What just happened? With more than one million podcasts now available on Spotify, it can be difficult for subscribers to decide what to listen to next. To help narrow down the search, Spotify on Tuesday introduced two new features designed to help users discover hot podcasts.
The Trending Podcasts charts will highlight the top 50 new and emerging podcasts while the Top list will feature the top 200 shows in a given region or category. Both charts will be updated on a daily basis to remain fresh.
As The Verge correctly highlights, podcast charts are ripe for abuse, especially those that rely on algorithms to determine rankings. A spokesperson told the publication that such gaming shouldn't be a concern on its platform as they have "overlapping systems" in place to detect and handle fraudulent activity.
While that may be true for third parties, one has to wonder if Spotify will play by the same rules.
Back in May, the streaming audio giant landed a deal to become the exclusive provider of The Joe Rogan Experience starting later this year. According to reports at the time, the multi-year arrangement was valued at more than $100 million. Surely it would be in Spotify's best interests to advertise the podcast as much as possible, but would that harm the integrity of its new rankings system?
The new features are rolling out today in 26 markets including Australia, Brazil, Sweden, the UK and the US, on both Android and iOS.
Masthead credit: radioshoot