This is the best summary I could come up with:
That’s according to a report from Bloomberg, which states the company could increase its annual gross profit by a whopping $38 million if it steers users away from so-called white noise podcasts.
These kinds of podcasts play various types of relaxing sounds on a loop — like static, crashing waves, or rain — and they’re more popular than you may think.
Last year, a report from Bloomberg suggested that white noise podcasters could rake in at least $18,000 per year from the ads placed by Spotify; now it reports based on internal documents that white noise podcasts made up 3 million daily consumption hours on Spotify as of January 2023.
When Spotify noticed it was sending users toward white noise podcasts, the platform reportedly considered taking these shows out of its talk feeds, banning future uploads, and nudging users toward other kinds of content.
“The proposal in question did not come to fruition — we continue to have white noise podcasts on our platform,” a Spotify spokesperson tells Bloomberg.
As reported by Bloomberg, some white noise podcasters have noticed their episodes suspiciously disappearing from the platform.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Wait people actually listen to white noise that’s occasionally pierced by better help ads?
people actually use spotify to listen to podcasts?
Why wouldn’t they? I’m not big on podcasts but I pay for Spotify and it has podcasts so why wouldn’t I use it for them?
Why use lemmy if there’s a centralized alternative where you don’t need to worry about instances and what client to use?
Podcasts used to be decentralized, everyone could publish their own feed and you could subscribe to it with any client you liked. Now there are platforms trying to lock you in with exclusive podcasts, while also offering those that are otherwise freely available, in a paid service.
A podcast is just a recording. It’s like a song. There is no intrinsic decentralisation built into them.
They don’t know about pocket casts, we must tell them!
I mean, all you need is 30 seconds of white noise and loop it. There are free apps that do this. White noise is even built into the iPhone now.