Spotify's quest to make podcasts more interactive is expanding. Today, the streaming service announced the polls and Q&A features that it has been testing will be available to all creators through Anchor, the podcast production service it also owns. Though the tools are open to everyone, Spotify explains podcast producers and listeners will see them in 160 countries.
On the listener side, questions will appear at the bottom of episode pages in the Spotify app on both Android and iOS. From there, you'll be able to respond directly in the app to any prompts related to the show. As you might expect, you'll see on-going results of polls, but Q&A responses will only be seen by the show's creator. Producers and hosts will have the option of pinning certain responses below the question alongside the corresponding username in a stories-like format.
Spotify has been testing polls for a year and it added a Q&A option to the trial in January. At the time, the company said 90 percent of users would see polls even though the number of shows on which they appeared was very limited.