Software
Spotify launches podcast charts to help people discover new shows.
Spotify is redesigning its podcast charts today to help listeners find new shows and keep up with what people enjoy in their area. This adds a well-known and divisive aspect to Spotify in the podcasting industry , making the platform more on line with other famous brands, such as Apple Podcasts.
The first two podcast charts will be called Trending and Top. Trending, which is partially focused on the pace of growth in the number of viewers, involves 50 growing shows, while the Top will be the 200 most popular shows in the world and will be clustered by country.
Top, which currently operates in a much smaller form, can also be categorized into categories, such as industry, comedy and technology, in certain areas. Similar maps will be used in 26 countries , including the United States, Canada , the United Kingdom, Brazil and Germany. These will be published every day.
Podcast charts can be contentious, particularly when algorithms that decide their rankings are often opaque. Others are also seeking to mess with them, making people in the industry doubt their credibility. A Spotify spokesman informs The Verge that it has "overlapping mechanisms" in order to detect illegal activities and eliminate bad actors from the company.
In the past, Spotify fought listener bots trying to inflate music and royalties. For those cases, the opportunity to exploit the scheme was greater as the scammers were paying per listen, as long as they released and produced the songs. Podcasters are not charged to listen, which is one of the reasons Spotify decided to concentrate on the industry.
Still, people have been trying to figure out how to play podcast charts on other platforms. The charts could make shows more popular by exposing listeners to podcasts they haven't heard. In 2018, podcaster John Perotti was able to pay $5 to anyone online who wanted to get his tiny show number 55 on Apple 's best podcast list. The same could happen on Spotify as podcasters seek more attention and listeners.
