Spotify Starts Rolling Out Comments on All Podcasts

Spotify announced the rollout of a top-requested feature for podcast creators looking to grow their audience on the platform, and that is public comments. The new comments feature will replace the existing Q&A and polls that allows podcasts creators to ask questions to their listeners and add their replies to their episodes.

“Podcasts have historically been a one-sided format and, while we’ve offered other interactivity features like Polls and Q&A for some time, people have told us they want more ways to connect directly,” the company said today. “Now, for the first time, listeners can actually have a two-way conversation with their favorite podcast hosts on Spotify, podcasters can get near-immediate feedback from their audiences, and real communities can form around shows.”

With the existing Q&A feature, listeners’ responses were private by default and podcast creators could choose to make their favorite ones public. These public answers will still appear on episode pages, but podcast creators won’t be able to create any new Q&As. Comments on Spotify podcasts, however, will also be private by default and creators will be able to pick up the ones they want to make public.

Spotify is launching a new Spotify for Creators app on mobile and the web to help creators manage their podcasts, even those that aren’t hosted by Spotify. The new portal has a Comments tab where creators can review comments and respond to specific ones. Doing so will automatically send a notification to the listener.

The new Spotify for Podcasters portal will also automatically notify podcast creators when their shows hit a new milestone or make it to a Spotify chart. Spotify is also working on a new automated moderation tool that will be able to automatically publish podcast comments that meet the company’s content guidelines.