I really hope that Spotify isn't waiting for enough people to come and like these topics to prioritize them. Spotify is incredibly unpopular as a Podcatcher, despite the incredible potential to integrate audio formats into mixed media audio... collages. There's so much that could be done, but it won't get attention until it's worth using. I have found so many people asking for literally the basics of a bare bones Podcatcher in the past few days... I'm starting to assume whatever question I'm here looking for the answer to is going to be "here's a similar topic that we haven't done anything about". I assume that's because things are prioritized based on the audience you *have* instead of the audiences you *could have*. There is no one who is active this forum who isn't already using your product. It looks like people who regularly listen to podcasts just don't use spotify to do it. If any decisions about prioritizing features are made based on the activity on this forum, it'll never improve, and that's sad. There's so much potential, and the models for the basic building blocks are already out there. The wheel doesn't need reinvented, but the vehicle for audio y'all could make with your already sophisticated (albeit often frustrating and cluttered) UI for desktops and mobile devices is missing a wheel. A few maybe, but there's so much that's good that's already here.
Right now, I really want to like Spotify for podcasts, but I don't. I just followed all my regular podcasts this week, assuming that I'd be able to easily create playlists that semi-automatically blends together today's new episodes of a few podcasts with some songs selected from another source (another playlist, my liked songs, an album).
There is already a feature to "enhance a playlist" but there is no feature to select a source from which to enhance.
There is a feature to make a playlist, and there are automatically updated randomized playlists like "Daily Mix 1" and "Morning Drive", even "Blends", but there is not a feature (that I found) to create an automatically updated "feed" of audio media bits that pass multiple filters. **bleep**, you can't even filter by multiple parameters right now. That alone would improve the podcast experience drastically.
This is only one example of things that I assumed would be simple in spotify, based on my previous experience, that aren't possible. The basic building blocks of a halfway usable podcatcher aren't there, and I've read in a bunch of places how the company announced over a year ago that they were going to be pushing podcasts... And I've seen it. And people are complaining about it. Not because it's not a great direction to go, but because podcast listeners don't use spotify. And those that try just find that out it's missing some of the necessary pieces that make a podcatcher functional. If you push podcasts without making these improvements, user satisfaction overall will go down, because people who already listen to podcasts won't switch, and people who don't already listen to podcasts aren't going to start when their introduction to the media is such a mess. So there won't be any progress, spotify will look at the data and see that podcasts just aren't really working out, and may push it even further back in the priorities to improve the basic interface... But I really hope that there's a whole group of excited people on a committee who are strategizing this multimedia audio platform with a well supported subcommittee who are making sure that podcast listeners can do things like "create a feed" and "remember last played position". I hope that I will be able to more fully integrate all my ear time activities. I kinda hope that it'll be spotify, but I won't be upset if it isn't. Maybe I just haven't tried the audio platform that meets my expectations, but when I do, that platform will get a huge portion of my weekly attention.
Staff / Moderator/ 3 years ago in Social & Random