Music streaming company Spotify has acquired Podz, a startup for an undisclosed sum. This was a strategic move on the Swedish streaming firm’s part that intends to strengthen its podcasting business. Spotify specified that it acquired Podz, a small, talented team of entrepreneurs, engineers, and designers, to help make the experience even better.

Podz generates high-quality clips that give users the opportunity to preview key moments from podcast episodes, encouraging them to discover and listen to new podcasts. The startup has recently raised $2.5 million in pre-seed funding and celebrities like Katie Couric and Paris Hilton are among the investors.

"This capability, combined with Spotify's 2.6 million podcasts on the platform, learnings from our work in music discovery, and current investments in podcast recommendation, will take podcast discovery to the next level," the company said in a statement.

Spotify said it has had machine learning experts focused on improving audio discovery for almost a decade, but there is more work to be done. The company now plans to integrate Podz' technology into the Spotify experience, and listeners should start seeing elements of that work before the end of the year.

"We believe that Podz' technology will complement and accelerate Spotify's focused efforts to drive discovery, deliver listeners the right content at the right time, and accelerate growth of the category worldwide," the company noted.

Spotify has also debuted Greenroom, its live audio Clubhouse rival.

The market for podcasting has been intensifying lately with several companies investing in Podcast streaming. Other than Apple Podcast that now allows creators to host bonus content and ad-free versions of their shows, in exchange for a monthly subscription Facebook is also on the verge of launching its podcast platform on June 22.