That's the move that would've been better for users, but it doesn't allow Spotify to use their already-popular product to bolster their nascent one, which is probably why they didn't do that.

It's far from new behavior for Spotify, though. They've been constantly twiddling with UI, algorithms, etc trying to optimize for profit margins over user happiness for years at this point. Last I knew their entire engineering structure is optimized for that, with the desktop client for example being carved up into wholly separate iframe "islands" (complete with dependencies in duplicate, triplicate, etc) managed by different teams to allow A/B testing of each pane without communicating with the teams responsible for other panes.

> but it doesn't allow Spotify to use their already-popular product to bolster their nascent one, which is probably why they didn't do that.

I think a good counter-example is Uber, with a separate app for ordering rides (Uber) and for ordering food (Uber Eats). Both apps are still bolstering each other by the brand recognition.

Additionally, the apps could still cross-reference each other in a subtle way. E.g. maybe when you type a podcast name in the regular Spotify it could redirect you to the Spotify Podcast app. Just like the Uber app sometimes nudges you to also order food.

In the case of Uber, I think it's more likely that someone who's used their ride service may be interested in ordering food than it would be for someone who's used Spotify for music to be interested in podcasts.

I do think you're right that more subtle nudges are probably fine. Some might begrudge them but such promotions are a lot more tolerable than directly pulling an entirely separate app into your existing app and then placing the newly imported bits in the spotlight.

You can order food in the Uber app - there's a big tab at the top in iOS.

I think there's huge pressure to "everything app" very disparate services. I've also noticed that Amazon now lets you pull up your Whole Foods code or pull up the Whole Foods storefront from the Amazon app.

You're right. I must have remembered wrong.. or maybe it has changed for worse recently?

My initial claim only works for Uber Eats. It can only be used for ordering food. There's a button to order a ride but it redirects to the Uber app.

Uber Eats seemed to be it's own thing, but now they seem to be tying them a bit more together. I've even seen the Uber app offering me the option to have food delivery setup while on my ride. Basically trying to give you the option to have food delivery arranged to show up to your destination around the same time you arrive.

But I believe you're right that initially they were more separate entities, but now it's kinda merged.

Except it's not quite the same as Spotify - when you try to order a ride, Uber doesn't dilute and replace found rides with food offerings which you don't need or want at that time. That's what Spotify did - they actually undermined their main feature to push podcasts and hurt/cannibalized their main value proposition to try to push another product that we didn't want when we opened the app.

Honestly, I think this could go much better if they just organized their damn software better and not damage their music offering with forced podcasts. Many of us would probably stay loyal and use it for podcasts as well if they made the experience great instead of forced.

Uber also is famous for having a GIANT app binary for "what should be a simple app", which they've gone on record as defending as necessary for international use. Maybe they didn't want to or couldn't continue to bloat the app.

To be fair they only became profitable last year, so for a long time there was no profit margin to "optimize"

Yeah this tracks with my experience in tech. All packaged and hyped under the brand of "Data Science".

Can't tell you how many times I was able to directly prove a change lead to a bad user experience only to be met with "Yeah but the data shows..." by some corpo cock sleeve of a manager or team lead.

All these shithead corps are actively monitoring AND MODIFYING USER BEHAVIOR without understanding human psychology or behavior science, because "The data shows"

IMO nothing short of a complete revolt in whatever fucking form that looks like.

I don't think two apps is the answer, they should just build a better distinction between music and podcasts into the existing app. A toggle at the top of the app that let you switch between music and podcasts would work, and that way you could still include the option to slot in a few songs between podcasts if that is how you enjoy your listen experience.

Maybe another example where one app does two things: AirBnB.

I am a host (holiday house) but regularly also travel and become a traveler. The experience and need is very different. In one “mode” I need offline availability and help in navigating the checkin time and the location and in the other one the calendar, bookings and money is my main concern. You can easily click on “switch to hosting” in the same app.

