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Seeing a lot of hate for Spotify's implementation of podcasts; does anyone here regularly use the app for Podcast listening? I do, and it's fine. It doesn't b

by Zetice 4y ago

Seeing a lot of hate for Spotify's implementation of podcasts; does anyone here regularly use the app for Podcast listening? I do, and it's fine. It doesn't blow me away, and I expect they're trying to, but it's not like... unusable or anything. My one complaint is that it plays episodes in the opposite order; like, if I discover a new podcast, I want to start from the beginning, but it only wants to let me play backwards (older and older episodes). It lets you sort in reverse order, but I don't think it plays them in that sort order (or it didn't last time I looked anyway). But yeah, a lot of "Spotify generally sucks" or "what Spotify is trying to do sucks" but not a lot of "I use Spotify for podcasts and I don't love it".

SilverBirch 4y ago
I think it's important to understand why people use spotify for podcasts. They use spotify because they already have spotify for music. No one is buying spotify for the podcasts. So the player has to be.... fine. It needs to be just good enough not to actively force people away from it. Spotify podcasts fits the corporate software quality model. And podcast players have been around for about 15 years anyway by now, so it's not rocket science. Anyone who doesn't like it... there are dozens of other podcast apps out there that are great.
- trts 4y ago
  I buy Spotify for podcasts (as a listener of Heavyweight which is now exclusive to Spotify). It sucks, and about 40% of the time an ad comes on, it crashes or loses my place in the episode completely when I try to skip (or I'm unable to skip). It's literally the worst podcast player I've ever used. I don't know what other exclusives they've gotten with a captive audience, but it's at least a reasonably logical play. Reply All would have kept me on the platform too had it not ended. But I stay because that's where my playlists and recs are, and those serve me well enough too.
niek_pas 4y ago
Last I used Spotify for podcasts, it didn't have chapter support, didn't have shownotes support, didn't have smart speed (skipping silinces), don't think it had any concept of playlists or queues, and so on. Some of that may have changed but those are pretty basic features for a podcast player.
- Shaanie 4y ago
  It does have silence trimming now at least, not sure about the other stuff.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ktross 4y ago
I use it frequently, and there has been a major bug since launch that seems present on multiple platforms (desktop, mobile, Android, Apple). Seemingly at random, though I have suspicions that it's related to ads, the currently playing podcast will skip to the next unplayed episode before the current one is finished. This happens anywhere from a few minutes in to a few hours in. I would never watch another podcast in the Spotify app if the podcast I want to watch was available elsewhere. They launched a half-baked product that was missing some of the most basic features you could imagine. It has since improved to the point where it's almost usable, but it can't compete with anything else from a UX/quality perspective. It's also missing the discussion/community aspect that you get with a platform like YouTube. Another annoyance is that I've had a Premium family subscription for years, but I still get ads on podcasts.
Legogris 4y ago
I do and my biggest gripe is that offline/syncing of new episodes has been broken for some time now. Here's what I expect: If I'm subscribed to a podcast and have it marked as "download", Spotify should sync new episodes as they become available and I will later be able to listen to them offline. This used to work but does not anymore. Sometimes I will even preemptively open the Android Spotify app in the foreground, only to leave the house and later discover that nothing got downloaded. I've also in recent months noticed weird latencies of downloaded content which is only present when Spotify servers are not reachable (such as when not connected to internet). Pressing "play" or navigating to a new episode will do nothing for 5-20 seconds, despite all necessary data already being downloaded. This is the same for podcasts and songs. Oh, and also getting a nag-overlay about Google Play Services whenever I try to use Connect, despite my setup not relying on it. All these are regressions: They used to work fine but got worse. As another commenter noted, it's amazing how they can spend so much resources when basic table stakes and seemingly trivially fixable UX regressions like this is what will actually drive me away from using Spotify for podcasts.
arkaic 4y ago
It's complete shit. It constantly loses my spot in an episode the next time I open it up, resetting me back to the beginning so I have to find the timestamp again. This is a basic 101 feature and they cannot get that right on Android.

by Zetice 4y ago

SilverBirch 4y ago

I think it's important to understand why people use spotify for podcasts. They use spotify because they already have spotify for music. No one is buying spotify for the podcasts. So the player has to be.... fine. It needs to be just good enough not to actively force people away from it. Spotify podcasts fits the corporate software quality model. And podcast players have been around for about 15 years anyway by now, so it's not rocket science. Anyone who doesn't like it... there are dozens of other podcast apps out there that are great.

trts 4y ago
I buy Spotify for podcasts (as a listener of Heavyweight which is now exclusive to Spotify). It sucks, and about 40% of the time an ad comes on, it crashes or loses my place in the episode completely when I try to skip (or I'm unable to skip). It's literally the worst podcast player I've ever used. I don't know what other exclusives they've gotten with a captive audience, but it's at least a reasonably logical play. Reply All would have kept me on the platform too had it not ended. But I stay because that's where my playlists and recs are, and those serve me well enough too.

niek_pas 4y ago

Last I used Spotify for podcasts, it didn't have chapter support, didn't have shownotes support, didn't have smart speed (skipping silinces), don't think it had any concept of playlists or queues, and so on. Some of that may have changed but those are pretty basic features for a podcast player.

Shaanie 4y ago
It does have silence trimming now at least, not sure about the other stuff.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ktross 4y ago

I use it frequently, and there has been a major bug since launch that seems present on multiple platforms (desktop, mobile, Android, Apple). Seemingly at random, though I have suspicions that it's related to ads, the currently playing podcast will skip to the next unplayed episode before the current one is finished. This happens anywhere from a few minutes in to a few hours in. I would never watch another podcast in the Spotify app if the podcast I want to watch was available elsewhere. They launched a half-baked product that was missing some of the most basic features you could imagine. It has since improved to the point where it's almost usable, but it can't compete with anything else from a UX/quality perspective. It's also missing the discussion/community aspect that you get with a platform like YouTube. Another annoyance is that I've had a Premium family subscription for years, but I still get ads on podcasts.

Legogris 4y ago

I do and my biggest gripe is that offline/syncing of new episodes has been broken for some time now. Here's what I expect: If I'm subscribed to a podcast and have it marked as "download", Spotify should sync new episodes as they become available and I will later be able to listen to them offline. This used to work but does not anymore. Sometimes I will even preemptively open the Android Spotify app in the foreground, only to leave the house and later discover that nothing got downloaded. I've also in recent months noticed weird latencies of downloaded content which is only present when Spotify servers are not reachable (such as when not connected to internet). Pressing "play" or navigating to a new episode will do nothing for 5-20 seconds, despite all necessary data already being downloaded. This is the same for podcasts and songs. Oh, and also getting a nag-overlay about Google Play Services whenever I try to use Connect, despite my setup not relying on it. All these are regressions: They used to work fine but got worse. As another commenter noted, it's amazing how they can spend so much resources when basic table stakes and seemingly trivially fixable UX regressions like this is what will actually drive me away from using Spotify for podcasts.

arkaic 4y ago

It's complete shit. It constantly loses my spot in an episode the next time I open it up, resetting me back to the beginning so I have to find the timestamp again. This is a basic 101 feature and they cannot get that right on Android.