YouTube isn’t a podcast app, however that hasn’t stopped it from turning into the primary place individuals who wish to devour on-line radio exhibits now flip to. In response to the corporate, a staggering 1 billion persons are tuning into podcasts each month on YouTube. That’s not simply greater than both Apple or Spotify can declare — it completely lays them to waste.
In 2023, Spotify reported it had 100 million common podcast listeners, and touted that half a billion folks had listened to a podcast on its platform since 2019 when it began its push into the world of on-line radio exhibits. Apple tends to come out behind Spotify in third-party measurements. If a full eighth of the world’s inhabitants makes use of YouTube for podcasts, it looks as if that’s most likely the place the motion is.
Reaching that huge chunk of viewers takes additional work for podcasters, although. Listeners can’t flip simply off their telephone’s display to hear unless they’re paying for YouTube Premium, and folks could not wish to stare at a static picture for an hour straight. Meaning doing video to actually make it rely.
Making video for YouTube is way costlier than it was once. In a newsletter earlier this month, cooking creator Carla Lalli Music, previously of Bon Apetit, stated it price her $3,500 to shoot a single video for the platform. These have been extra sophisticated than a podcast video, however it nonetheless speaks to the platform’s demand for high quality with the intention to get off the bottom. YouTube says that greater than 400 million hours of podcasts have been watched on TVs alone final 12 months. Video clearly issues; creators can’t simply activate their webcams and get outcomes.
Reaching YouTube’s viewers additionally means taking part in by YouTube’s guidelines. The platform doesn’t work with RSS feeds in the identical approach that almost all different podcast platforms do — each podcast has to grow to be a local YouTube video. That requires them to play by YouTube’s advert guidelines, too, and use YouTube’s advert programs. Podcasters can’t serve adverts the identical approach they do in all places else, and so they can’t get the identical metrics they’d usually use to promote advertisers on their attain and success.
Nonetheless, that tradeoff has clearly been price it to a terrific many creators, and YouTube’s stats in the present day present why. It is probably not a conventional podcast platform, however it’s an enormous one which podcasters can’t ignore.