Spotify on Wednesday announced a handful of new features designed to give podcast a more prominent place in its application as it fights with Apple and YouTube to become a preferred podcast destination for users.
The company says it will start recommending podcasts on its homepage and provide a following flow to keep up to date with the latest episodes of your favorite broadcasts. Soon, Spotify will also develop new tools for Podcast creators to suggest content and participate better with their fans in comments.
The changes, while relatively small, are part of Spotify’s growing efforts to compete with Apple’s PodCasts app and YouTube. The latter has invested more in podcasts in recent years. This month, for example, YouTube started its own weekly list of top podcast to challenge Spotify and Apple. This chart underlines some Significant differences between platforms In terms of what YouTube video viewers prefer to watch.
Meanwhile, Spotify has also invested in Podcast videos, allowing all creators to upload videos and encourage them with payments for successful broadcasts through its partners.
Despite these efforts, YouTube remains the service to beat the US, at least, where one -third of weekly Podcast listeners prefer the Spotify or Apple Google service.
Spotify reports that new Podcast recommendations on the Home tab have already begun to circulate worldwide and early feedback suggests that it is led to more podcasts, savings and concerts.
In addition, Spotify introduces a following flow that will serve as a special point where you can see all the latest episodes released by the podcasts you follow, instead of having to search throughout the application. (To access this feature, you will press on the podcasts button at the top of the app, then the following button appears on its right.)
Podcast creators will soon gain access to a new feature that allows them to show other content they report in their podcast episode that can also be found in Spotify – including other podcasts, songs, audiobooks, playlist and much more. This will be available in the coming weeks and will be on the episode page.
In a smaller sting, creators involved in their podcast pages comments in the application will be able to use emoji reactions to respond to fans.
The company notes that creators are still able to check when the comments appear or leave their appearance on their broadcasts or episode pages via the Spotify for Creators account.
