The race to build a podcast recommendation engine and why it matters
Ever since Spotify plopped down over $400 million to buy three podcast companies, there’s been plenty of speculation about how it would leverage its recommendation algorithms to improve podcast discovery. After all, its music playlists — curated by both humans and algorithms — have driven songs onto the Billboard Top 100 list and turned previously-unknown artists into overnight stars. Now imagine applying these recommendation features to podcasts, a still-nascent medium for which discovery is still a challenge.
And sure enough, this past week we’ve learned that Spotify is testing out new designs that would feature podcasts more prominently within its app. The Verge’s Ashley Carman reported that Spotify was displaying podcast recommendations next to music on a personalized playlist called Your Morning Drive. And then a few days later, Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw reported that Spotify was testing a version of the app that gave podcasts more prominent placement within the app’s libraries, making it so it’s easier to navigate to them. “We want you to get there in two clicks versus seven,” said Chief Financial Officer Barry McCarthy
Spotify isn’t the only app that’s forging ahead into personalized podcast recommendations. Pandora has spent over a year developing what it calls its Podcast Genome Project, a…
