After launching a competition to Apple Music last spring, Pandora is all set to build a massive podcast catalog called “podcast genome project” that would help podcasters monetize shows more easily.
Talking to Variety, Pandora Internet Radio CEO Roger Lynch said that the company is working on a deep integration of podcasts that will allow users of the service to easily browse and discover new shows.
This project is a nod to Pandora’s Music Genome Project — a massive database of dozens of musical attributes for every single song in the company’s music library that is being used to compile stations and aid discovery.
Diversifying itself strictly from streaming music to streaming shows will help Pandora evolve into a more modern platform. While, currently, Apple hosts the largest directory of podcasts, Spotify and Google Play Music both include subscription music and podcasts in the same experience.
While ad-supported streaming music remains Pandora’s primary product unlike its competitors who have on-demand subscription music, it plans the same strategy for podcasts too.
Pandora’s primary product remains ad-supported streaming music and not on-demand subscription music like its competitors, however, and it hopes to apply that to podcasts too.
