Spotify Launches New Program for Podcasters

By Janko Roettgers

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Spotify is beta testing a new program to get more podcasts onto its service. for Podcasters gives any podcaster the ability to syndicate their show via the music service, the company announced this week.

“Through this new platform that we’re testing, podcast creators who are hosting their elsewhere will be able to make their show available to Spotify users by providing us with their podcast feed,” the company said in a blog post . “This will easily make them available to our audience of more than 180 million listeners around the world.”

Spotify for Podcasters promises to give podcast producers access to stats about the performance of individual episodes, listener demographics, location, engagement and other data points. The big upside for podcasters is likely going to be that this gives them access not only to download and streaming numbers, but also some of Spotify’s more thorough audience intelligence.

It’s worth noting that Spotify isn’t actually asking podcasters to upload their audio files. Instead it is simply syndicating their RSS feeds, similar to the way companies like Apple and Google syndicate podcasts.

Spotify isn’t the only streaming service eyeing podcasts as a way to complement their music offering. Pandora has also been working on a way to more deeply integrate podcasts into its service, which has involved building a recommendation system the company calls the “podcast genome project.”