[Podcasts] Spotify is pushing Podcasts too much

[Torm]

Plan

Premium Family

Country

Czech Republic

Device

Windows 10 PC, iPhone 8, iPhone SE 2020

Operating System

Windows 10, iOS

My Question or Issue

I use Spotify to listen to music. I enjoyed some podcasts in past, but I do not really like them on my main page. If you also stop listening to them, you are still stuck with them no matter what. You listen to 1 sec of a certain podcast by accident (for fun my Girlfriend selected German The Sims 4 podcast which we do not even understand as we do not speak the language, yet now it is forever in my recommendations). I listened to the new Obama's podcast for few minutes and found it not so entertaining as I do not follow US politics that much anymore, yet here we are, forever stuck with me. Spotify is like "YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO MORE PODCASTS!!1!1!" yet I'm not really interested. 

Below you can see my recommendation on my Win 10 Spotify App on the main page. I see nothing but Podcasts and I have to do some scrolling to get to the music I like to listen. Why? 

Here you can see the same situation on my phone. It is the same, I have to scroll down to see the music I enjoy. 

Worst of all? After 5 years of using Spotify I'm seriously considering swapping my family account to competition as Apple Music is not forcing anything you do not like onto you (at least I started my free trial yesterday and so far so good). 

I understand that Spotify acquired multiple Podcast companies and they want to profit from their investments, but pushing Podcasts that much is in my opinion anti-consumer and you might loose paying customers because of it. Yes, your userbase is huge, but MySpace and Nokia used be huge, until someone better came on the scene and did it right and people liked it. 

My Solution?

I have few ideas. The simplest would be to separate the Music and Podcasts again. I do not know why did you decide it is a good idea to mix those two together. If you are hardcore podcast listener you will appreciate Podcast section where you can browse according to the categories, look for news, lifestyle, tech, cars etc. Music listeners like me will have their own section again and everyone will be happy! 

More hardcore solution would be to allow users to customize their Home Screen. You like something? Add it to your home screen. You do not like certain recommendations? Simply remove them. You can adjust your algorithm to adjust the recommendation based on our likes/dislikes. Also where did the dislike button go? I really enjoyed clicking certain genres or artists as dislike so it is no longer recommended to me. Nowadays I'm stuck with what the playlist gives me and I have to skip to next song if I do not enjoy what is playing. 

Thank you for listening. If you have any advise I will be happy to talk about it. If I will stick with Spotify I'm seriously considering to request Spotify to delete my whole account so I can start fresh. So all the stupid recommendations are removed. But that is solving the issue.  

Thank you and have a great day!

[Jeremy]

Hi there @Torm,

Thank you for your post and feedback here in the Community. 

There's an idea about this - [All Platforms] Customize Start Screen. You can leave a +VOTE and Subscribe to the thread for any updates.

We're always testing things by adding or removing features to make Spotify better overall and we’re constantly aiming to improve our features. We’re sorry that this means you’re not able to use Spotify like you wish to do at the moment.

You can read more about how your feedback reaches Spotify here.

Once again - thanks for the feedback, we appreciate it. Let us know if we can help you with anything else. 

Take care!

[jaspoid-0934]

I’m seriously considering switching to apple

music too. Podcasts in the spotify app are annoying and Spotify’s music recommendation algorithm sucks. It always tries to push content I am not interested in

[removeallpodcasts]

Your link points (again) to an idea that has been shut down because you just don't care. Please at least make an effort to make it look like you are trying

[Alex]

Hi @removeallpodcasts,

Thanks for the post.

The Idea is still active and you can vote for it. The status "Not Right Now" means that it's something that is not planned for the next upcoming update.

Hope this clears things up.

[removeallpodcasts]

The idea has been active for 2 years. I have literally upvoted every single idea that proposes a solution but all you guys are doing is labeling a valid idea as not right now or as we don't care.

This has not cleared up anything, but just fuels my anger with your service. WHY IS IT THAT **bleep** HARD TO ADD AN OPTION? I know for a fact that it is not hard to implement, since I have disabled podcasts my messing in your js stuff. The last update ruined it again and I don't like repeating those steps as I have better things to do in my life. Not listening to spoon fed podcasts suggestions that is.

Are you waiting for a pull request or are you actually giving me the feature?

[persephonea]

the reason they're not doing it because force-feeding us podcasts is part of their business model now... I think it's hopeless.

[_b-7p2s8rfu0h]

I think I am switching to Apple or Tidal because of this podcast spam.

[donnykoh]

Spotify is trying too hard by complicating features. Why would I want to listen to podcast when i open a Music app? Recommending me songs in languages that I never listen and the latest is to change the whole UI to be like Tiktok! I have stopped my subscription and use Apple Music and Youtube music instead.