Spotify on Wednesday announced a handful of new features designed to give podcasts a more prominent position in its app as it battles with Apple and YouTube to become users’ preferred podcast streaming destination.
The company says it will begin recommending podcasts on its Home page and provide a Following feed for staying up-to-date with the latest episodes of your favorite shows. Soon, Spotify will also roll out new tools for podcast creators to recommend content and better engage with their fans in comments.
The changes, while relatively minor, are a part of Spotify’s growing efforts to compete with Apple’s Podcasts app and YouTube. The latter has been investing more heavily in podcasts in recent years. This month, for instance, YouTube launched its own weekly top podcast list to challenge Spotify and Apple. That chart highlights some major differences between the platforms in terms of what YouTube’s video viewers prefer to watch.
Meanwhile, Spotify has also invested in video podcasts, allowing all creators to upload video and incentivizing them with payments for successful shows through its Partner Program.
Despite these efforts, YouTube remains the service to beat in the U.S., at least, where one-third of weekly podcast listeners prefer the Google-owned service to Spotify or Apple.
Spotify says the new podcast recommendations on the Home tab have already started to roll out to global users, and early feedback suggests it’s led to more users engaging with podcasts, saving, and liking shows.
In addition, Spotify is introducing a Following feed that will serve as a dedicated spot where you can see all the latest episodes released by the podcasts you follow, instead of having to search across the app. (To access this feature, you’ll tap on the Podcasts button at the top of the app, then the Following button that appears to its right.)
Podcast creators will soon gain access to a new feature that lets them point to other content they mention in their podcast episode, which can also be found on Spotify — including other podcasts, songs, audiobooks, playlists, and more. This will become available over the next few weeks and will be found on the episode page.
In a smaller tweak, creators who participate in the comments of their podcast pages on the app will be able to use emoji reactions to respond to fans.
The company notes that creators are still able to control when comments appear or opt out of showing them on their shows or episode pages via their Spotify for Creators account.
