Throughout this year, Spotify's investment in podcasts has been quite important, an investment that is allowing it to superate Apple in some countries, a situation that seemed practically impossible if we take into account Apple's seniority in this field since it was one of the first, if not the first, in this field.
According to the latest report published by Voxnet, Spotify has become the most used application in some countries, surpassing the first position that Apple had dominated for several years. This same report confirms that Apple still does not make any movement related to its podcast service, quite the opposite of Spotify.
This report shows us the data between March and October of this year, according to which Spotify has become the most used application in various European countries such as Sweden, the country with the most podcast listeners in the world. In Latin America, Spotify surpassed Apple a little over a year ago, confirming once again that either Apple gets on with it or Spotify will be able to take its place as the maximum representative of this format.
As stated by the CFO of Spotify, Barry McCarthy in the presentation of financial results for the last quarter, "podcasts will be as important to the business of Spotify as streaming Netflix original shows and movies." While Spotify celebrated earlier this month Spotify's First Global Podcast Summit in Brazil, Apple has dedicated itself to organizing some events for podcasters in a rather restricted way, such as the special laboratories of the WWDC.
Two years ago, Eddy Cue stated, to the massive complaint of many of the largest podcasters in the United States about the lack of monetization of the platform, that they were trying to find a monetization path that would allow them to continue investing their time and money in Apple's podcast platform, something that has not happened so far.
For its part, Spotify already has exclusive podcasts on its platform, podcast with which it wants to attract even more users who continue to use other platforms such as Apple's and it seems that for now, they have a very clear way forward.
What more personally has encouraged me to use Spotify as a podcast platform, is the integration in the same application with the music section, that of not having to leave one app to enter another just to change the subject is a plus. In addition, spotify long before apple music, it was already compatible with various devices (smart tv, sticks, mobiles, tablets, etc.), which made my user experience transparent no matter what I was using. Now it is that apple is evangelizing in that sense and only with apple music (and again with apple tv).
With spotify account for free, I can download my podcasts and listen to them offline when I travel and do not consume data and save on battery thanks to this, there are no ads, etc, what I was missing was that there were podcast programs that were in Apple and not in spotify, and it's not like that anymore, at least the ones I listen to are everywhere.
I think that's what has made a difference.
Completely agree. Focusing everything in the same application is an advantage and plus that we do not find in other streaming music services and that makes it easier to listen to podcasts from any device.