Summary
- YouTube has surpassed one billion monthly podcast users, beating Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
- Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube Music are big players in the audio podcast market.
- Lesser-known podcast app alternatives like Pocket Casts and AntennaPod are great options.
Nowadays, it seems like everyone has a podcast. Whether it’s two friends talking about hot topics going on in the world of sports, or one person telling us about the most outrageous true-crime stories, it’s one of the easiest forms of media for anyone to get involved in, regardless of technical experience. It’s also a relatively easy way to consume content, too. Most people already have a subscription to a music service like Spotify or Apple Music, and with that is a semi-built-in podcast platform. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s a free service that far outnumbers the lot in terms of viewership, and in a big way.
I gave up YouTube Premium and struggled at first, but it was ultimately worth it
It’s painful to adjust, but I’ve learned to live without YouTube Premium
YouTube is one of the biggest websites in the world, and it is frequently only beaten in monthly users by Google, which is slightly ironic. Nonetheless, the brand just announced that it has surpassed one billion monthly podcast users on its official blog (via TechCrunch). YouTube says that this more than pushes them ahead of brands like Spotify and Apple Podcasts. According to Edison Research, a market research firm, YouTube is accurate; 31% of weekly podcast listeners age 13 and up choose YouTube as the service they use most. Spotify accounts for 27% of the spread, while Apple Podcasts accounts for 15%. Honestly, Spotify holds extremely well in this regard, as it only had 675 million total users on its platform at the end of 2024, according to Variety. YouTube has more than 2.7 billion monthly active users.
A podcast market full of options
While the numbers that YouTube generates are staggering, the podcast race is more split than YouTube’s announcement would like to make it seem. While YouTube is the platform that most people use for video podcasting, the big players for typical audio podcasts are Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube Music. YouTube Music took over podcast functionality from the now-shutdown Google Podcasts, and while some of us were not too displeased to see the end of Google’s old podcast app, YouTube Music is lacking in a lot of the fundamentals.
If you don’t have access to Spotify, YouTube Music, or Apple Podcasts or an active subscription, there are multiple lesser-known alternatives for all your podcasting needs. Pocket Casts is fantastic, and its UI makes it easy to use. Castbox, Podcast Addict, and AntennaPod are also well known for their free and, for some, subscription-based plans, but not everyone knows that Audible has podcasts on its platform. You do need an Audible Plus subscription, though.