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Spotify opens podcasting section up to everyone

Spotify opens podcasting section up to everyone

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Podcasts can submit their feeds to get on the service

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Spotify is opening up its podcasting section to allow anyone to upload their podcasts to the service (via Engadget). The move could result in an uptick in podcasts that are available through the service that was first started back in 2015.

Spotify isn’t offering to host the podcasts directly. Instead, producers will provide the streaming service with a link to their podcast feed, after which Spotify will list it and make the podcast available to its 180 million users. Spotify is, however, offering to provide information on who is listening to the podcasts, which will no doubt be especially helpful to podcasts with paying advertisers. The service promises to offer daily stats about the demographics of who is listening to the podcast, engagement statistics, and where they’re listening from.

Apple continues to dominate the market for podcasting apps with a reported market share of 55 percent as of 2017, even though it can only be found on about 20 percent of the world’s smartphones. In other words, Spotify has a tremendous opportunity if it can dominate podcast playback on Android.