Spotify’s Suggested Playlists can assist you in discovering new podcasts to enjoy

On Tuesday, Spotify extended its Prompted Playlists functionality to encompass podcasts, an update that could simplify discovering fresh shows for Premium users. Prompted Playlists were initially introduced as a beta feature in December, but until now only applied to music. This feature allows you to create tailored Discover Weekly playlists utilizing text prompts to “guide the algorithm” towards particular genres or subjects.

The recent update permits the same functionality for playlists consisting of podcast episodes. However, the feature remains in beta and is available only in English for Premium users in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden.

Upon testing the updated functionality, I found that Spotify’s AI took a few minutes to compile my podcast playlist (including a step it labeled as “verifying humor”), yet I was quite pleased with the outcome. I requested a playlist featuring Dungeons & Dragons actual play shows, which included a blend of well-known series and lesser-known finds. My initial prompt raised an important point if you’re using this feature for podcasts—it may select random episodes, which could be problematic if a show is intended to be listened to in order.

This was relatively simple to address. After generating a playlist, you can revisit and modify your prompt to refresh the playlist. I added a statement specifying that the playlist should exclusively feature the initial episodes of campaigns or shows. The new selection the AI provided was more rounded than I had anticipated, including some episodes of Dimension 20 and Critical Role together with some lesser-known shows I had either not encountered before or hadn’t yet listened to, such as Tales from the Stinky Dragon and Join the Party.

Each episode in the playlist was accompanied by a short AI-generated synopsis explaining how the episode connected to my prompt. While I generally approach AI-generated summaries with skepticism, the descriptions for shows I’ve viewed were precise, such as labeling Dimension 20: Fantasy High as “humorous with genuine stakes.” It’s ambiguous, but certainly not misleading.

You can enhance and manually adjust Prompted Playlists after creation, or keep revising them if you aren’t keen on the podcast episodes the AI curates for you. While I don’t intend to use this feature for music, it could prove beneficial for certain listeners regarding podcasts, especially in assembling a “first episodes” compilation like this. Additionally, you can configure the playlist to refresh regularly to receive new podcast samples on a daily or weekly basis.

To try out this feature, open the Spotify app and select “Create,” then pick “Prompted Playlist” from the options. In the prompt text box, describe the type of podcast episodes you wish to include in the playlist and click “Generate playlist.” The first few times I attempted this, I received an error indicating that Prompted Playlists didn’t yet support podcasts. The problem was resolved after I updated the application.