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.

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.

Editors' Recommendations

Simon Cohen
Contributing Editor, A/V
Simon Cohen covers a variety of consumer technologies, but has a special interest in audio and video products, like…
Spotify set to finally announce a price increase, WSJ reports
Spotify Premium on an iPhone.

In what only can be described as a Friday afternoon news dump meant to soften the ground before an earnings call the following week, The Wall Street Journal reports that Spotify is about to increase its monthly subscription fee for the first time.

Spotify Premium is set to increase by $1 a month to $11, according the unsourced report. Spotify itself has yet to announce any changes. Spotify has long resisted any price increases, but the move would bring it in line with all of its major competitors, some of which have seen recent increases to that $11 mark.

Read more
How to master your equalizer settings for the perfect sound
An equalizer from eqMac.

Everyone likes to hear music their own way, whether it's soaked in bass, has a little extra treble for definition, or highlights some punchy mids to make guitars growl a little more. Mastering the equalizer of your headphones, stereo receiver, or streaming service's built-in EQ is an art form in and of itself, whether you're a producer, engineer, DJ, or just a music lover with an iPhone and a Spotify account.

The equalizer, or EQ, has come a long way since your dad's graphic EQ with the tiny little sliders that he never quite understood -- although messing with them somehow made his Zeppelin records sound "rad." But for most devices you'll encounter these days, it's all done digitally.

Read more
Spotify’s hi-fi lossless tier could arrive this year — as a paid upgrade
Spotify app icon on iPhone.

Spotify could finally launch its much-anticipated hi-fi tier this year, according to a report from Bloomberg. Spotify's CEO, Daniel Ek, has openly discussed the launch of a new premium tier to compete with Apple Music and Amazon Music  -- both of which have added lossless, hi-res catalogs at no extra cost -- but Ek has been coy about the timing for such a tier.

Internally, the new subscription level is being referred to as "Supremium," according to the report, and it may include expanded access to audiobooks, in addition to lossless audio versions of the company's music library. Bloomberg's reporting doesn't indicate exactly when Supremium will launch, but it says that the new service will initially only be offered to non-U.S. markets.

Read more