Spotify lets you share a specific timestamp from a podcast
It’ll be easier to get friends to listen to a specific part of an episode.
Spotify is bringing more social sharing options to its Android and iOS apps starting today, including a way to link to a timestamp in a podcast. When you tap the share button, you’ll see a toggle option that'll let you create a link for the current playtime. After you share the link, anyone who taps it can start listening to the podcast from the same spot.
The idea seems to be to spark conversations. If the host(s) says something particularly interesting you want to speak with your friends about, it’ll be easier to direct them to a certain part of an episode, just like you might share a timestamp of a YouTube video.
Podcasts have been a key growth area for Spotify over the past couple of years. A quarter of Spotify users (around 89 million) now listen to podcasts on the platform. Sharing on social media plays a major role in helping people find new things on Spotify, with around 40% of music discovery attributed to it, according to a survey of users. Perhaps timestamp sharing will do something similar for podcasts. It might encourage more users to sign up for podcast subscriptions too.
Meanwhile, Spotify users will be able to share songs through the Canvas feature (which turns song pages into video art experiences) on Snapchat in addition to Instagram Stories. You’ll also get to see a preview of how the Canvas video will look on your feed. The Canvas share sheet will show you only apps you have on your device. If you regularly post to Instagram Stories and don’t have Snapchat installed, you’ll see Instagram among the sharing options but not Snapchat.
