In recent news, Spotify has taken its first steps towards personalizing their user’s podcast recommendations. Spotify’s first step towards personalization was the launch of its “Your Daily Podcast” playlist, which offers users a personalized list of podcasts they could be interested in. After seeing positive results during a testing period, Spotify has decided to roll out the feature to all users in the US, UK, Germany, Sweden, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
The playlist, which personalizes user’s podcast recommendations, mixes podcasts that users already follow along with Spotify’s own recommendations. To gather a list of podcasts that users might be interested in, Spotify takes into account listening history and podcasts users currently follow. The playlist is set to feature trailers along with long podcasts and shorter news segments. Emily Rawitsch, Director of Product Design, states that, “Listeners might be shown an episode in a series they already listen to; a show about a similar topic to something they already like; a popular show in a genre they like; or a show with a host they already enjoy.” Spotify plans to stick with listening behavior as a determining factor for podcast recommendations with plans to role out a further developed algorithm in the future.
In my opinion, I think this is an awesome move for Spotify. There really hasn’t been a great place (at least not that I know of) to discover new podcasts and with Spotify’s new feature, this could be the beginning of a better discovery process. Their current music discovery playlists and features are awesome and if they are able to replicate the same thing with podcasts, I think this could be a big hit. I currently only listen to two podcasts, so I am pretty excited to be able to use Spotify’s new discovery feature to find new podcasts.
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