Of course I’m just speaking for myself, but I personally have several reasons for not wanting podcasts in the app (when I say podcasts I’m mainly talking about the video verity.)

The main reason is because I am on a family plan and my middle school daughter uses the app for music. We used to have Spotify, but when they added podcasts essentially it became a video streaming free for all and I would find my daughter watching “podcasts” that were just people shouting profanity over video game streams and tik tok compilations. On top of being young, she has a neurological disability and Spotify turning the social media faucet on full blast was more than she could handle. She was sneaking to watch these videos instead of doing her school work and sleeping and it was really starting to affect her life. We switched to Tidal because it did not have those features and she went through some withdrawal but she is much healthier now that she’s back to just jamming to music.

That ties into another point which is that nowadays anyone can throw a video together and call it a podcast regardless of the quality or content. Setting aside that I already have 8 different ways to watch this content on various audio and video streaming apps as it is, including podcasts on Tidal feels like a complete diversion from their marketing strategy of being the place to go for the very highest quality music. The small number of in-house music focused shows they feature now fit the brand well and I think they would lose their identity if they change that.

I could go on but this reply is long enough.