Opposite for me. I cancelled because of that. Partially because I didn’t like Spotify endorsing his content, but also because I subscribed to Spotify for music, not podcasts.

I wanted to see them invest more in features around music and work on better compensation for artists - not spend my subscription money on shoving podcast content at me.

I wonder why they force podcasts so much. I've never listened to them, and I'm sure they have that data, and the recommendations are way, way off anything I'd consider listening to.

I guess they try to force it because they have higher margins on them.

Podcast are cheaper to produce and requires no record label sharing the profits with Spotify.

If they produce the podcast they don't have to pay royalties + they've aimed for exclusivity with them. They aren't going to have exclusivity with most music, so podcasts are an opportunity to bring in a new audience and lock them in.

That's, AIUI, the theory. Whether it works in practice is another story.

Probably the same reason they're pushing so hard into audiobooks right now. They want to be a general audio platform instead of a music platform and there are significant network effects if they can pull it off which ultimately means more customers and a more sticky product.

Why would you assume that?