Spotify on Wednesday introduced a handful of recent options designed to offer podcasts a extra distinguished place in its app because it battles with Apple and YouTube to develop into customers’ most popular podcast streaming vacation spot.
The corporate says it can start recommending podcasts on its Dwelling web page and supply a Following feed for staying up-to-date with the most recent episodes of your favourite reveals. Quickly, Spotify can even roll out new instruments for podcast creators to suggest content material and higher interact with their followers in feedback.
The modifications, whereas comparatively minor, are part of Spotify’s rising efforts to compete with Apple’s Podcasts app and YouTube. The latter has been investing extra closely in podcasts in recent times. This month, as an illustration, YouTube launched its personal weekly prime podcast record to problem Spotify and Apple. That chart highlights some main variations between the platforms when it comes to what YouTube’s video viewers desire to look at.
In the meantime, Spotify has additionally invested in video podcasts, permitting all creators to add video and incentivizing them with funds for profitable reveals via its Associate Program.
Regardless of these efforts, YouTube stays the service to beat within the U.S., at the very least, the place one-third of weekly podcast listeners desire the Google-owned service to Spotify or Apple.
Spotify says the brand new podcast suggestions on the Dwelling tab have already began to roll out to world customers, and early suggestions suggests it’s led to extra customers partaking with podcasts, saving, and liking reveals.
As well as, Spotify is introducing a Following feed that can function a devoted spot the place you’ll be able to see all the most recent episodes launched by the podcasts you observe, as a substitute of getting to look throughout the app. (To entry this function, you’ll faucet on the Podcasts button on the prime of the app, then the Following button that seems to its proper.)
Podcast creators will quickly achieve entry to a brand new function that lets them level to different content material they point out of their podcast episode, which can be discovered on Spotify — together with different podcasts, songs, audiobooks, playlists, and extra. This can develop into obtainable over the following few weeks and will likely be discovered on the episode web page.
In a smaller tweak, creators who take part within the feedback of their podcast pages on the app will be capable to use emoji reactions to reply to followers.
The corporate notes that creators are nonetheless in a position to management when feedback seem or choose out of displaying them on their reveals or episode pages through their Spotify for Creators account.
