In its 18 years of existence, Spotify has not had a comments section consistent with its music repertoire. This sets it apart from other music platforms like SoundCloud, YouTube, and TikTok (if you consider TikTok a music platform).
Now that’s about to change—at least for podcasts hosted on Spotify.
The streaming service announced on Tuesday (July 9) that it has begun rolling out the ability to comment on podcasts, a move it says is key to podcasters building deeper relationships with their audiences.
This is on top of the new Spotify Podcast App It enables podcasters to manage their shows from mobile devices, including managing their presence on Spotify, checking statistics and interacting with their audience.
“Podcasts have historically been a one-sided format, and while we’ve offered other interactive features like polls and Q&A for a while, people told us they wanted more ways to connect directly,” said Spotify’s vice president of podcast product. Maya Prokhovnik said in an interview on the Spotify blog.
To support its claim that viewers want more interactivity, Spotify provided some statistics: 9 million This year alone there have been unique listener engagements with podcast Q&A or polls, and listener Q&A responses and votes are on the rise 80% same time last year.
Prokhovnik emphasized that interactivity means greater audience loyalty.
“We found that listeners who engaged with a show were four times more likely to return to the show within 30 days,” she said. “They also listen to music on average twice as much per month as people who don’t listen to music. So there’s something really special about making that connection, and it’s something tangible.
As reviews of Spotify podcasts continue to come in, a natural question is: Will the same happen to music tracks on Spotify?
Spotify has hinted it might be considering this: Comments “have been a long-requested feature by podcasters and Spotify listeners,” Prokhovnik noted in the interview. As in music audience…?
If Spotify does launch music reviews, the initiative won’t necessarily be revolutionary. After all, those who listen to music on YouTube, SoundCloud or Genius can already comment on tracks.
“We found that listeners who engaged with a show were four times more likely to return to the show within 30 days.”
Maya Prokhovnik, Spotify
The idea of transforming music consumption into an online social activity is a particularly important priority for Chinese music streaming services, who are arguably leading the way in innovating the social aspects of music consumption.
Streaming service owners Tencent Music Entertainment Provides a “listen together” function that allows multiple users to listen to the same music at the same time, effectively creating a virtual listening party.
When interviewed last year MBW, Vivian WeiTencent Competitor Copyright Vice President NetLouis Cloud Musicmakes a compelling case for comment.
“[Users] Read the comments while listening to the songs,” she said. “A lot of artists are very smart. They jump at the opportunity and respond in the comments section. They interact and communicate with their fans. It makes it easy for them to build a fan base.
So, from the perspective of streaming services and artists, there is a situation in the comments section.
But before Spotify decides whether to open up its music library to reviewers, it has to answer a slightly tricky question: Do we really want the Kendrick Lamar-Drake feud to happen? On our platform?global music business
