Spotify’s Plan for Podcasters
- Hunter Yang, Vanessa Huang
- Oct 18, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Jan 12, 2021
Run chart of podcast listeners in the U.S. (Courtesy of Business Insider)
During the past few years, podcasts have taken over the world, and are continuously becoming popular. According to Business Insider, “by the end of 2020, there will be nearly 106 million monthly active podcast listeners in the US — and YouTube and Spotify are in a tight competition, to maintain and steal the No 2 spot for podcast listening, with Apple Podcasts ranking first.” Nowadays, almost every music platform is creating podcast sections that allow podcasters to make their podcasts and also enables the audience to listen to the podcasts from the platform. Among the music platforms, Spotify has been working on its program for podcasts and has updated a few functions.
Not Just Listening
Podcasts are no longer audio entertainment only; Spotify has collaborated with several podcasters to let the audience take a look at what their favorite hosts have been doing behind the microphones. With this audio-visual function, podcasters and their fans are able to know each other better. If the listeners just want to stick to the listening part, you can still turn off your screen and take a nap while commuting without worrying about running out of battery. Since this new visual function is optional, listeners who prefer the previous way, that is, listening to the content only, will be able to enjoy the show as usual.
More Interactions
Podcasts are no longer audio entertainment only; Spotify has collaborated with several podcasters to let the audience take a look at what their favorite hosts have been doing behind the microphones. With this audio-visual function, podcasters and their fans are able to know each other better. If the listeners just want to stick to the listening part, you can still turn off your screen and take a nap while commuting without worrying about running out of battery. Since this new visual function is optional, listeners who prefer the previous way, that is, listening to the content only, will be able to enjoy the show as usual.
Podcast Playlists
Spotify, remaining one of the most popular music streaming services, has generated podcast channels for users that can be organized just like the music playlists. The playlists can now include podcasts, and the listeners can navigate their playlists like the ones for music. That is, they can love, save, and access to any of the podcast episode’s information. Last but not least, just like Spotify’s music page, once the listener has tapped into one podcast’s page, the platform will recommend a wide variety of shows and also full episodes of artists’ podcasts.
Adding Music to Your Podcast
In 2019, Spotify purchased Anchor, a platform for podcast creation. Recently, Spotify has updated the function to let people add songs to any episode of their podcasts without worrying about any copyright problems. On the other hand, this service also encourages the listeners to be creators, and to make their own playlists with music combined with talk segments.
Spotify’s podcast DIY page (Courtesy of Engadget)
Since the number of Spotify’s subscribers and the population of podcast listeners keeps rising constantly, we are sure that Spotify will work on their podcast area and do more to attract both podcast creators and fans. Stay tuned to see Spotify’s latest news and newest releases. (Ed. Ceria Huang)
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