On mobile this is exactly how it works for Spotify. There is a filter at the top for podcasts and then it just shows podcasts. Good for finding something when going for a walk. The UI/UX on Apple's podcast app didn't work well enough for me (could be a me problem) to figure things out, sometimes their UI/UX decisions are odd burying things in menus.

So true. I actively rage against Spotify sometimes when I see all the podcast spam, that I can't turn off. I feel so insulted and used.

* * *

I'll never know, because I'm afraid to click on a podcast in Spotify for fear it will shove more of them in my face.

Using Spotify in CarPlay, for several months it used up most of the screen real estate to promote podcasts. When I open Spotify it's for music discovery, and the number of podcasts I'm interested in listening to at that moment is zero.

edit: in case it's relevant, I pay for Spotify Premium. This isn't a complaint about ads in an ad-supported product.

Oh it will 100% show you even more podcast spam if you accidentally interact with any of it.

Yep, it definitely gets worse if you interact. After a week or so of Spotify recommending a podcast on my home screen with the shape of a penis as it's cover image, I finally got annoyed enough to start looking for a "I don't want to see this" button. I never found one, but I spent enough time poking around for the cast to somehow get promoted to one of "my shows" with an even more prominent place in the UI.

That was the main reason I switched to Apple Music.

If you're on desktop, https://spicetify.app/ & https://github.com/theRealPadster/spicetify-hide-podcasts

I feel the same - to the point where I’ve considered dumping Spotify.

I don’t want music and podcasts mixing - and I resent the fact that screen estate that should be given to helping me find great new music is instead given to desperate attempts to shove podcasts in my face.

What if they did a better job of segregating music vs. podcasts in the same app? So you can search and "save your place" separately between podcast and music? That's my biggest gripe - I can't just pickup separately between the two, I have to search again, find my spot etc. It makes it tempting to just use a different app for podcasts.

I genuinely can't understand how they haven't fixed this already. If you listen to a podcast and then half way through switch over to music, there is no easy way to resume that podcast you were on, and good luck finding that one episode among the list of hundreds of episodes. It makes me think Spotify employees don't even use the app themselves.

I hate their interface, and there are a number of annoying podcast specific bugs. But for this use case you actually can find and resume your most recent few podcasts. You go to Library >> New Episodes, and at the top under Continue Listening there are your 3 most recent podcast episodes listed which you can click to resume.

I sort of agree but there are many product reasons not to do that. They could also have segregated the content in their existing app(s) more strictly. I, like you, am hardly ever interested in seeing both music and podcasts. Keep the "home" pages music-only and let me navigate to podcasts when that's what I'm interested in.

I somewhat disagree. The key to profitability in the audio space is moving listeners from pay-per-stream content (music) to owned content (podcasts, shows, etc.). For that latter costs are fixed even as listenership grows. The only profitable subscription audio service is SiriusXM, and they do this through exclusive licensed content (Howard Stern being the most notable example). Getting people to switch back and forth between apps makes it hard to get people to substitute the profitable content for the unprofitable.

Even Sirius isn't THAT profitable...they have several satelites that will need to be replaced in the next few years, each of which will eat about 9 months of profit.

This is a big reason why I left Spotify. Seemed like they kept pushing me to lower cost content like covers and live performances instead.

The other is that unfortunately things are ecosystems these days. Spotify just didn't seem to work as well on Google Home and Android Auto. Probably not their fault as Google can barely keep their shit working.

Yeah, podcast would be better with audio books than music.

Totally agree. I used to listen to music and podcasts on Spotify, but now use Apple Podcasts to listen to podcasts and Spotify to listen to music.

It’s a tough call but I disagree. It’s so much harder to grow from 0 than to go grow from an already high install count.

Agree. Podcast should have there own experience. Being able to access music and podcast in the same ui is a strange experience.

