Last year, Spotify made a low-key purchase, paying just under $50 million for Podz, a podcast discovery site. Podz’s technology is used in a new UI test that is now being rolled out to certain Spotify customers. A new button has been added to the toolbar that starts a TikTok-style feed of podcasts, which may help you locate your next pod-binge. Alternatively, if this modification irritates you, there are alternative music services available.
Anyone who has used TikTok, or even just seen someone else scroll through it aimlessly, will be immediately familiar with the new UI on Spotify’s app. You swipe up to navigate between podcasts, which start playing as soon as they appear on the screen. These 60-second clips are meant to give you a flavour of the material. If you enjoy what you hear, you may listen to the episode right away or save it aside for later. In the Tweet below, there’s a demonstration.
The algorithm developed by Podz, which does not need podcast makers to provide their own footage, is most likely the secret to this functionality. It employs machine learning that has been trained on more than 100,000 hours of podcast audio, according to TechCrunch. I’m not sure where they placed that bot, but the findings are currently being sent out to a select group of Spotify customers. Due to the fact that this is simply a test, Spotify may decide to cancel or significantly change the experience before releasing it.
