White Noise Podcasts on Spotify
Ashley Carman (via Hacker News):
[The] company has achieved its goals to recruit more creators to the platform with 44% of all podcasts being hosted on Anchor as of July 2022. At the same time, though, not all the podcasters fit the classic show mold. In particular, one segment of users found massive success through Spotify’s tools: white noise creators.
As I wrote last year , these podcasters, whose shows entail playing various noises like crashing waves or bird sounds on repeat, could make at least $18,000 a month through advertisements that Spotify placed in the programming. I posited in that story that some algorithmic magic seemed to be pushing people to this content, and now, over a year later, documentation from Spotify confirms as much.
[…]
Once Spotify realized how much attention was going to white noise podcasts, the company considered removing these shows from the talk feed and prohibiting future uploads while redirecting the audience towards comparable programming that was more economical for Spotify — doing so, according to the document, would boost Spotify’s annual gross profit by €35 million, or $38 million.
Spotify didn’t actually do that, but some podcasters have reported that their episodes mysteriously went missing.
Previously:
- Absurdly Long YouTube Videos That Play Nothing on Purpose
- Dark Noise 3.0
- Spotify’s Podcast Aggregation Play
