Need a better podcast app

I’ve been a Spotify customer for years. I think $15/month is a good deal for access to all that audio content. But the app is so danged frustrating to use! More so because I regularly use four different versions of the app: the Windows desktop app, the Android app on my Samsung tablet in the shop, the Android app on my phone, and the Android Auto interface to the app on my phone.

The tablet and phone versions are almost identical. All of the apps are usable, although the Android Auto interface is just barely functional. But I expect better than just “usable.” The Spotify app, even on the Windows desktop leaves so much on the table. Things it should do but doesn’t, and often the things it DOES do are done in stupid ways.

Its handling of podcasts is particularly stupid. By default it lists the episodes in reverse chronological order. If I go to the podcast and hit “Play,” Spotify dutifully plays the most recent episode. And when that ends it goes to the previous episode, etc. Already heard it? Tough! You know where the “next episode” button is. And the next time I want to listen to something I haven’t heard I have to search through all the episodes I’ve already listened to.

It doesn’t help that most of the time when this happens I’m driving down the road in my truck and I don’t want to take my eyes off the road long enough to fiddle with the dang thing. I wonder how “Hey Spotify” would respond to “Hey, Spotify, play the most recent RadioLab episode that I haven’t already heard.” Asking Google to ask Spotify to do that hasn’t produced the desired result.

It seems as though Spotify hasn’t figured out that podcast episodes aren’t like songs. I don’t put podcast episodes on playlists and listen to them again and again. Why can’t I select an option so that hitting Play from the episodes list will play the most recent (or oldest! I’d love the ability to play all podcast episodes from the first one) episode that I haven’t already played?

More to the point, I listen to multiple podcasts. Why do I have to visit each individual podcast page to play the new episodes? Can’t Spotify create a “pending” list for me? It could append to the list whenever a new episode from one of my watched podcasts is released. I could go to that page, hit Play, and the oldest episode podcast would start playing. And when it’s done, it’s removed from the list!

I don’t think my requests here are unreasonable or even unusual. I suspect plenty of other podcast listeners have similar frustrations. Or maybe I can ditch Spotify for podcasts? Time to do some digging.