Music streaming company Spotify has acquired technology startup Podz in order to enhance podcast experience.
Podz, powered by the innovative machine learning technology, generates clips that give customers the opportunity to preview key moments from podcast episodes, encouraging them to discover and listen to new podcasts.

“This capability, 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,” Spotify said in a statement.

Podz recently raised $2.5 million in pre-seed funding and celebrities like Katie Couric and Paris Hilton are also among the investors.

Spotify said it has had machine learning experts focused on improving audio discovery for almost a decade, but there is more work to be done.

“Podz’ technology will complement and accelerate Spotify’s focused efforts to drive discovery, deliver listeners the right content at the right time, and accelerate growth of the category worldwide,” Spotify said.

The company plans to integrate Podz’ technology into the Spotify experience, and listeners should start seeing elements of that work before the end of the year.

Spotify has also started Greenroom, its live audio Clubhouse rival.

Apple Podcasts Subscriptions allow creators to host bonus content and ad-free versions of their shows, in exchange for a monthly subscription.

Apple Podcasts Subscriptions are now available for listeners in more than 170 countries and regions.

Facebook is planning to roll out its podcast product on June 22. The social media network is also likely to add a new feature that will allow listeners to create clips from their favourite shows.