Podcasts now get the most listeners via YouTube, not via Spotify, Apple Podcasts or other platforms. Meanwhile, Spotify is focusing more on video. What’s going on?
No one expected a few years ago that podcasts would be the most popular on a video platform. Because you listen to a podcast, right? More and more podcasts were added, and to stand out, more and more podcasts put a camera in the studio. For short videos on social media, to attract new listeners, or to simply put the entire recording with images on YouTube. And it turns out: many people also want to see who they are listening to.
YouTube outpaces the competition
This is evident from the figures: YouTube surpassed the competition this year and was the most popular service for listening to podcasts with 31 percent. That shows research by market analyst Edison, held in the US. Spotify scores second with 27 percent, Apple Podcasts comes in third with 15 percent.
A few years ago, YouTube was far behind Spotify and Apple. The big change has several explanations. We already gave the first one: more podcasts record video and post it for convenience. But the audience is also changing: Generation Z (1997 – 2012) has matured and consumes more podcasts. That generation grew up with YouTube and “values the additional context that video provides,” according to the researchers.
Pandemic also played a role
The corona pandemic also played a major role in the rise of the video podcast, writes The Wall Street Journal. As a result, we got used to looking at (web) camera images of each other much more quickly, and we had a greater need for human interaction. So more and more video podcasts were made, and that actually remained the same after corona.
Spotify also sees this change. “If you had said five years ago that people wanted to watch people talking in front of a microphone, I would have said ‘probably not,'” Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said. Yet it happened, especially at a time when podcasts are also becoming increasingly important for Spotify.
And so Spotify will compete with YouTube, the company announced last week. Podcast makers can now also add the video version of their recordings to Spotify. The expectation is that Spotify will push for this, and will prioritize video podcasts in its own recommendations to encourage them.
Is Spotify still on time?
The question with these types of developments is always: will Spotify become better at video faster than YouTube at podcasts? One problem: apparently YouTube is already better at podcasts. The largest video site in the world already appears to attract the most podcast listeners.
YouTube will probably focus even more on this, if only because podcast listeners are a nice audience for YouTube’s Premium subscription. Namely: if you want to put your phone in your pocket while watching a podcast, you must have YouTube Premium to continue listening in the background.
YouTube Music is still relatively small
In the meantime, Spotify must convince users to continue looking at the app. Everyone is used to pressing play on Spotify and then leaving the app.
You could also argue that users simply prefer Spotify for music and YouTube for videos, whether that’s a podcast or something else. This is also reflected in the figures, because don’t forget: YouTube Music has been a competitor of Spotify in the field of music for years. And yet YouTube Music still has less than 10 percent of the music streaming market, while Spotify is by far the largest with more than 30 percent of the market.
The future of the podcast as a whole is also interesting in this new light. Will we soon have podcasts as we know them, made for listening? Or are we slowly creeping into a format where you also have to have the image there to understand what it is about? The listening viewer or watching listener will decide.
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Source: www.bright.nl
