Machine learning comes to podcasting

Acast, a technology platform for on-demand audio and podcasting, has launched Recommendations: a function that utilises a machine learning algorithm to surface new, tailored content for its users, similar to Spotify's Discover. During the feature's beta phase, Acast extracted data over a period of two weeks which showed that users are 52% more likely to follow a show if it is recommended to them by the algorithm, and 49% more likely to listen to multiple episodes of a show recommended by Acast. Johan Billgren, Acast CTO, comments: "Searching for new podcasts is hard and often time-consuming. We want our users to spend their time listening to great podcasts, rather than looking for them, and that is why we are launching Recommendations. Our machine learning algorithm, which we began testing in October last year, gets to know preferences over time by learning from a user's choices and then recommending new shows that they will like."