Music
On Tuesday, Spotify expanded its Prompted Playlists feature to include podcasts, an update that could make it easier for Premium users to find new shows to listen to. Prompted Playlists were originally launched as a beta feature in December, but previously only worked for music. You can use the feature to effectively generate customized Discover Weekly playlists using text prompts to “steer the algorithm” toward specific genres or themes.
Tuesday’s update allows you to do the same thing with playlists of podcast episodes. The feature is still in beta, though, and is currently only available in English for Premium users in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden.
When I tried out the updated feature, Spotify’s AI took several minutes to generate my podcast playlist (including a step it described as “verifying humor”), but I was surprisingly satisfied with the results. I asked for a playlist of Dungeons & Dragons actual play shows, including a mix of popular series and hidden gems. My first prompt highlighted an issue that’s worth noting if you’re using this feature for podcasts — it will pull random episodes of shows, which could be an issue if a show is designed for chronological listening.
This was pretty easy to fix, though. After generating a playlist, you can go back in and edit your prompt to update the playlist. I added a line specifying that the playlist should only include the first episodes of campaigns or shows. The new sampling the AI gave me was more well-rounded than I expected, including a couple episodes of Dimension 20 and Critical Role along with some smaller shows I either hadn’t heard of before or haven’t had a chance to listen to yet, like Tales from the Stinky Dragon and Join the Party.
Each episode in the playlist also included a brief AI-generated description of how the episode fits into my prompt. While I’m usually skeptical of AI-generated summaries like this, the summaries for shows I have watched were accurate, like describing Dimension 20: Fantasy High as “funny with real stakes.” It’s vague, but at least not misleading.
You can add to and manually edit Prompted Playlists after generating them, or keep updating them if you’re not a fan of the podcast episodes the AI pulls for you. While I still don’t plan on using this feature for music, it could be useful for some listeners when it comes to podcasts, specifically compiling a “first episodes” sample pack like this. You can also set the playlist to refresh regularly so you can get new podcast samplers daily or weekly.
To try out the feature, go into the Spotify app and select “Create” then choose “Prompted Playlist” from the menu. In the prompt text box, describe what kind of podcast episodes you want the playlist to include and hit “Generate playlist.” The first couple of times I tried it, I got an error saying Prompted Playlists don’t support podcasts yet. The issue was resolved after I updated the app.
Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.