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Spotify is now starting a series of podcast playlists tests that will involve the creation of episode suggestions organized around specific genres, according to a source close to the company. Spotify does not currently allow people to discover new shows. It is therefore a first step to help creators find a wider audience.
Five playlists will begin to appear today at about 5% of users in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Sweden, Colombia, Chile and Argentina. The themes are comedy, real crime, "geek culture", "walking (motivation)" and "relaxation (mindfulness)". Playlists should evolve over time as Spotify experiment their presentation, which means that they could be updated. at different rates and offers a rotating selection of exclusive Spotify broadcasts and third party podcasts. The way curators choose episodes is unclear: if they create agreements with networks for placement or simply select the content they recommend.
The main objective of these tests is to improve the discoverability of podcasts, a problem that affects the industry. Generally, people find new podcasts when they hear about it in other shows. That's why cross-promotional ads are so important and have become the focus of at least one startup. Some podcast applications also use human curators, although often these lists offer full program recommendations rather than individual episodes. Apple, for example, creates organized lists of programs recommended by its team. In the case of Apple, he built relationships with networks and creators to present their work.
Custom playlists are an interesting addition to Spotify, but they do not move the industry forward. It will be more interesting to see how playlists generated with data and algorithms come into play later, as Spotify learns more about what people want to hear and what they like. For the moment, these playlists are vast, but the discovery could be improved if each person received an individualized list of episode recommendations based solely on their tastes. I would not be surprised to see this soon.
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