Spotify buys podcast discovery platform Podz

Podz is a podcast discovery tool that uses machine learning to preview clips from various podcast episodes

Spotify, the audio streaming giant has acquired Podz, a podcast discovery app that uses machine learning to give users what it calls a "audio newsfeed".

Podz's machine learning interface was that has been trained over thousands of hours in consultations with audio experts uses the AI smarts to promote podcasts that a user might be interested in by giving them a small high-quality preview of audio clips as part of a feed.

In a blog post, Spotify said that it believes the acquisition will allow the company to speed up podcast discovery on their own platform. The streaming giant said that it already had teams that are focused on improving its audio discovery tools but this acquisition will accelerate the growth in that sphere.

Listeners can expect to start seeing the first traces of Podz's acquisition before the end of this year.

Spotify also says that this acquisition, "combined with Spotify’s 2.6 million podcasts on the platform, learnings from our work in music discovery, and current investments in podcast recommendation, will take podcast discovery to the next level—making it easier for listeners to find the content they want to listen to, and for creators to be discovered and build a fan base."