Alexa, play a podcast on Pandora
Podcasts have been steadily gaining in popularity over the last several years, but thanks to COVID-19, it feels like interest has exploded recently. After all, people are stuck indoors -- whether unemployed or working from home -- and listening to a podcast is a great way to pass the time. Don't forget, Spotify recently paid Joe Rogan $100 million to get his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, on its platform exclusively.
Pandora may not be the most popular platform for listening to podcasts, but some people do, in fact, use it for that purpose. If you are one of those people, I have great news -- you can now start and listen to your favorite podcasts on Pandora using Amazon Alexa.
"Starting today, Pandora users across all tiers of service can enjoy their favorite podcasts on Alexa-enabled devices including Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, and Echo Show, among others, by using simple voice commands like: 'Alexa, play the Sway’s Interviews podcast on Pandora.' With the addition of podcasts to the Pandora skill on Alexa, you can use voice commands to listen to any podcast in Pandora’s library, request a specific episode ('Alexa, play the latest episode of Ted Talks Daily'), request an episode by topic ('Alexa, play the Ted Talks Daily episode about procrastination') and use playback controls for hands-free podcast enjoyment while in the skill," says Pandora.
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If you find it to too tedious to say "on Pandora" after some of your commands, you can simplify things a bit. By setting Pandora as the default podcast service, you can leave off the "on Pandora" with the same results. This can be achieved from the Alexa smartphone app by going to Settings, Music & Podcasts, and then Default Services.
Are you someone that uses Pandora for podcasts? Will you uses this new Alexa integration? Please tell me in the comments below.
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