[jaderobbins1]

I think the point about separation of Music and Podcasts is an important one for me as well.

I really don't like mixing the two, they have two different use cases imo. Drives me nuts how much Spotify pushes podcasts when I just want to listen to some tunes.

[KoolKat23]

I once tapped on a podcast link that someone sent me that opened in Spotify. I was haunted by podcast recommendations for months, if not years afterwards. I honestly wouldn't care if there was a completely separate tab in the app that didn't influence recommendations.

[grvdrm]

I’ve suffered through it just like you. I recently reinstalled Overcast after using Castro for quite a while. But, I’m still not completely satisfied with any of these apps.

[danhodgins]

I actually prefer that Spotify have both podcasts and music in their app. I would be more annoyed if I had to use a separate app for the two use cases. In my view, both are audio entertainment, so it makes sense. I can see how this would annoy some people though.

[xp84]

Spotify thinks if they can get you into Podcasts, which they don’t have to pay a dime for, it will improve their bottom line, since you (probably) can’t simultaneously listen to music that they do have to pay for. Kind of a funny motivation to enter the podcast market, but probably a good business move, as awkward and annoying, and seemingly irrelevant to their brand and core competency as it is.

[chatmasta]

That's a fascinating way of looking at it that I've never thought about before. So basically Spotify is considering cost per minute of music vs. podcasts? That's a believable explanation for the counterintuitively high price they paid for acquiring popular podcasts like Joe Rogan (which they know loyal viewers users will reliably watch for hours each week, during which time they won't be streaming Taylor Swift songs on repeat).

It's also interesting because the normal optimizations like caching don't apply to licensing fees. At first I was going to suggest that they can cache frequently played songs to save cost, but then I realized that has no impact on royalty fees derived from playtime.