Following its big bet on original podcasts, Spotify says it is finding success in translating its audio content into other languages.

“What we have learned early on is that you can be very successful with adaptation,” Spotify’s chief international content and advertising strategist Dawn Ostroff told dpa in Berlin.

“We have done many now, some from German originating podcasts into English. Some English into many different languages. And then some from our Spanish-language countries that have been adopted into other languages.”

“And we are seeing two things,” she said. “Good storytelling is good storytelling. And it doesn’t matter what language it is in. But it needs to be in the context and the cultural relevancy of whatever country you are doing it for.”

Spotify has been betting hard on becoming the Netflix of audio content with major investments into original podcasts and production companies.

Ostroff says one of the streaming service's most successful adapted in-house productions was the true crime podcast “Serial Killer”.

These episodes are liked all over the world because true crime is the biggest podcast genre these days, Ostroff says. Another format to find many fans across cultures is a podcast about daily horoscopes.

Meanwhile the already massive English podcast community has also been borrowing from other languages. Spotify has adapted the German podcast concept of “Talk-O-Mat”, where two celebrities meet for a kind of blind date in the studio and are told what to talk about by a robot voice.

The “Caso 63” format, on the other hand, was adapted by Spotify from Spanish, says Ostroff: “It’s a psychological thriller, actually a sci-fi psychological thriller. It became the number one show of the Spanish-speaking markets.”

When Spotify adapted it for India, it became the number one podcast again, Ostroff said, explaining why it’s now being brought to other markets, including English-speaking countries.

 - dpa