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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.