Although Spotify is primarily focused on music, the streaming service also tried to achieve success in podcasting. In hindsight, not the Swedish powerhouse’s most successful idea, but with new tweaks, the dream remains alive.
Yes, it’s nice to listen to your favorite music on the go. We’ll never deny that. But listening to a podcast, as we do at WANT, for example, is also a pleasure. Spotify knows that too, which is why it’s making some changes in that area.
Podcasts on Spotify
Spotify sees podcasts as an important part of its streaming service. Financially, however, it is not doing what was expected of it, so the company is coming up with some changes. Artificially intelligent changes, of course.
As Netflix does with series, Spotify also wanted to get its exclusive Original content. They struck deals for the rights to The Joe Rogan Experience, Call Her Daddy and Armchair Expert, among others. A nice idea, but it seems to be time for a breath of fresh air.
Where exclusivity used to be the magic word, now it’s AI. In its latest conversation with shareholders, Spotify CFO Paul Vogel and CEO Daniel Ek revealed that it wants to be more efficient in order to make more profit. For example, it wants to use AI to translate English-language podcasts into other languages so more people can listen to it.
That really sounds to me like my childhood trauma of movies on German television (read: dubbed dregs). Let alone translating jokes that are really only funny in the original language.
More Jeffrey from Carglass
By the way, it was also about AI and that makes you shiver even more. Just listen to Ek: “Creating an audio ad is pretty expensive. With generative AI, the cost should come down for Spotify. You can use the same voice actor, but instead of one ad, you can even create hundreds of thousands that are created individually for each user.”
So yeah, that’s more Jeffreys from Carglass talking about their star power.
So the conversation with shareholders was mostly about making more money and less about creative content. It would only get really interesting when Spotify talks about how it really wants to differentiate itself in terms of podcasts. Will there be new names, will existing deals, such as Joe Rogan’s, be renewed?
Spotify made a profit of 32 million in recent months and gained 16 percent paying members. It raised prices from €9.99 to €10.99 a month for the paid subscription. To further increase profits, a more expensive subscription with higher sound quality is also in the pipeline.