> I'm surprised Spotify hasn't broken into podcasts yet (or have they?).

Shoot, I hate to see technical folks genericize "podcasts" this way.

Podcasts are a great and popular standards-based medium for distributing audio and video on the open web.

Proprietary platforms like Spotify ingest a small percentage of the best podcasts and make that content available to their customers via their proprietary platform in order to increase the value of that platform.

The important bit is that the Spotify show isn't a podcast — no podcast app can play it. Spotify owns the listener relationship. They share stats with creators at their pleasure, if at all. It's a closed thing.

Apologies for what will seems like pedantry to some, but podcasting is the only open audio/video medium we've got.