In this detailed session, James Cridland, the Radio Futurologist and Editor of Podnews, chatted with Johan Seidefors, the Nordic Head of Content at Spotify.
Johan looks after both podcasts and music for the streaming giant. He said that he said that that makes sense, especially in a smaller market like the Nordics. “We are viewing podcasts like artists more and more” he said.
James asked whether the radio industry is doomed: “Do you see radio as the competition?”. Johan laughed. He said that his mission was to be the biggest audio company in the world and pointed out that his company was following the audience, not driving the trends.
Johan is focussed on recommendations. Spotify is always trying to highlight content that audiences might be interested in. And Johan said that personalisation will become more and more important in the the future. Although, he pointed to the potential issue with this: “You cannot lose the element of surprise for audiences, this is the challenge”.
Spotify released their Swedish podcasting survey last week, which showed fast-growing audiences in the podcast space. Why is Spotify so popular in Sweden? Johan thinks that first-mover advantage is key but also it’s because the user interface is so good. “It’s easy to find good content on Spotify” he said.
Maybe radio could learn from what is happening at Spotify?
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