Spotify Rolls Out Data Analytics Dashboard For Podcasters

In October, 100,000 podcasts signed up for the beta of Spotify for Podcasters, which provides data on listeners’ age, gender, location, music taste and how long they listened to an episode. When they sign up for an account, Spotify users provide basic demographic information. Now, Spotify is offering the data analytics tool to the 450,000+ shows accessible on its platform. Spotify for Podcasters, now available worldwide but currently only in English, offers much more detailed information than Apple’s podcast data.

The Verge reports that Spotify head of the creator marketplace Charlie Hellman said the company will “iterate the product” with feedback from podcasters. “It’s still really the beginning,” he said. The data is intended to help podcasters sell ads. The new analytics tool also mirrors Spotify for Artists, the dashboard for musicians that gives them “the ability to publicize tour dates, sell merch, and create playlists.”

Chief content officer Dawn Ostroff said that the dashboard will “give as much information” as possible to podcast creators. With a more powerful dashboard, “in theory, it could also become a place for ad insertion to be handled if Spotify wanted to become an ad network or help connect brands with podcasters.”

Although “podcasters can’t currently submit their shows for inclusion on podcast playlists,” Hellman said he hopes to “fine-tune the format that’s working with listeners … [and] try to bring back any opportunities for podcasters to better participate.”

Ostroff explained that, although Spotify has a “firehose worth of data,” the podcasters dashboard distills the “most relevant” information, although she “didn’t elaborate on what additional data Spotify-created shows might have access to versus what’s presented on the dashboard.”

Podcast creation technologies Anchor and Soundtrap are not on the dashboard, “but they round out Spotify’s broader podcast ambitions.” “All of the different podcasts initiatives and companies have very specific verticals that they focus on,” noted Ostroff. “Having the different ways in which people who are interested in podcasting can connect with us seems to be a smart strategy.”

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