Despite competing against giants like Apple in the industry,Spotifyhas continued to dominate the music streaming market for a few years now. Although the gap between Spotify and its rivals, likeApple Musicand, to an extent,YouTube Music, is diminishing, there’s no doubt that it’s still the most preferred platform for podcasters. The platform has even adopted AI on its apps, as we saw with the recent introduction ofAI-based podcast translationsin partnership withOpenAI. In celebration of International Podcast Day (September 30), Spotify has now announced a couple of new features across its apps.
First up is auto-generated and time-synced transcripts for podcasts, allowing Spotify users to read along as they listen or simply read through the podcast when they can’t listen to it, like when in a crowded subway or if there are no earbuds around. This feature addition is also crucial from an accessibility standpoint. Listeners can simply scroll down from the Now Playing View and tap theRead alongsection to find transcripts, as demonstrated below.
Users can expand the transcripts to full screen and return to the Now Playing View just as easily. While transcripts may not be immediately visible to everyone,Spotify saysthese would be available across “millions of episodes in the coming weeks,” adding that it would soon allow creators to add media to these transcripts, helping provide further context on the subject as the listeners are reading along. Spotify first announced auto-generated transcriptsback in May 2021as part of a limited beta across Spotify Original and Exclusive shows, and it now appears to be ready for primetime.
Furthermore, the streaming giant also announced the availability of Podcast Chapters on its mobile apps, a feature introduced in March as a means of helping listeners jump to a specific portion of a podcast. Like the auto-generated transcripts, Podcast Chapters on mobile can be accessed by scrolling down from the Now Playing View.
Lastly, the Podcast Show pages will start showing more information on the creator, with the About tab featuring images, descriptions, and episodes recommended by the podcasters, Spotify said. TheMore like thistab right next to it would provide further suggestions on similar content.
Apart from these additions, Spotify recently appears to have made up its mind on launching the new hi-fi tier calledSupremiumfor $20/month, withrumored perkssuch as 24-bit lossless audio, mixing tools, plus 30 hours' worth of audiobooks per month, up from the 10 hours offered with Spotify Premium. While some of these perks are certainly attractive,competitors like Apple Musicand Amazon Music already provide higher quality audio on their current plans without charging their customers extra. The streaming service hasn’t confirmed plans for this new Supremium tiet yet.
