Spotify’s Prompted Playlist feature now works for podcasts

Spotify’s Prompted Playlist tool now works for podcasts, after earlier this year. As the name suggests, this is an AI thing. It lets users use natural language, or prompts, to describe what they’re looking for in a playlist and the algorithm does the rest.

The platform says the tool is a good match for podcasts, as listeners can use it to discover a new favorite show or “dive deeper into a topic or piece of culture.” Spotify adds that the algorithm generates playlists based on both the prompt and a person’s listening history, along with “what’s happening in the world today.”

Spotify gives some examples of the kinds of prompts that could be used to generate podcast playlists, which include a user asking the bot to build a playlist “all about science and innovation” and another “with the biggest entertainment news from the past few days.” It’ll be interesting to see if the algorithm prioritizes podcasts from its of in-house creators over third party releases.

Spotify says the tool “unlocks powerful new opportunities” for creators. This is because it can recommend older episodes from a back catalog, thus giving them a little boost.

The feature is rolling out now in a beta form to Premium users in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, New Zealand and Sweden. It remains to be seen when Spotify will open up the tool to other languages.