Spotify Has Added A Big New Podcast Feature, And It's Already Controversial

Spotify has been making a bit bet on podcasts over the past several years, and it just upped the ante. Unlike its biggest competitors, such as Apple Music, the Swedish music streaming giant has differentiated its platform by including a robust podcast library for no extra cost. By late 2023, the company had invested $1 billion into the podcast space, striking sweetheart deals with everyone from Joe Rogan to Barack Obama.

Now, Spotify's podcast library is getting its biggest upgrade yet, as the platform begins to push into video podcasts and reorient its user interface around them. Users will now see video highlights from podcasts suggested in the Spotify app, presented in a standard widescreen or vertical format that will be instantly familiar to users of TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts. The previews aren't new, but their prominence in the app is. You can keep scrolling for a seemingly endless feed of podcast clips until you find one that suits your fancy. Double-tapping a video will add that episode to your favorites, while tapping on the video will launch the podcast player and start the episode from the beginning. There's now a comment section with threaded replies under each episode, too.

Whether this is a better way to help users discover podcasts remains to be seen, but the feature is already controversial among some users. Meanwhile, Spotify is stuck in a tough spot. It doesn't yet offer high-fidelity audio like Apple Music or Tidal, and needs to offer other goodies. Clearly, podcasts are one way the company intends to stay ahead, so here's why Spotify is pivoting to video, and why some of its users are resistant to this change.

Spotify's addition of video podcasts and clip-based discovery makes sense in the current media landscape. According to data from Edison Research based on a sample size of 1,003 respondents, a quarter of Gen Z podcast listeners find new podcasts by encountering viral clips on social media. Additionally, 80% of Gen Z podcast listeners consume video podcasts, while 71% exclusively consume podcasts in video form. And where do people go when they want long-form video podcasts? YouTube, not Spotify. That trend spells bad news for a company with so much money invested in podcasting, and Spotify has clearly decided that if it can't beat video platforms, it's best to join them.

The question then becomes whether this strategy will pay off in the same way as other left-field efforts like Spotify Wrapped have. There's an ominous precedent here that the company would do well to learn from. Spotify's video podcast push is bound to evoke echoes of Facebook's infamous "pivot to video" in 2015-2016. In an effort to compete with video platforms, Facebook encouraged publishers to prioritize video content over other forms of media. The effects of this push were catastrophic. Reporters and editors across the media industry were laid off, replaced with video producers. However, the views were simply not there, and businesses were forced to downsize even further or shut down operations completely. In 2025, more people consume video content than they did a decade ago, but Spotify still needs to exercise caution here. It's clear that some users prefer an audio-only podcast experience, and they're coming out in droves to express their opinions.

It's a story as old as the modern web. In an effort to attract new users, developers add features that prove controversial to the existing user base. The story is repeating once again with Spotify's push into video, which has alienated at least some people.

"Why can't a music app just do music ... ?" lamented u/fitzingout in the top comment on a Reddit post entitled, "Since when did Spotify start offering YouTube style content." The sentiment was echoed by other users protesting the intrusion of podcasts and video content into the user experience. Multiple other commenters in the thread claimed to have switched to Apple Music or Tidal, citing Spotify's lack of high fidelity audio in addition to their other concerns. "It just feels like it is trying to be an everything app while focusing on nothing at all," wrote u/jawboy.

One particularly eyebrow-raising comment featured a screenshot of a Spotify video recommendation featuring a re-upload of a sex worker's camgirl stream. Although clothed in a swimsuit, the stream clearly features a menu of adult services such as "drooling ahegao." We at SlashGear confirmed that the video remains publicly available, highlighting recent concerns over adult content being hosted on the platform, including a much more explicit variety. Such content has its place in an online ecosystem, but it's not what most Spotify users signed up for.

If Spotify wants its video podcasts to pay off, it clearly needs to work harder on content moderation and reducing low-effort uploads, while making an effort to keep its music library on at least equal footing with other content.