Spotify wants to be more social than ever. With this goal in mind, the streaming platform has decided to launch a new comments section, which will be exclusively for podcasts.
Furthermore, it’ll be the creators who will have total control over the comments, being able to choose which ones will appear to the public and which ones will not. They can also disable the function completely or activate it in specific episodes only. To manage this function, creators will have to use the Spotify for Podcasters app or its desktop version. Through the app, they’ll receive notifications (e.g., for new replies or milestones reached) and they will also have access to a comprehensive podcast analysis.
The truth is that social functions have never been Spotify’s strong point. Until now, there were few things we could do: check the number of followers, conduct surveys, and little more. With comments, Spotify wants to encourage interactions between podcasters and listeners, just as is already possible on other platforms like iVoox or YouTube. To access the comments, we will have to scroll down in the application, right below the sound controls.
According to their own statistics, Spotify discovered that users who use social features not only come back more often, they’re also more likely to listen to new episodes in 30 days. In fact, the most active listeners spend twice as many hours per month enjoying podcasts.
For now, we’ll see comments appearing gradually. According to TechCrunch, “the feature will be rolled out slowly, starting this week from the consumer side (in podcasts that have chosen to display comments on their pages). Over the next month, the commenting option will be extended to all Spotify users“.
