Spotify has decided its about time its service offered the equivalent of a drive-time radio show by allowing spoken-word content to be combined with full song playback. The end result is "Shows with Music."
The audio streaming service is introducing a new show format which opens the way for podcast hosts to inject songs into their shows. Not just brief samples, but full song playback. Anyone can create this new show format, but they'll need to use the latest version of the Anchor platform to do so as it has the required tooling. For now, it's only available to Anchor users in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland.
Enjoying these shows to their fullest requires listeners have a Spotify Premium subscription. Otherwise, the songs included will remain limited to 30-second preview clips, which will certainly detract from any discussion by the host after a track has played. The only other restriction seems to be on the music being played, which you've probably guessed needs to be available to listen to on Spotify.
The Shows with Music format is exclusive to Spotify, and that's simply because Spotify needs to be able to ensure only licensed music is played and that musicians and songwriters get paid, just like they do on Spotify's regular audio streaming service. Discovering which shows include song playback is easy, just tap on the "Shows with Music" hub in Browse.
To help kickstart the feature, Spotify added full song playback to seven Original Shows, which include: