Amazon's Alexa gets podcasts from Apple and Spotify

Amazon's Alexa gets podcasts from Apple and Spotify

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  • You can now play podcasts from Apple and Spotify on Amazon Alexa-powered speakers. Apple emailed all podcasters on Friday. Spotify followed with a blog post announcing their integration.

    • Both Spotify Podcasts and Apple Podcasts on Alexa are only available in the US. It doesn’t work in the other 179 countries in the world: caution when advertising the service on your podcast, because everyone else will get an error.
    • See our analysis of podcasts on smart speakers below.
  • Libsyn has updated their platform, adding the ability for you to add Podtrac/Chartable/Blubrry “URL prepends” and author data per episode.

  • Transistor has published Google Play and Google Podcasts – what’s the difference?, noting that, after 18 months, a Google search for “how do I submit my podcast to Google Podcasts?” returns instructions for Google Play Music Podcasts, which is a different and competing service that the company is still running.

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Analysis: podcasts on smart speakers

Most smart-speakers are in shared spaces, like kitchens or the living room. Yet 91% of podcasts are listened-to alone. That’s one reason, perhaps, why only 0.21% of Libsyn podcast plays in August 2019 were to smart speakers (source). Even if podcast listening was to treble on smart speakers, this is unlikely to produce a massive change in consumption: and certainly if only available in one country. (Expect lots of confused listeners trying to listen outside the US).


Aug 19 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

Despite the hype, Amazon Alexa is only market leader in two countries: the United States and the UK. In all other countries, Google is in front (and the Google Assistant is also embedded in many other devices, so it has more users everywhere). Google Podcasts syncs with the Google Assistant automatically; just as both Apple and Spotify’s Alexa skills do. Users will have to connect their Apple or Spotify account to their Alexa account, however; unlike the Google Assistant, which is already linked to your Google account.

This is to be welcomed by Amazon. Podcasts have always been playable through Alexa speakers using their default provider, TuneIn Radio. TuneIn recently lost a copyright court case in the UK, which could possibly open the floodgates for a number of other copyright actions against the company (and has the possibility of forcing it to cease trading). In many countries, Amazon has succeeded in finding other default directories for live radio; and it would make sense for an alternative default directory for podcasts.

Most interestingly, this is the first time that Apple has produced a third-party integration for Apple Podcasts. It communicates that Apple are serious about their podcast ambitions. Next, could we see an Apple Podcasts app for Android?

  • Feedback: want more little analysis pieces like this? Let us know.

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