Ask any Spotify Premium subscriber what their biggest issue with the service is and a decent proportion would say the muddled interface that places podcasts among music.
I’ve been complaining about it on this site for ages and, while entirely unrelated to my rants, Spotify is now doing something about it.
The app is now rolling out a new Home experience which features a dedicated feed for music, and another for podcasts and shows. Praise be to the audio streaming gods. “Dive straight into Music,” Spotify advises. What a novel concept from a music streaming app!
Spotify says this will help it provide more recommendations, but to many users, the option to have a less cluttered home screen is sure to be the biggest perk here.
In a blog post, Spotify says: “By creating these feeds, Spotify will help listeners to easily scroll through the type of content they’re looking for at that moment. “The updated interface will make the experience more personalised while allowing users to dig even deeper into their recommendations.”
Android users are first up, with the update now rolling out. iOS users face a little bit of a wait with Spotify promising word on the release in the “near future”.
Critics of Spotify’s current policy have expressed frustration with the incursion of podcasts into the main feed. Some users have also taken umbrage with the money Spotify is paying high-profile podcast hosts, while raising the cost of Premium subscriptions for music fans.
While users are going to have to like or lump podcasts within the main Spotify app, at least the company is making it more tolerable for people who’d like to ignore their presence.
“In the Podcast & Shows feed, listeners will be able to head straight to new episodes of their favourite shows,” the company adds. “They’ll also find personalised podcast recommendations. What’s more, listeners will be able to read episode descriptions, save to Your Episodes or start playing podcasts without leaving the page, so the experience all starts from one place.”
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