Bloomberg: Spotify had plans to halt ‘white noise’ podcasts

Bloomberg believes that Spotify is on the verge of no longer allowing new ‘white noise’ podcasts on the platform. These podcasts, in which only noise or ambient noise can be heard, would cause the company to lose 35 million euros in gross profit annually.

An internal report from Spotify that a Bloomberg journalist was able to view shows that since January of this year, three million hours of so-called ‘white noise’ podcasts have been listened to on the platform every day. ‘White noise’ podcasts are podcasts in which there is no talking, but only sounds. The creators of these podcasts would according to Bloomberg earn $18,000 every month; that amount would arise from advertising revenue via Spotify.

When the streaming service’s board found out about the figures at the beginning of this year, they considered no longer including the podcasts in the feed and blocking new episodes. Spotify also reportedly wanted to redirect users to podcasts that contained chatter because they would be more economically viable for the platform. Thanks to these measures, the Swedish company could increase its annual gross profit by 35 million euros.

However, according to a company spokesperson, the plan was never implemented and ‘white noise’ podcasts are still welcome on the platform. However, some podcast makers believe that their ‘white noise’ podcasts disappeared at some point. For example, one creator told Bloomberg that two podcasts had suddenly gone missing this year. The problem was only resolved after several weeks, but the creator is said to have missed out on an average of 50,000 downloads per day.

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