Spotify is a key player in audio streaming. The platform also has serious strengths in terms of podcasts. Here’s what you need to know to take full advantage of it.
Spotify wants you to manage all your podcasts like you manage your music. If you have already tested, or wanted to test, Spotify as a podcast player, here is everything you need to know to take full advantage of it.
To start
The podcast part of Spotify is hard to miss as the platform puts them forward. Tap or click the Search button and among the options you will see the Podcasts category.
Unfortunately, it is not (yet) possible to import a list of podcasts that you would listen to in the Spotify app. You must therefore proceed manually and also find out which episode you are on. Use the Search page to find your podcasts and select Follow to subscribe.
You’ll also see a gear icon on each episode in the mobile app. Tap on it and “Mark as read”, to identify all the episodes already listened to. As soon as you subscribe, the latest and newest episodes appear on your devices under New Episodes in the Your Library section on mobile, and you can tap on Your Library and Podcasts & Shows to see it all at once. There is strangely no New Episodes shortcut on the desktop version.
If you are totally new to podcasts, you can browse through the Search page or you can try the discovery tool that Spotify has come up with. Answer a few questions about your habits and tastes and you will have a first recommendation.
Manage podcasts
The New Episodes playlist is created automatically as soon as you follow one or more podcasts, but you can also find them in Your Library and Podcasts and Series on mobile or Your Library and Podcasts in the desktop app.
Here and there in the Spotify apps, you’ll see two buttons next to episodes. The + button adds an episode to the Your episodes playlist, which you will find in your library. The download icon performs the same action, but also downloads the episode, so you can listen to it offline. This option is only available with a premium account.
You don’t have to send your episodes to the Your Episodes playlist, it’s just the default behavior. To choose a different playlist, tap or click on the button with the three little ones next to an episode and add it to the playlist of your choice.
Individual episodes can be added to playlists without you following the entire podcast. Convenient if you want to test a podcast or if you are interested in a single episode.
Playing podcasts
Playing a podcast is very similar to playing your music. There are identical options – such as navigation in an episode, identical to that of a song – but others are specific.
For example, it is possible to choose the playback speed, to move forward or backward by 15 seconds. On mobile, you can also use the crescent moon icon to set a sleep timer. After the time has elapsed (between 5 minutes and 1 hour, or at the end of the current episode), the podcast playback stops.
As with music, you can tap or click the icon with small devices to stream playback to a compatible connected device. If you leave home, for example, you can resume the current reading on your computer on your smartphone.
The last option on the control screen on mobile is the share option, to share the episode to someone. You can also include the timestamp to start playback at that exact moment. To share a podcast, you can also tap on the icon with the three little dots and use the Spotify-style QR code. The person next to you then just has to tap on the Search option and the camera icon to scan the code and have the episode in question on their device.
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