Spotify went all-in on podcasts – they have invested heavily on this new format. Early this year, Spotify acquired Gimlet Media, a podcast network and producer which hosts shows like StartUp, Homecoming, Mogul, The Pitch, Reply All, The Cut, Science VS and Anchor which was a DIY podcasting startup that provides a set of tools that make it super easy for anyone(beginner and Pro) to create and monetize their own podcasts and for free for reportedly $300 million.
Spotify also acquired Parcast, a producer for crime, mystery and sci-fi podcasts for $100m. The audio streaming giant also partnered with BBC Studios and P&G to create more podcasts. They also partnered with Barack and Michelle Obama’s media company, Higher Ground Productions for a multiyear podcasting deal are the company’s efforts to help them find new users, keep the current ones, generate revenue while at it and increase profits as making podcasts inhouse is much cheaper than songs from music labels.
In their Spotify Wrapped Campaign, they summed up the listening habits of some 248 million listeners in which people took to social media to share together with a ton of memes – some of which are Apple Music users getting mad and jealous of Spotify users.
One huge take away was how their investment on podcasts is really paying off. More than 500,000 podcast titles are now available on the platform and podcast listeners have gone up by more than 50% since the year began with a 39% increase in podcast hours consumed by listeners quarter over quarter.
Spotify recently announced Your Daily Podcast that features personalized podcast playlists that use similar algorithms that power its curated playlists such as Discover Weekly and Daily Mix to increase the number of podcast listeners.
The platform is now bringing a new button that will help people find a podcast that’s interesting to them. The button will be on the hompepage of users in its free tier and will ask users to pick topics that interest them so that they can get podcast recommendations.
The recommendations will feature both Spotify-exclusive shows and non-Spotify-exclusive shows.
Spotify is one of the major podcast apps but there are other apps whose sole purpose is podcasts in which people have already settled on such as Pocketcasts and Overcast.
This new button will show up to people who have never listened to podcasts on Spotify and will be available to users in the US, Denmark, Great Britain, Brazil, Canada, Sweden, Australia, Mexico, Ireland, and New Zealand.
This feature will come in handy for new users as Spotify tries to figure out the podcast discovery problem that makes it difficult to find new shows as its only as good as someone’s listening habits.
With the coming year, Spotify wants to ensure its users to listen to more shows and make their investments worth it.
