Substack as a distribution platform for podcast content.
Enhanced Search and Discovery
Substack's current search and discovery features are minimal compared to YouTube or other platforms. The TV app needs better discovery tools to help viewers find content. But this also signals that Substack is prioritizing algorithmic discoverability over the original model where subscribers actively chose what to read.
In-App Subscription Upgrades
This is a revenue maximization move. Currently, viewers might need to leave Substack to upgrade to paid subscriptions. Building that upgrade funnel into the app increases conversion rates. It's a straightforward growth optimization.
Dedicated Publication Sections
This mimics YouTube's channel structure, giving each publication a home base where viewers can see all content from that creator. It's a useful organizational feature that also encourages binge-watching behavior (viewers stick on a publication's channel longer).
Substack primarily focuses on subscriber relationships for monetization, unlike YouTube and TikTok, which emphasize algorithmic engagement. Estimated data.
The Monetization Reality: How Substack Makes Money From Video
Here's the part that doesn't get much discussion in the community backlash: Substack's monetization model for video is still fundamentally based on subscriber relationships, not algorithmic engagement.
Once a creator has a paid subscription base, Substack takes its 10% cut. That's true whether the content is written or video. A creator with 1,000 paid subscribers at
For creators to move to video full-time on Substack, they'd need to build a paid subscriber base large enough to sustain them. The "For You" feed and algorithmic discovery help them get initial audiences, but the actual revenue still comes from subscribers choosing to pay.
This is fundamentally different from YouTube (where creators earn revenue per view, not per subscriber) or TikTok (where the creator fund pays based on video views and engagement).
So in a way, Substack is trying to have it both ways. It's adding algorithmic discovery to help creators find audiences. But once those audiences exist, Substack's monetization model falls back to the subscriber relationship model.
This is actually a competitive advantage. Creators who build audiences on Substack own their subscriber relationships. Unlike YouTube or TikTok, the algorithm can't arbitrarily suppress a creator's reach. Once someone's a subscriber, they'll see that creator's content.
But it also means Substack is less attractive for creators who want to maximize engagement metrics and algorithmic reach. If a creator's goal is to get their content in front of as many people as possible, Substack's subscriber-based monetization is less aligned than YouTube's view-based monetization.
The Creator Perspective: Who Benefits, Who Loses
Let's think through how different types of creators are affected by Substack's pivot:
Long-Form Writers (Newsletter Creators)
- They benefit from improved distribution (TV app, better discovery)
- They lose focus and engineering resources (company is splitting attention between writing and video tools)
- They see the platform's brand shifting away from "the place for writers"
- Some feel abandoned as video creators get more platform investment
Video Creators (New to Substack)
- They get a new distribution channel with TV-optimized viewing
- They get access to a creator-friendly monetization model (10% fee, subscriber-based)
- But they're competing with YouTube (which has massive scale and sophisticated tools) and TikTok (which has better algorithmic promotion)
- For them, Substack is likely a secondary platform, not primary
Creators Attempting to Multiformat Content
- These creators benefit the most. They can post newsletters, videos, and audio content all on one platform
- The company is building more tools to support this vision
- But execution matters enormously—fragmented tools are worse than specialized tools
Emerging and Early-Stage Creators
- The TV app's discovery features could help unknown creators get audiences
- But they'd still need to build paying subscribers, which takes time
- Compared to TikTok or YouTube, Substack has less algorithmic leverage to help them reach large audiences
The Substack TV app is highly rated for its monetization model and full-screen experience, providing creators with a new revenue channel and viewers with an engaging way to consume video content. (Estimated data)
Technical Considerations: Building a TV App Well
Launching a TV app sounds simple but involves significant technical work that the Substack community might be underestimating.
UX and Navigation TV interfaces are fundamentally different from mobile interfaces. You're navigating with a remote (usually), not a touch screen. The interaction model is completely different. Menus need to be larger. Touch points need to be easier to target with directional buttons.
Substack has to build a TV-first navigation experience, not just port their mobile app to a larger screen.
Video Infrastructure Streaming video reliably at various quality levels to millions of TVs requires robust infrastructure. Substack doesn't have Netflix's experience with video delivery. They'll need to either build this expertise or rely on third-party video infrastructure.
