What if Spotify made a Podcast App?
A product design concept
In 2015, Spotify made the bold move to allow podcasts on its music platform. At that time, podcasts weren’t really a big deal, but now they’re a huge deal, and cannot be ignored. The #1 spot for the best podcast app has recently opened up because of Apple Music’s recent train wreck —Apple Podcasts, which is slow and complicated. What if Spotify took the reigns?
Problems with podcasts on Spotify 2019
- I had no idea—Spotify has podcasts?
- Too many clicks to arrive at a podcast.
- It doesn’t have all podcasts.
- Lacks a rating and review system.
- Mixing music and podcasts messes with the discovery algorithm.
- It doesn’t have global and national top charts.
Solution
A stand-alone Spotify Podcast app.
Timeline
Timeline is a dynamic stream of constantly updating episodes based on your followed podcast shows. It displays the date updated, the podcast show, whether or not you’ve started the episode, and how much time the episode has left if you have any time left. All episodes that have been played will be removed from the timeline and when an episode is tapped, an audio player will immediately appear, playing it in a single click.
Your Podcasts
Your Podcasts is a sortable master list of your favorite shows. To add a podcast to the master list click follow on the podcast’s show page. The cover art of the podcast will immediately appear at the top of your master list, where you can sort it into the order you’d like.
Audio Show
Audio Show is where podcasts display their latest episodes, average ratings, and an expandable description. Older podcast episodes can be accessed here by scrolling down, and a blue dot displays whether or not you’ve listened to the episode.
Ratings & Reviews
Ratings & Reviews are listener ratings and written reviews of podcast shows. The ratings will be averaged by the total ratings given. To leave a rating, press the number of hearts you want to give and leave a written review by clicking on Write a Review. Every review is available in a scrollable list and each written review can be expanded when tapped to view the whole review.
Audio Player
Audio Player for Spotify podcasts is perfect. All controls—play, pause, +–15, skip, time, cover art are beautifully organized.
Featured
Featured displays charts, themes, publishers, and more to stimulate podcast discovery. Compilations will be both editorially curated by human editors and algorithmically generated by a listener’s past history.
Top Charts
Top Charts is a national and global series of official podcast rankings issued by Spotify. Rankings should be determined algorithmically by at least three factors: 1.) breadth: number of plays, 2.) depth: total length of time listening to podcast episodes, and 3.) quality of ratings and reviews.
Do you want Spotify to build a podcast app? If so clap it up, tweet at them: @spotify, @spotifydesign, @eldsjal, @rochelleking, and follow me @spencercamp,!
