Spotify is a key player in audio streaming. The platform also has serious advantages 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 the same way 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 its benefits.
Begin
The podcast part of Spotify is hard to miss as the platform pushes them forward. Tap or click the Search button, and among the options you’ll see the Podcasts category.
Unfortunately, it is not (yet) possible to import a list of podcasts that you will listen to in the Spotify app. Therefore, you must act manually and also find out which episode you are in. Use the search page to find your podcasts and select “Subscribe”to subscribe.
You will also see a gear icon on each episode in the mobile app. Click on it and “Mark as read”to identify all the episodes you have already listened to. Once you subscribe, the latest and newest episodes will appear on your devices under “New Episodes”under “Your Library”on your mobile device, and you can tap “Your Library”and “Podcasts & Shows”to see them all at once. Oddly enough, the desktop version doesn’t have a “New Episodes”label.
If you’re new to podcasts, you can check out the search page or try the discovery tool that Spotify came up with. Answer a few questions about your habits and tastes and you’ll get your first recommendation.
Podcast management
A New Episodes playlist is generated automatically as soon as you subscribe to one or more podcasts, but you can also find them under My Library and Podcasts & Shows on the mobile app, or Your Library & Podcasts on 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 you’ll 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 submit your episodes to the Your Episodes playlist, it’s just the default behavior. To select a different playlist, tap or click on the button with three small icons next to the episode and add it to the playlist of your choice.
Individual episodes can be added to playlists without having to follow the entire podcast. Useful if you want to test a podcast or are interested in a single episode.
Podcast playback
Playing a podcast is very similar to playing music. There are identical options, such as song-identical episode navigation, but others are specific.
For example, you can select the playback speed, move forward or backward by 15 seconds. On mobile, you can also use the crescent moon icon to set a sleep timer. When the time has elapsed (between 5 minutes and 1 hour, or at the end of the current episode), the podcast stops playing.
As with music, you can tap or click the small devices icon to stream to a compatible connected device. For example, if you leave home, you can resume your 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 with someone. You can also specify a timestamp to start playback exactly at that moment. To share a podcast, you can also click on the three-dot icon and use a Spotify-style QR code. The person next to you then just needs to tap on the “Search”option and the camera icon to scan the code and get the relevant episode on their device.