Since spotify doesn't provide podcast ApI data right now, could you have a feature where we can "track" podcasts manually? Basically, you can search for a podcast, then add it to your "Currently listening" rotation for podcasts. All the episodes would be there, and you can manually click "listened" for each episode. Then your Podcast stats would include the estimated #of minutes you've listed to a podcast based on your marked watched shows, your top listened to podcasts, and other data. With this, you probably shouldn't compare stats across users because you can artifically inflate the numbers but it might be good as a starting point. I know it's not perfect, but would be a great way for avid Podcaster (like myself) to track their podcast stats. It's also a handy way of keeping track of which episode you're on in case you haven't watched a podcast in a while. It's similar to what IMDB let's you do. An app called TVTime has perfected this for TV shows and movies but not podcasts so it could be a cool way of getting that number somewhere. I've been looking for an app that does this for a long time, but ended up just making my own proxy using some basic good. If you can make this a possibility on this app - I think it would be a great starting point while we wait for Spotify to get their api data out to us.
Some notes:
- If you're planning on adding other app compatibility for which podcast app is available (Amazon, Google, etc.) Then you should keep this "Spotify Podcasts stats" seperate from the other podcast tracking software or there will be issues. Another way around this would be to have it as an option where if the app detects the same podcast name in Amazon Podcsst and Spotify podcasts for example, it can ask if you wsnt to merge that data.
- You should be able to mark episodes as "watched" multiple times, remove/resuce the amount of times a podcast episode is "watched" for example if you make a mistake.