Photo Credit: Spotify
Spotify has launched its ‘Your Daily Podcasts’ playlist. The playlist will help train its algorithms to make more personal podcast recommendations.
The feature has been in testing for a few months now with positive results. The feature is now available to all users in the United States, United Kingdom, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Germany, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand.
‘Your Daily Podcasts’ mixes podcasts that you follow with recommendations from Spotify’s algorithm. Previous listening history and favorited podcasts influence the results of the playlist’s suggestions.
In addition to podcast episodes, the playlist will also feature trailers and news bites. The playlist isn’t committed to a specific format or a ratio of long or short episodes.
Emily Rawitsch, Spotify’s Director of Product Design — says no show will get preferential treatment over another in the playlist. Bold words coming from a company that has on multiple occasions stiffed artists out of playlist promotion.
Rawitsch says the playlist is a free-for-all right now — it may show episodes of a series you’ve already listened to, for example.
Despite the new feature roll out, Spotify hasn’t provided any insightful information into how the algorithm works. They’ve shared no info on how it will determine if the content is interesting to listeners beyond listening history and show follows.
Podcasts have a much wider range of appeal than music genres, so they can be harder to classify. Aspects like the hosts’ voice, episode content, and topic can all influence a show’s appeal.
It is also unclear if Spotify is transcribing shows behind the scenes to feed the algorithm information for making recommendations.
Podcast growth in 2019 has been phenomenal with the focus from Spotify and Apple Music. But podcast discovery is still troublesome for many listeners. A playlist with new content may help to some degree, even if it is ultimately just another vector for exposure.