Spotify Acquires Podcast Discovery Service ‘Podz’

Soon after launching its own Live Audio app Spotify Greenroom (click here to know more). Spotify has acquired podcast discovery specialists Podz. Podz, is a startup whose technology generates preview clips of podcasts. It uses machine learning which is trained on over 100,000 hours of audio, to make preview clips from shows.

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Through this acquisition Spotify aims at improving its podcast discovery and making it easier for its users to choose a podcast by listening to a small clip rather than a whole almost an hour long episode. “At Spotify, we are investing to build and scale the world’s best (and most personalized) podcast discovery experience,” the company says. “We believe that Podz technology will complement and accelerate Spotify’s focused efforts to drive discovery, deliver listeners the right content at the right time, and accelerate growth of the category worldwide.”

Spotify says this will make it “easier for listeners to find the content they want to listen to, and for creators to be discovered and build a fan base.” Podz tells TechCrunch that users on its platform typically follow up to 30 podcasts, up from an average of seven.

According to The Verge, Spotify says it plans to integrate Podz technology into its platform, and that some of the results should be visible before the end of the year.