Spotify has unveiled a new feature for your daily commute. And it’s got a lot more than music in it.
Taking full advantage of its recent podcast acquisitions – Gimlet Media, Anchor, and Parcast – the company has rolled out Daily Drive.
The feature incorporates news podcasts alongside music recommendations. NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and Public Radio International will provide news audio clips. Music and news recommendations will update multiple times a day, meaning your evening news and music listening won’t be the same as in the morning.
Daily Drive represents Spotify’s broad efforts to aggressively grow its podcast listener base as well as its podcast offerings. As described by the music streaming giant, the new feature mixes personalized music with “timely world updates from reputable sources.”
Daily Drive also follows other podcast-centric features. Last week, the company rolled out human-curated podcasts to around 5% of its users in the UK, United States, Canada, Mexico, Sweden, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina as part of a test. Podcast themes include comedy, geek culture, motivational walking, and true crime, among others. With this new feature, Spotify aims to improve podcast discoverability.
Doubling down on its podcast features, the company has also posted a new job listing – News and Documentary Podcast Producer.
Working out of New York, the selected candidate will work as a producer for pre-production, production, and distribution of Spotify’s internal News-focused podcasts. The job will also include managing and producing content for publication on all platforms as well as audio production.
Of course, the posting signifies a continued podcasting expansion for Spotify, which is also a continued non-music expansion. For most of this year, Spotify has been resolutely expanding its podcasting footprint, a strategic move designed to dramatically lower content costs associated with music recordings and publishing.
The selected candidate will report directly to Natalie Tulloch, Spotify’s Director of Planning and Ops in Content Partnerships.