Earlier in the year, Spotify announced a commitment to podcasts when discussing the future plans of the company. Alongside a revamp of their mobile app which gave podcasts 1-click access, they made several strategic purchases to expand their opportunities within the Podcasting industry.
After a long beta, the unveiling of ‘Spotify For Podcasters’ is the first step in their plan to start to edge out competitors such as Apple, Stitcher, Pandora and Luminary. With analytics and a growing userbase, Spotify might just become the go-to platform for Podcasters to upload, advertise and track progress.
Spending more than $300 Million USD they acquired uploading interface Anchor and major podcast production house Gimlet Media (Makers of Reply All, The Pitch and many more). Now they have the tools in-house, Spotify is putting the incentive for the hundreds of thousands of Podcast hosts to get their fans to listen via their platform.
It’s not their first time succeeding with analytics, their Spotify For Artists app and dashboard has proven a hit amongst its music creators, it’s also a key factor in why artists emphasised push fans to Spotify over other services. The new podcast interface gives show creators access to how their episodes are performing, how many listeners they have, who the listeners are, which are the most popular episodes, and curiously….. the music they listen to.
Writing along with the release, Spotify says the dashboard provides creators with “insights that will help you plan future episodes or get sponsors”. They also revealed the platform has over 200 million listeners across more than 75 countries, and use has doubled since the start of 2019. With Apple having only just revealed their insights platform for music, it will be interesting to see how long it takes them to catch up with their own version for its Podcast audience.