Spotify launches new audio experience combining music and talk content

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Everyone loves both a great playlist and a highly engaging conversation. Spotify is now beginning to test a new listening experience that brings together music and spoken-word content in an easy and elegant package, allowing full songs and talk commentary to live together wrapped up in one show.

With this new feature, listeners have even more ways to discover and connect with music from their favorite (and future favorite) artists. Read on for the full details on how to listen, which shows you can hear now, and how to make a show yourself.

Think of your favorite drive-time radio show, that music journalist whose insights help you appreciate a band’s leap forward, a DJ whose perspective makes that next track hit perfectly. 

Now imagine that you’re able to enjoy that perfect blend of music and commentary whenever and wherever you want, interactively and on demand. With shows that use this new format, listeners can interact with the music within the episodes, in the same way they interact with all other song tracks on Spotify (for example liking, saving, and reading more information about a track) without having to leave the episode page or search for it manually.

For any episode of a show with music, hit “Explore Episode” on the episode page, or tap the play bar at the bottom of the screen to pull up the episode track list. From there, you can skip around to different segments and songs and save songs for future listening.

Shows using this format are exclusive to Spotify because they rely on Spotify’s music catalog licenses and compensate musicians and songwriters just like any regular stream of a music track on Spotify. Spotify Premium listeners will hear full tracks as part of these shows, and those with the Free tier will hear 30-second music previews.

Creators have long wanted a way to highlight the music they love and spread the word about their favorite artists. To empower an ecosystem of these new shows, Spotify is also making it possible for anyone to create their own by rolling out tooling in Anchor.

The new format solves a variety of limitations previously inherent to audio creation and distribution, which have never before been able to leverage the power of music streaming. For creators, it will now be possible to leverage licensed music in an easy, fair way. Creation tooling is available for Anchor users in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland.

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