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.

‘While video is not a new facet of podcasting, only now is the number of reported viewership growing.’

The relative success of these platforms in the market is not solely due to acquisition budgets or historical support; it is also the result of an audio-based art form overwhelmingly becoming a video-based one. While video is not a new facet of podcasting (as far back as 2008, Apple Podcasts, then known simply as iTunes, supported the delivery of video over RSS), only now is the number of reported viewership growing. In 2025, 51% of Americans said they watched at least one podcast.

Gabriel Soto, the senior director of research at Edison Research, confirmed that the increase in video podcast consumption has been supporting YouTube’s growth quarter over quarter as the years go by, adding that among new podcast listeners, YouTube is also the preferred platform. “We can look at those who started listening within the last year to see what type of behaviors or what type of impact they might have on the future of podcast consumption,” Soto said. “We’re seeing that YouTube is the number-one service among First-Years.”

The most significant advantage YouTube has, of course, is that its infrastructure was built for video consumption from the start, allowing it to support video content creators with ease. Hot on the heels of YouTube, Spotify, and Apple, however, is short-form social media content. In early 2024, thanks to social media clips, Shannon Sharpe’s “Club Shay Shay” interview with Katt Williams was such a cultural moment that it was parodied on “Saturday Night Live.” Where earlier podcast discovery mechanisms like audiograms largely failed, video clips of podcasts on social media have broken through the noise and gone organically viral. It seems like podcasting has finally cracked its discovery problem.

Every week, clips from shows like Amy Poehler’s “Good Hang” or Theo Von’s “This Past Weekend” go viral on TikTok or Instagram Reels. Each time, these shows see a surge of interest, even if it is only momentary. Surveying just the show “Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso” on Instagram, episode clips with video had, on average, 32 times more impressions than those from the same timeframe without, regardless of the caliber of that particular week’s celebrity guest. Video is where new listeners are at, and video platforms are best poised to offer video podcasts. 

“[People are] using TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook to listen to podcasts, and by combining those platforms, those have even surpassed Apple Podcasts among First-Years, which was like the platform that started it all last decade,” Soto said.  

This puts Spotify — which is currently better positioned to succeed in its direct pursuit of YouTube than, say, Apple — at a disadvantage, as the audio platform is not where most consumers are going for video content. Plus, there is no significant advantage to podcast creators in posting their video content on both Spotify and YouTube. Danny Brown, the head of podcaster support and experience at the distribution and monetization company Captivate, explained that the idea of creators using Spotify has clear benefits and drawbacks.

“The pro, obviously, [is] it’s another avenue for getting your content out there [and] earning revenue. If monetization is a key part of your goals, the Spotify ad partner program does look like it’s a higher buy-in than what a YouTube creator could earn through YouTube ads and their monetization platform,” Brown said. 

The con is that while Spotify hosts about 6.5 million podcasts, there are only about 500,000 video podcasts on the platform. Obviously, half a million video podcasts is “still a decent number,” Brown said, “but it’s a very small percentage of the overall podcasting experience.”

Even if Spotify could convince every major podcaster to publish their videos on the platform, it still doesn’t compete as an overall video platform. As of April 2025, there were over 20 billion videos uploaded to YouTube. People go to that app and website to watch videos. 

“People go to YouTube because it’s not just for podcasting, right? People go to YouTube because they can see their streamers, they can see other types of video content, like video games, sports, highlights, whatever it is,” Soto said. “Then they can engage with podcasts that just happen to be a part of their ecosystem. It’ll be very, very difficult for [Spotify] to compete with the overall content creator world.”

‘Spotify prioritizing video could require entirely new workflows and increased production costs.’

Yet it’s unlikely Spotify, a massive media corporation known for spending its way to cultural dominance, will give up without a fight.

“For nearly two decades, Spotify has led the evolution of audio. As listening habits continue to expand, we see video podcasting as a natural and exciting expansion of the format — one we’re excited to support on Spotify. Video on Spotify isn’t about replacing audio, but about enriching the connection between creators and their audiences, and meeting fans wherever and however they choose to engage,” said Jordan Newman, head of content partnerships at Spotify. “We’re seeing strong momentum: Creators are uploading more video content than ever, and audience engagement is growing rapidly. We will continue to build tools and experiences that empower creators, help them grow their audience, and make Spotify a dynamic home for storytelling in all its forms.”

Fittingly, starting in 2026, a selection of Spotify video podcasts — most of which are from The Ringer — will be available to stream on Netflix in the U.S. The move is perhaps a predictable one, but the results are more difficult to foresee.

For audio-only podcasters, Spotify prioritizing video could require entirely new workflows and increased production costs that some smaller outfits can’t accommodate, and that some creators won’t accommodate. Not only do certain audio-only podcasters reject making video content for any platform despite the medium’s exponential growth, but also, audience engagement for audio shows tends to be much stronger.

“Retention on audio far outstrips retention on video,” Brown said. “You’re getting more engaged listeners that are more likely to take an action on a call to action from the podcast or a creator than maybe a video — not always, but a lot of the time,” which is music to advertisers’ ears.

‘While the bubble is still in the burgeoning stages of inflation, creatives and listeners alike owe it to themselves to be circumspect.’

This calls into question how well the partnership between Spotify and Netflix will play. In addition to concerns about engagement, as Bloomberg journalist Ashley Carman noted in a video responding to the deal, it’s unlikely podcasters will want to relinquish those advertising dollars, which will be in jeopardy if Netflix expects exclusivity from podcasters. 

There are also podcasts that are not enhanced by video, or even worse, that undermine the show’s entire premise by adopting it. A perfect example is Kelly Ripa’s podcast, “Let’s Talk Off Camera,” which added video to its format in an attempt to keep up. In doing so, however, it betrayed its central conceit, which posited that all the best conversations on a TV set happen once the cameras are turned off. In time, perhaps, the creators of these shows will come to their senses.

While the bubble is still in the burgeoning stages of inflation, creatives and listeners alike owe it to themselves to be circumspect about whether this change to the medium reflects a fundamental shift in the art form, or whether it’s just another ill-conceived pivot to video, in which titans of industry duke it out for the crown while creators try to avoid the fallout. 

“I think the problem we have as podcasters is that the entire medium is extremely vulnerable to being destroyed entirely by the whims of like one or two tech people,” said longtime host and producer of shows, including “The Allusionist,” Helen Zaltzman. “It makes me feel terrified because fundamentally there’s nothing I can do about, like, Google or Apple suddenly deciding to do a thing radically differently in a way that throws us all.” 

Benjamin Cannon contributed reporting.