Spotify gets polls and Q & As

Podcast hosts can now ask their fans for their opinion directly on Spotify. With surveys and Q & As, Spotify wants to enable community building.

With polls and Q & As, podcasters on Spotify can now interact with their audiences. Both sides should benefit from this, explains Spotify: The listeners get a new and more direct relationship to the podcasters. In return, the producers get new insights into their community.

The surveys and Q & As are now available in 160 countries, including Germany. They can be seen under the respective podcast episode. There, listeners can answer directly in the app and then see how the others voted.

Answers to a Q&A are only forwarded privately to the hosts. They can then decide whether they want to publish certain answers under the question.

Currently, only podcasters who create their shows via Anchor can use the tools. In this video, Anchor explains how it works.

Spotify has been working on making podcasts more interactive for a long time. A year ago, the streaming service had already tested surveys and Q & As – apparently with success. Thousands of podcasters have expressed an interest in using the tools, according to Spotify.

The hosts in the test group would have asked for feedback or requests for future guests, for example. The tools can also be used as gamification elements to keep the listener’s attention and focus on the podcast again.

“We believe that the future of podcasts is interactive,” the statement said. Podcasts are a promising opportunity for community building. Currently, podcasts mainly use other channels for community building, such as Instagram. It remains to be seen how the new capabilities of Spotify will be used.