In September 2023, Spotify made headlines when they announced “adding auto-generated transcripts to millions of podcasts.” Fast forward to March of 2025 and the John Travolta gif of him looking around and finding nothing is appropriate.
The promised “transcripts” are nowhere in sight.
What Spotify Promised
In their original newsroom announcement, Spotify stated they were “launching auto-generated and time-synced transcripts to more creators and shows so you can read along with an episode, making transcripts more visually and textually accessible.”
They described a feature where listeners could “scroll down the now playing view to find the transcript, then tap the card to follow along on this full screen as you listen to the episode.” Spotify promised to roll this out “to millions of episodes in the coming weeks.”
The Reality: Subtitles, Not Transcripts
Problem #1 is what Spotify is actually describing is not a transcript—it’s subtitles.
There are multiple crucial differences between transcripts and subtitles, particularly when it comes to accessibility and WCAG conformance. Three key distinctions:
- A proper transcript identifies who is speaking. This is essential because podcasts typically have multiple speakers. Without knowing who is saying what, you lose critical context.
- Transcripts are static documents that can be searched, accessed independently of the audio, and easily navigated using assistive technology like screen readers.
- A transcript exists independently of the audio being played, while subtitles are time-synced to the media.
My 25 Minute Journalistic Investigation
At first blush, I couldn’t immediately locate any transcripts on Spotify. Here’s what I found:
- Looking at podcast episode pages while logged into Spotify’s website, I found no indication of transcripts or even a way to access them.
- I screen-recorded my experience examining popular podcasts like the Joe Rogan Experience and The Bill Simmons Podcast. While I did find subtitles for video podcasts, there was no “read along” card or transcript option despite searching through all available menus and options.
- Creator Dashboard: In my own Spotify creator dashboard, I found a “Transcripts” section with a toggle labeled “make my content accessible with transcripts.” However, when hovering over the question mark, it revealed: “this podcast is not eligible for transcripts.” This contradicts the announcement that transcripts would be rolling out to “millions of episodes.”
Limited Rollout Confirmed
A response on the Spotify community forum from November 2024 (over a year after the initial announcement) confirms that “some podcasts and their episodes don’t have transcripts at the moment, meaning that the option to switch it on won’t appear for those podcasts.”
Accessibility Implications
Even if Spotify’s “follow along” feature were widely available, it wouldn’t be sufficient for WCAG conformance. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are technical standards for web accessibility. Again, a proper transcript must:
- Identify speakers
- Be static
- Be accessible via assistive technology
- Exist independently of media playback
Why I Looked InTo This
This wasn’t organic research on my part – I don’t use Spotify to listen to podcasts, nor do I typically seek out transcripts.
However, I just launched Transcript Host, a hosting service that acts as a centralized hosting hub for all types of transcripts. Thus, I was very interested in experiencing the automatic transcript feature that Apple Podcasts and Spotify had both promised recently.
Apple is actually much closer to a transcript realization within the episode description. One essential element is speakers aren’t identified, but this is difficult to automatically assigned. However, I expect artificial intelligence (AI) to rapidly help with this.
Neverthless, even if Spotify and Apple both flawlessly executed on transcripts, Transcript Host still has a place for a few reasons.
An obvious one being that not everyone uses Spotify or Apple.
Another one being that neither provide for the optimal reading experience (small text on a mobile device).
Also, practically, many people want to find specific parts of a podcast episode and may do so by using Control+F to search the transcript.
If you’re a podcaster looking to ensure accessibility and WCAG 2.1 AA conformance as well as improve exposure and searchability, Transcript Host plans offer a lot of power.
