Spotify Puts Podcast Suggestions Into Music Recommended Playlist

Indira Datta - May 04, 2019

Spotify is spending millions to become a major player in podcasting by placing suggested episodes into algorithmically generated playlists.

The famous online music service, Spotify is investing a lot to become the main podcasting broadcasting platform by putting podcast episodes into the recommended music playlist.

These short episodes have been arranged by the algorithm into a list of suggestions for different individuals. The company has yet to have a extensive podcast recommendation tool or curated podcast playlists, so this may be the company's upcoming actions.

Spotify has focused on expanding its territory to the podcast industry. The company is thinking about spending $500 million to acquire podcast networks like Parcast, Gimlet Media and the Anchor podcast creation platform. There haven't been many changes in these podcast platforms yet, but perhaps the company will use them to advertise and create programs with its exclusive content.

The testing playlist, which is called "Your Daily Drive", provides recommendations based on users' interests and listening habits. In addition to providing songs, Spotify inserts podcasts with short duration and news content into a list of suggestions. However, according to Dan Seifert at The Verge, the podcast on his list was in Portuguese, which he didn't know. The recommended podcasts were not produced by Spotify.

According to Spotify spokesperson, these new products and experiences are still in the process of testing, so they have not been able to publish anything at this time.

It's possible that Spotify might be running a program test in countries that use Portuguese and it accidentally appeared during Dan's experience. This led to him having to listen to a podcast suggestion that had nothing to do with the content he had seen and heard before.

The fact that Spotify has designed algorithms to create suggestion lists including music and podcasts based on each person's interests is desirable for users. With the successful launch of Discover Weekly playlist, a somewhat similar feature with podcasts included would potentially bring some of its 100 million users to the podcasting world.