Spotify and Apple are running neck-and-neck in U.S. podcasting, with various surveys showing one or the other in first place. Not wanting to be shown up by Apple, which launched new creators tools this week, Spotify followed suit at the Podcast Movement conference in Denver, announcing customization features and a new audience performance dashboard. For the first time, podcasters will be able to customize parts of their podcast landing page, adding a bio and social media handles. “Spotify is working to build a more robust podcast ecosystem that serves creators, listeners, and advertisers at scale,” said Austin Lamon, director of podcasts.

“We touched on the most important topics for enterprise publishers — monetization, audience growth, video and measurement,” added Dave Zohrob, product director for enterprise podcast platform, in a company news release.

To that end, the streamer’s new Audience Network Performance Dashboard aims to meet the needs of enterprise publishers who subscribe to Megaphone, a scalable platform offering podcasters everything from hosting and distribution to ad servers and regulatory compliance.

“Creators will have more options to customize their podcast page, including the ability to highlight specific episodes, cross-promote other podcasts, and display promotional banners for their paid content,” The Verge reports. Creators can access “trending data for individual episodes and identify where impressions are taking place.”

“Spotify’s aim appears to be twofold with these new updates: creators will have more control over how they appear to listeners, and listeners will have access to more information to aid in podcast discovery,” The Verge says.

Discovery via the Spotify app will be enhanced by “the addition of auto-generated tags that let listeners jump to the search results for any given creator,” TechCrunch writes. “By clicking these tags, it will be easier for a listener to find all the content from a creator or a show guest across all of Spotify.”

The company also “announced that its Podcasters program will roll out to more markets like the United Kingdom and Australia,” PhoneArena reports. “Up until now, the Spotify for Podcasters program was only available in the United States.”

For complete details on Spotify’s upcoming podcast upgrades, visit: Feature Updates to Help Podcasters Stand Out on Spotify.

Related:
Apple Podcasts Creators Get Subscription Analytics, Linkfire, ETCentric, 8/23/23
Spotify Reportedly Has a $38 Million White Noise Problem, The Verge, 8/17/23
Spotify’s CEO Revealed Fears About Being an ‘Unreasonable’ Boss, Fortune, 8/24/23
What TikTok’s $200 Billion Shopping Plans Mean for Creators, The Information, 8/23/23
Spotify Integrates with Patreon to Stream Subscriber-Only Content, TechCrunch, 8/9/23