Testing Spotify's Podcast Shortcut Feature

I host a show called Cryptids Across the Atlas. It's an entertainment podcast about monsters, legends, and the weird corners of the map. I also make music under the name Braille Atlas. For most of the show's life, those two worlds sat in separate tabs.

Then Spotify rolled out a feature called Podcast Shortcuts, and I spent a weekend testing it on our feed. It's the first cross-promotion tool from a platform that actually feels built for independent shows instead of big networks.

Here's what it is, what I did with it, and whether it's worth your time.

What Is a Podcast Shortcut?

Podcast Shortcuts is Spotify's in-episode linking feature, built into Spotify for Creators. It's the thing that powers the "In this episode" card listeners see on an episode page.

Each episode can carry up to ten linked items. Those items can point to:

• A guest's profile or their show if they're a podcaster.
• Music. A song, album, or artist page.
• Another episode of your show or someone else's.
• A playlist related to the episode topic.
• A book, audiobook, or podcast you referenced on the air.

For listeners, it's a clean row of tappable cards right under the player. For hosts, it's basically a lightweight show-notes system that actually gets clicks, because it lives inside the app instead of a description box nobody expands.

Why We Wanted to Try It

Cryptids Across the Atlas has a soundtrack problem in the best possible way. I score a lot of the episodes myself under Braille Atlas. There's a full album called Beastiary I'd love more listeners to stumble into, and every episode uses tracks from it.

If a listener is already three minutes into your episode, they're the exact right person to stumble into the music behind it.

Outside of the music, we also bring back topics. A Mothman episode references an older Mothman deep-dive. A Bigfoot episode leans on lore from a Skunk Ape episode from last season. Those callbacks deserved a better cross-link than "go check out our earlier episode" in the middle of a monologue.

Shortcuts seemed like a way to make all that navigation one tap instead of a scavenger hunt.

How We Used It on Cryptids

On the first episode I tested, here's how I spent the ten slots:

• Braille Atlas artist page. So a listener could open the full catalog, not just one song.
• Beastiary album. The actual soundtrack for the show.
• Two specific songs from the episode. The open-theme track and the mid-episode cue.
• A related past episode. Same cryptid, older season.
• A guest's show. A fellow indie podcaster who appeared on the episode.
• A podcast swap partner. Another small show in the paranormal space I wanted to return the favor to.

Setup took maybe twelve minutes total inside Spotify for Creators. Most of that was me second-guessing which song to lead with. The actual mechanical part is fast.

Why This Matters for Indie Shows

Most podcast growth strategies are fighting for a new listener on a different platform. Shortcuts is doing the opposite. It's working on the listener who already found you.

That's the cheapest listener you'll ever get. They've already clicked play. They already like the show enough to be in the episode. If you give them a reason to tap one more thing before the episode ends, you've either deepened the relationship or sent a streaming royalty to yourself. Both are wins.

For creators stacking shows, music, and guest episodes, this is a small feature that starts to compound fast. I don't think it'll be the thing that makes or breaks a show. But it'll quietly lift watch-time, cross-episode listens, and repeat visitors.

Two months in, the data on our end shows a modest but real lift on catalog listens to Braille Atlas songs on episodes where I used the feature, compared to ones where I didn't. That was enough to make it a default part of our publishing checklist.

How to Set One Up Yourself

The workflow inside Spotify for Creators is short. Six steps and you're done.

• Open your show in Spotify for Creators.
• Select the episode you want to add shortcuts to.
• Click "In this episode." That's where the feature lives.
• Add up to ten items. Songs, artists, episodes, playlists, books.
• Reorder them so your most important item is first. That's the one listeners tap most.
• Save. Updates go live within a few minutes.

You can edit or reorder shortcuts later, so there's no reason not to experiment. If you're a host with music, merch, or a back catalog worth browsing, this is ten minutes that'll keep paying you for the life of the episode.

I'll run this test for another quarter and report back. But for now, it's in the workflow on Cryptids, and it'll be part of every client show we produce going forward.