There’s a marked hunger for audio content right now. According to “The Podcast Consumer 2025,” an Edison Research report on the industry published earlier this year, the number of hours Americans spend listening to podcasts increased by 355% over the last decade. Put differently, Americans now collectively listen to 773 million hours of podcasts each week, which is tantamount to every single American over 13 years old listening to approximately 20 minutes of podcasts a day. The seemingly endless demand for something to engage with or dissociate to while cleaning, working, commuting, and so on accounts for the medium’s uninhibited growth. 

Major corporations, of course, have taken notice. Most notably, Spotify has leveraged its position as a top music streaming platform in an attempt to corner the podcast market as well. Recognizing an opportunity to maximize its influence by not only hosting but also producing podcasts, the company quickly acquired smaller studios and lured in big names with $100 million contracts. These aggressive acquisitions helped cement Spotify as the most listened-to streaming platform in the world. But when it comes to podcasts specifically, Spotify has captured only 26% of American podcast listeners compared to YouTube’s 33%, according to Edison Research’s annual “The Infinite Dial” report. And despite being an early adopter, supporting the medium since 2005, Apple Podcast’s current audience share is just 14%, according to that same report.