Imagine if you could listen to podcast highlights that give you a taste of an episode before sitting through the whole 1-hour segment of a new podcast; well, Spotify is working to make that a reality! This month, Spotify acquired Podz, a team powered by “state-of-the-art machine learning technology” that generates high-quality podcast clips (the podcast trailer you imagined before) to help drive discovery and increase streaming. With this podcast clip feature likely to be available by the end of the year, we expect this innovation could be especially popular among Gen Zs who have an affinity for bite-size content.

We’re seeing classic video brands like MTV dip into the podcast space with the launch of their “MTV's Behind The Music” podcast set to drop the same day as the show reboots on Paramount+. Showcasing artists from Madonna to 50 Cent, listeners will get the chance to hear an audio remaster of original episodes while following new stories from Jennier Lopez to Fat Joe. Creating a dance between audio and visual and bouncing around both the past and present, listeners (and viewers!) will start getting new episodes tomorrow, July 29th.

Pocket Casts is an intriguing podcast listening platform that uses “human curators” to help discover new content, allows trimming of silent moments in episodes for more efficient listening, and even provides a sleep timer for those who fall asleep to their favorite podcaster. This month, parent company Automattic, which owns WordPress.com and Tumblr, acquired Pocket Casts as part of their latest push to bring more consumers to content created on their platforms. As podcasts continue to rise in popularity, the personalized approach that Pocket Casts provides listenersis likely to attract Gen Z and Millennials looking for more control over their podcast experience.