Content Recommendations Algorithmically recommending videos is different from algorithmically recommending short videos (like the short-form feed). Long-form video recommendations need to understand user preferences at a deeper level. What length of video do you prefer? What topics? This requires machine learning infrastructure that Substack probably needs to build.
Live Streaming Stability The TV app presumably supports livestreaming (since Substack added livestream capabilities earlier). Livestreaming to millions of TVs reliably is a different challenge than livestreaming to mobile phones. The quality expectations are higher.
All of this requires engineering resources. The implicit cost of the TV app is that Substack's engineering team is dividing attention between improving writing tools, improving video tools, and now improving TV viewing tools.
Market Positioning: The Substack Narrative in 2026
How is Substack positioning itself with the TV app launch? The official messaging is careful but revealing.
From Substack's blog: "Substack is the home for the best long-form—work creators put real care into and subscribers choose to spend time with. Now these thought-provoking videos and livestreams have a natural home on the TV, where subscribers can settle in for the extended viewing that great video deserves."
Notice what's happening here. The company is arguing that video (at least long-form video) is consistent with Substack's values. Substack was never anti-video. It was anti-algorithmic feed, anti-algorithmic recommendation, pro-long-form.
Long-form video—thoughtful essays on video, documentaries, long-form video essays—can live within that philosophy. The problem is that the platform is also supporting short-form video, which contradicts this narrative.
Substack is trying to position video expansion as a natural extension of the platform's core values. But the community isn't buying it. To early Substack believers, the platform's core value was textuality and writer-centricity, not content longevity.
Strategic Questions: Is This Expansion Too Broad?
There's a deeper strategic question haunting this expansion: Is Substack trying to become a platform for all content creators, or a platform for a specific type of creator (long-form creators)?
Because those are actually very different strategies with very different outcomes.
Strategy One: Be the Platform for All Creators
- Compete with YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Patreon, etc.
- Build video infrastructure, livestreaming, audio, text, images
- Use algorithmic discovery to help new creators build audiences
- Rely on community and network effects
- Requires massive engineering resources and capital
- Requires competing on their turf (and they've won so far)
Strategy Two: Dominate Long-Form Creator Economics
- Be the best platform for writers, video essayists, podcasters, and other long-form creators
- Focus on tools that serve these creators specifically
- Build community around quality and depth over virality
- Accept that the TAM is smaller but focus on profitability and sustainability
- Requires less capital, more sustainable long-term
- But it's a smaller market with fewer growth opportunities
Substack seems to be trying to do both, which is typically the worst strategic position. You end up being decent at both but great at neither.
A truly long-form-focused Substack would have said "no" to short-form video. It would have doubled down on writing tools, launched better audio features for podcasts, and let video creators use YouTube.
A truly all-creator platform would have launched with more aggressive monetization for video creators (giving them a better cut, not just subscriber support) and more sophisticated algorithmic promotion.
Instead, Substack is doing something in the middle, which is likely to satisfy neither group.
The Creator Exodus Question: Will They Leave?
One of the most important outcomes to watch is whether established Substack writers start migrating to other platforms.
A few scenarios:
Scenario One: Some Writers Leave for Ghost or Similar Platforms Ghost is a newsletter platform that positions itself as a more writer-focused alternative to Substack. If Substack continues prioritizing video investment over writing tools, some writers might migrate.
But this requires Ghost (or similar platforms) to build a competing ecosystem. Reader discovery, cross-newsletter recommendations, and payment infrastructure are all harder to replicate than just having a newsletter tool.
Scenario Two: Writers Stay but Reduce Investment More likely, writers stay on Substack but reduce their investment in the platform. They use other platforms for video and audio. They see Substack as one part of their distribution strategy, not the centerpiece.
Scenario Three: Generational Divide Younger creators entering the space in 2025-2026 might not have emotional attachment to "original Substack values." They might just see Substack as another platform offering decent creator economics. For them, video and text being on the same platform is convenient, not a betrayal.
The outcome probably involves elements of all three.
Lessons for Platform Strategy: The Broader Implications
Substack's expansion tells us something important about the creator economy: Platforms face intense pressure to grow, and that pressure often leads to feature creep and platform drift.
This isn't unique to Substack. Twitter started as a simple status update service and became a news platform, then a discourse platform, then a platform for everything. Instagram started as a photo app and added Stories, Reels, and now nearly everything TikTok does.
The pressure comes from a few places:
Venture Capital Expectations VCs invest in founders' visions of billion-dollar companies. A platform that's "sustainable and profitable for creators" isn't exciting. A platform that's "the dominant infrastructure for all creators" is.
Competitive Pressure If YouTube has video and Substack only has text, YouTube wins the creator. Substack has to match feature parity or lose.
Audience Growth Limits There's only so much growth available in the long-form creator market. To grow beyond that, platforms have to expand the market they serve.
User Expectations Once people get used to doing multiple things on one platform (email, messaging, photos, video on your phone), they expect to do everything on each platform.
The result is that most platforms eventually become general-purpose platforms trying to do everything. Few maintain focused positioning long-term.
Substack wanted to be different. It wanted to be the platform that stayed focused on one thing and did it well. But staying focused means accepting smaller market size, slower growth, and lower valuations. For a company with $750 million in funding, that's a very hard case to make.
Looking Forward: What Happens Next
The TV app is just the beginning. If Substack's expansion strategy continues, we'll likely see:
Year 1-2 (2026-2027):
- Stabilization of the TV app and audio features
- Further refinement of algorithmic discovery
- Experiments with additional monetization (ads, branded content, etc.)
- Some churn of writers unhappy with the direction
- Growth in video and podcast creators using Substack as a secondary platform
Year 3+ (2028+):
- Substack either establishes itself as a meaningful competitor in video/podcast/audio creation
- Or it becomes clear that Substack's strength is in subscriber-supported long-form content, and video/audio are secondary
- The company either refocuses on its core strength or continues the expansion
- Possible acquisition by a larger platform (unlikely but possible)
The question that will determine Substack's long-term success: Can the platform maintain the community and creator alignment that made it special while expanding into new categories? Or does expansion inevitably destroy what made the platform valuable in the first place?
The Community's Role: Can Substack Recover Trust
The backlash to the TV app announcement is important because it signals creator discomfort with the direction. But backlash doesn't always lead to exodus. Sometimes it leads to course correction.
Substack could potentially address community concerns by:
Reinvesting in Writing Features Announce major improvements to the newsletter experience: better editor tools, improved analytics, better writer community features.
Clear Messaging About Values Explain specifically how video expansion aligns with long-form values, not contradicts them. Show which features are for long-form creators specifically vs. broader creator support.
Resourcing Signals Publicly commit to maintaining writing as the core while expanding adjacent formats.
Community Governance Give creators more voice in feature prioritization and strategic decisions.
But taking these steps requires Substack to move against venture capital expectations. It requires the company to accept being "a platform for long-form creators" instead of "a platform for all creators."
That's the real strategic tension underlying the TV app announcement.
The Bottom Line: Evolution or Decline
Substack's TV app represents a critical strategic moment. The company is betting that expansion into video, audio, and multiformat creator tools will let it compete more effectively with YouTube, Patreon, and other platforms.
This might work. Video creators might discover Substack's subscriber-based monetization model and prefer it to view-based monetization on YouTube. A unified platform for all creator types could develop powerful network effects.
Or it might not work. Substack might find that it's not good enough at video to compete with YouTube, not good enough at short-form content to compete with TikTok, and still good enough at long-form writing that it becomes a divided platform trying to serve multiple audiences poorly.
What's certain is that Substack's original value proposition—being the platform for long-form creators who want to own their relationship with subscribers—is being diluted. Whether that dilution leads to a larger, more valuable platform or a less focused, less special platform remains to be seen.
The community's skepticism might be justified. Or it might be nostalgia for a version of Substack that was never sustainable long-term. The next few years will tell us which it was.
FAQ
What is Substack's TV app?
Substack's TV app is a dedicated application that lets users watch Substack video content on television sets. It features a TikTok-like "For You" algorithmic feed highlighting videos from creators, recommended content based on subscription tier, and dedicated sections for each publication where viewers can explore all videos from specific creators. The app is designed to provide a full-screen, couch-friendly viewing experience for longer-form video content.
How does the Substack TV app work?
