This week in Spotify news…

Spotify on TV

Daniel Ek – Spotify’s founder – has announced changes to how Spotify looks on Smart TVs. I often use our Smart TV to listen to Spotify and it’s always been a bit user un-friendly – a poor relation to the mobile app. But all that is about to change. The menu is much more extensive, the recommendations are all there to spookily give you exactly the right tune at the right time, and you’ll be able to watch video podcasts on the full screen. It’s basically caught up with the mobile app in look and feel, with the advantage that your Smart TV has really good speakers.

Fan Study

Spotify has released their ‘fan study’ – an analysis of podcast listener behaviour and attitudes. Now being so dominant in the podcast market, Spotify’s research matters, and their data is huge. Insights include …

Word of mouth is still far more powerful than chart position in discovering new shows.

More podcast listening takes place on a weekday than weekends, with Tuesday being the biggest listening day (but only by a smidge).

There are distinct months when people are more open to discovering new podcasts: January, March, July and October. I’d never seen this before, but the difference between months is striking.

– Comedy and ‘leisure’ podcasts (including gaming and hobbies) are the most important categories for video. 44% of all video podcasts fall into these genres.

There’s one section of the study – hourly consumption by time of day and category – that puzzles me. It shows that ‘History’, ‘Health and Fitness’ and ‘Religion & Spirituality’ shows are listened to for longest during the hours of 1am and 3am. Firstly, length of listen doesn’t reflect the amount of listeners. (i.e a small proportion of your listeners may listen for longer at that time, but still account for a tiny fraction of overall hours) and surely this is because lots of them have fallen asleep and haven’t pressed stop? I’m open to other theories.