They didn’t build a separate app precisely because they want people listening to less music where they have to pay the music industry for each play and move to content that just had a fix cost

absolutely. But then they'd have to build the user base from the ground up

this would be incredibly bad move

For whom?

How does having the option to listen to podcasts on Spotify negatively impact my music listening experience?

When you're looking for music there's a podcast section positioned centrally in the app you can't remove in options

Interesting comment

The UX for the podcasting part of their app is god awful. I always thought it was so funny to watch them invest in Rogan.

The disconnect between Sales/Management and the Dev/UX team is plain as day.

Yes. I used Spotify for podcasts for a long time (because it was convenient and I had a music subscription), and then gave up. The only user visible changes I ever saw were ads for podcasts I didn't care about pushed into my face. I would search online for some problem I had and see that it had been reported years ago by other users and no improvement ever came.

Their service has always been very reliable, I'll give them that. But the app just doesn't improve over the course of years. What on earth are they actually working on at this point? And what kind of podcasting strategy doesn't include making the app good for podcasts?

On the desktop app you can't even see what the newest episodes of the podcasts you are following are. Truly insane.

I don't use Spotify and never will, but the Amazon Music app did that too and it's incredibly annoying.

It’s funny because I listen to music quietly in the background while my podcasts play, so I can’t use Spotify for podcasts _because_ they’re in the same app.

They just need to fix their donkey ass app and it would be fine.

My god man so many big companies have such crazy shit show experiences, it really makes me wonder.

I think once you have people addicted or 'needing' something, then great experience goes down the toilet.

The funny thing is, I'll bet there are very good economics behind good design ... aka good design will payoff, and usually it's measurable. It's odd.

Specifically with JRE, the AndroidTV app for Spotify was horrible and I cancelled when I dropped PayPal, and didn't bother looking to resubscribe another way. As far as I know it's still pretty bad.

I disagree, I love using the Spotify app for podcasts. I have podcast addict and never use it because frankly I already go to Spotify for all-things-audio.

Now they allow paid podcasts as well, so my playlist is complete.

When I started using Spotify back in 2011, I was excited to not have to use N apps for music. I want to stick to not having to use more than 1 app for audio.

Assuming that app didn't suck, I'd actually use it. Instead of actively avoiding anything related to podcasts in the music app because as soon as you accidentally interact with any of the podcast content that triggers it to start shoving it in your face even more.

The play here was to get a higher %age of listening time in the app spent on free content (ie the long tail of podcasts). Use a few paid big names to create exclusivity and then funnel listeners to the freebies they don't have to pay for while collecting your monthly subscription.

so agree here. i've used Pocketcasts and Spotify since my first smart phone. i have no philosophical opposition to Spotify acquiring exclusive content...whatever, play that game spotify. but end of the day, i want the best possible podcast experience, and you're not giving it to me. happy to keep them separate

I'm not sure why the podcasts are so hated in Spotify. Yes the home screen podcast carousel unnecessarily ate some premium space, but for me they otherwise stayed out of view.

Also, I do like them in the same app. Never in my life had I ever listened to a podcast before trying Fall of Civilizations in Spotify. Podcasts were totally irrelevant to me as a concept, similar to radio. But I've now added this to my habits, so I guess the strategy works when targeting casual listeners.

They could have done both.

From a dev perspective, it seems close to trivial to "enable podcasts" in the current app. I think most of the work there was just on organization UIs.

A separate app could be a great marketing tool for people looking for a good podcast app alternative (assuming Spotify was serious about investing in a solid app from what die-hard podcast listeners like to see in it), and monetize with ads unless they become a paying Spotify user (then the music gets enabled too).

The entire point is to leverage one's leading position in one market to try to dominate another market. It's one of the primary plays in the anti-competitive playbook, a key that anti-trust enforcers should be watching for.

If not for their belief they could do this, why would they bother with podcasts at all? Let alone try to break them, making them no-longer-podcasts, but only consumable via their own app?