The site best known as a place to watch videos is now the biggest platform for podcasts.
Yes, podcasts. Not Spotify. Not Apple. YouTube! Because these days, we don’t just listen to podcasts. Now we watch podcasts.
The Wall Street Journal reports it’s a profound shift that suddenly has the world’s audio giants battling for supremacy in the increasingly valuable world of video podcasts.
The most improbable thing about how YouTube made the podcast market all about video is how swiftly it happened.
Only four years ago, when it was less popular for podcasts than both Spotify and Apple, YouTube becoming a podcasting colossus sounded about as realistic as Martin Scorsese releasing his next movie on TikTok.
But this year, YouTube passed the competition and became the most popular service for podcasts in the U.S., with 31% of weekly podcast listeners saying it’s now the platform they use the most, according to Edison Research.
And the rise of YouTube comes at a time when Americans have become completely obsessed with podcasts.
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| WSJ Graphic |
In the final stretch of his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump appeared on more than a dozen shows that collectively drew more than 100 million views on YouTube, including a sit-down with Joe Rogan that was the biggest podcaster’s single biggest podcast in years. They were not the reason he won. But when many of those podcasters and YouTubers got a shout out from his victory party at Mar-a-Lago, it became clear that they were the other winners of this election.
It also became clear that a site whose core product used to be cat videos might just be the most influential company in all of media right now.
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