Skip to main content

Spotify ramps up podcast discovery with ‘Your Daily Podcasts’ playlist

It’s no secret that Spotify has gone all in on podcasts. After making many investments in the medium from both a licensing and production point of view, it’s now getting serious about helping its listeners discover more of the podcasts that are on the streaming service. Launching Tuesday, November 19, Your Daily Podcasts is a personalized playlist that attempts to introduce you to new podcasts based on your previous listening activity.

Your Daily Podcasts works on both free and premium Spotify accounts, but if you’ve never listened to any podcasts on Spotify, the playlist may not appear in the app. Emily Rawitsch, Spotify’s director of product design in the company’s personalization group, told Digital Trends that in order for the algorithm to create a personalized podcast playlist, a user needs to have listened to at least four podcasts in the past 90 days.

Recommended Videos

It’s possible you’ve already listened to four podcasts and not even realized it. Spotify’s Your Daily Drive playlist, which launched earlier this year, combines music with podcasts, so if you’ve ever listened to that playlist, those podcasts count toward your four-podcast minimum.

So how does Spotify figure out which podcasts you might want to check out? It looks at your recent podcast streams and follows, and examines the type of content you’re listening to.

Genre, host, topic, and length of the podcast are all taken into consideration. Then, based on that data, the playlist could include:

  • The next episode in a series that you already listened to
  • A popular episode in a series that you listened to
  • A popular show in a similar genre
  • A show about a similar topic
  • A show featuring the same host/notable personality
  • Another show that has similar attributes (such as length and format)

Needless to say, there are plenty of other data sets that Spotify could exploit for even more personal recommendations like your location, or taking a look at podcasts that are popular with listeners who have a similar taste in music as you, but for now, the company is keeping things simple.

You can listen to Your Daily Podcasts in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Simon Cohen
Contributing Editor, A/V
Simon Cohen is a contributing editor to Digital Trends' Audio/Video section, where he obsesses over the latest wireless…
You can now design custom Spotify playlist cover art, right in the app
Spotify's Cover Art Creator tool seen on a phone screen.

Personalizing your Spotify playlist by uploading your own covert art image is a great way to put a visual stamp on your audio mix, but now, you can design that cover art right in the app.  Starting today as a beta feature in English in 65 markets, the "Create Cover Art" feature gives users the ability to pick backgrounds, create text effects, and add stickers to generate an original piece of cover art for their playlists. It's available to both free and Spotify Premium users.

Accessing the new feature is as simple as opening a playlist you've created, selecting the context menu (the three dots ... ) and choosing Create Cover Art. You'll then be given the choice to change the cover image (by uploading) or to create covert art.

Read more
Instagram’s Spotify integration makes saving songs a snap
A video playing on Instagram for iOS.

Instagram and Spotify can now be linked, giving you the ability to instantly save Instagram tracks to your Spotify favorites, without ever leaving Instagram itself. The new feature began rolling out globally on October 17, and it doesn't require a Spotify Premium subscription.

With millions of Instagram users uploading videos every day -- many accompanied by music -- there's an argument to be made that the Meta-owned social media network has become one of the most popular ways of discovering new tunes (yeah, OK, TikTok is probably No. 1). Until now, it's been easy enough to tap on a recognized track in the bottom corner of a video -- taking you to the song page in Instagram so you can see related videos -- but not so easy to capture that track name so you can listen to it later.

Read more
What is Pandora? Music, features, and pricing explained
The Now Playing screen on the Pandora desktop app.

One of the original music streaming services is a little service called Pandora. And while Spotify and Apple Music may be the more relevant tune meccas of 2024, Pandora music is still around and is a great way to indulge in many of your favorite albums, artists, and stations. 

But how much does a Pandora music subscription cost, and what devices can you enjoy this service on? We put together this exhaustive guide on Pandora to answer those questions, plus several others.
What is Pandora?
Pandora is a music-streaming service that gives you access to an immense library of albums, artists, playlists, and podcasts. With an emphasis on curation and recommendations, the Pandora app allows you to build “stations” that are algorithmically linked to the types of music you enjoy listening to. The more you listen, the more attuned to your preferences the stations get. 

Read more