On Spotify, an Arranged Marriage Between Music and Podcasts

Music-filled — and Spotify-exclusive — shows like “Black Girl Songbook” and “60 Songs That Explain the ’90s” dance around copyright constraints.

Danyel Smith used to make a podcast in her kitchen. Smith, an author, journalist and former editor in chief of Vibe magazine, recorded it with her husband, Elliott Wilson, a fellow journalist and the founder of Rap Radar, between the sink and a bowl of fruit. As one might expect of a show hosted by longtime music journalists, the podcast, “Relationship Goals,” which ran from 2015 to 2016, featured lots of music — in between playfully adversarial banter about domestic and professional headlines. The song placements, like the show itself, were done off the cuff — without much forethought, professional assistance or official permission. “It was a little bit of pirate podcasting,” Smith said. “We weren’t a part of a network, and this was before podcasting had become super popular. We would just sit at our little kitchen table and play music and talk about it.”