YouTube is surging ahead of Spotify as the most popular podcasting platform, even as Netflix is planning a push of its own towards developing the genre.
More than 1 billion people a month are viewing podcast content on YouTube. “We’ve seen a lot of growth,” Tim Katz, vice president for partnerships at YouTube, told Bloomberg in an interview.
YouTube first began identifying its potential as a major host for podcasts during the pandemic. Its decision to focus on podcasts, roughly coincided with Spotify scaling back its plans to develop podcasts.
“Podcasters were organically coming onto YouTube, and users were flocking to their content,” Katz said. “At that point, we were like, ‘We should lean in.’”
Part of the leaning in effort involved YouTube assigning dedicated teams to onboard, manage, and respond to the needs of podcasters coming onto its platform. It even offered as much as A$481,780 to podcasters to encourage them to create video podcast content.
In contrast, Spotify which had already invested more than A$1.6 billion on acquisitions and licencing deals for popular shows closed its in-house podcasting studio in 2022.
Unlike Spotify Payouts for musicians, Spotify usually doesn’t pay podcasters. Those creators have to instead rely on payments from listeners, sponsorship or advertising deals.
The YouTube podcast trend “existed but it was a matter of us pouring some gas on it,” said Katz.
Some of the measures helping it to currently grow podcasts include YouTube’s search algorithm working to amplify content and support for multiple languages so shows can be consumed worldwide.
Last year, viewers watched more than 400 million hours of podcasts monthly on living room devices, according to YouTube.
As of June 2024, Spotify said about 170 million people had watched a video podcast on its platform and earlier this year said it has more than 300,000 video podcasts on the site.
As ChannelNews recently reported, Netflix which has already implemented live programming including some major sports events on its streaming platform, may now be considering hosting video podcasts.
Podcasters such as Joe Rogan and Theo Von have shown the immense popularity of their video podcasts hosted on YouTube.
YouTube’s CEO has already called its service as “the new TV,” a shift which has helped it win advertisers who previously spent their money on broadcast TV commercials. Netflix will be keen to tap into those advertising dollars by hosting video podcasts on its platform.