The TV app uses algorithmic discovery to show users recommended video content through a "For You" feed, similar to TikTok or YouTube's home feed. Viewers access content based on their subscription tier (free or paid), and the app also provides paid content previews for free subscribers. The platform plans to add audio posts, read-aloud features, enhanced search capabilities, and in-app subscription upgrades to improve discoverability and monetization.
What are the benefits of the Substack TV app for creators?
Creators benefit from expanded distribution and a new revenue channel through TV viewing. The TV app provides better discoverability through algorithmic recommendations, helping creators reach audiences who might not be actively seeking their content on mobile apps. Creators maintain Substack's subscriber-based monetization model, where they keep 90% of subscription revenue, rather than relying on view-based ad revenue. The full-screen TV experience also makes longer-form video content more engaging.
Why are some creators critical of Substack's video expansion?
Many early Substack creators and users worry that the platform is abandoning its core identity as a place for long-form written content. They argue that the original appeal of Substack was that it rejected algorithmic feeds and prioritized direct creator-subscriber relationships. The expansion into short-form video, algorithmic discovery, and livestreaming feels inconsistent with these founding principles. Some critics suggest this represents classic venture capital-driven mission drift rather than organic platform evolution.
How does Substack's TV app compare to YouTube and Patreon?
YouTube dominates video streaming with massive scale and sophisticated creator tools, but monetizes creators primarily through ad revenue and view-based payments. Patreon focuses on patron support and community building but isn't primarily a video platform. Substack's TV app attempts to blend subscriber-based monetization (like Patreon) with video discovery (like YouTube), maintaining the 90% creator revenue split that attracted writers to the platform initially. However, Substack lacks YouTube's enormous audience and algorithmic sophistication.
Will the TV app cannibalize text-based creators on Substack?
There's genuine concern that platform resources devoted to video infrastructure, livestreaming, and algorithmic recommendation systems represent engineering investment diverted from writing-focused features. If Substack prioritizes video creator acquisition and algorithmic promotion over writing tools and community features, text-based creators might feel deprioritized. However, text and video can theoretically coexist, and many successful creators are building multiformat audiences combining text, video, and audio content.
What content can creators publish on the Substack TV app?
Creators can publish long-form videos, livestreams, and video essays on the TV app. Substack plans to add audio content and read-aloud features, allowing creators to automatically convert written essays to audio. The platform supports both free and paid video content, letting creators use the same subscription-based monetization model available for text content.
How does Substack plan to help creators succeed on the TV app?
Substack's strategy includes improving algorithmic discoverability through the "For You" feed to help creators reach new audiences, adding enhanced search features for better content discovery, implementing in-app subscription upgrades to reduce friction in the payment process, and creating dedicated publication sections where viewers can explore all content from specific creators. The company also plans read-aloud features to make text-based content more video-friendly and livestreaming improvements.
Is Substack abandoning its core mission?
This is the central question the community is wrestling with. Substack hasn't explicitly stated it's abandoning written long-form content. The company argues it's expanding what "long-form" means to include long-form video and audio. But the strategic direction—investing heavily in algorithmic discovery, short-form video feeds, and TV apps—suggests the company is repositioning itself as a general creator platform rather than the platform specifically for long-form writers.
What's the competitive pressure driving Substack's expansion?
Substack faces genuine competitive challenges. YouTube dominates long-form video. TikTok dominates short-form video. Patreon handles patron-based creator monetization. Spotify and Apple Podcasts dominate audio. By only serving text-based creators, Substack limits its addressable market. Expanding into these categories lets Substack compete for all creators, but requires massive resource investment and risks diluting the platform's original focus and strengths.
Key Takeaways
- Substack's TV app represents a strategic pivot from long-form writing focus to multiformat creator platform competing with YouTube and Patreon
- Early Substack creators view the expansion into video and algorithmic discovery as inconsistent with the platform's original anti-algorithm, writer-centric values
- The company faces classic venture capital pressure: growth expectations that force expansion beyond the original focused market segment
- Substack's subscriber-based monetization model (10% cut) remains more creator-friendly than YouTube's view-based model, but this advantage is lost if the platform can't compete on discovery and audience size
- The platform's expansion strategy risks becoming a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none competitor against specialized platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Patreon
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