Spotify has a new plan to get people listening to podcasts, and it follows the blueprint of its music service in its focus on human curation. The company has launched three podcast playlists initially in six countries: the US, UK, Germany, Sweden, Mexico and Brazil.
‘Brain Snacks’ will focus on the educational side of things (“learn something new in the time it takes to make a cup of coffee” is the strapline) while ‘Crime Scene’ will focus on the popular true-crime genre. ‘Best Podcasts of the Week’ is self-explanatory. S
potify’s content boss Courtney Holt told The Verge that the new playlists won’t just focus on Spotify’s own shows. “The product only works if it has editorial integrity, and our editors have been given directive to pick what the best content is. It really has very little to do with whether or not we’ve made it,” he promised.
While these three playlists are the announcement, Spotify is clearly doing a lot more around curated podcast playlists already. In the UK, for example, the ‘Podcast Playlists’ section of its Browse screen also includes Spotify-curated playlists for comedy (‘Laugh Out Loud’), music (‘Talking Music’), football (‘Goal!’) and celebrities (‘100% Celebrity Interviews’) as well as an extension of Spotify’s ‘This Is’ brand of artist playlists to comedians like James Acaster, Katherine Ryan and Romesh Ranganathan.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…