Every year, we take a step back to assess what truly moved the audio business forward — and what reshaped it. In 2025, the story wasn’t just about growth. It was about acceleration, convergence, and mounting pressure on long-standing models, metrics, and assumptions.
Here are a few transformative shifts that stood out.
YouTube Is Now the Dominant Podcast Platform
YouTube’s rapid rise as the leading destination for podcast consumption marked a turning point. YouTube is now central to audience growth, discovery, and, increasingly, primary consumption.
Data released this year from Edison Research shows most new podcast viewers and listeners start out on YouTube rather than in audio-only apps. I’ve seen this firsthand with my NYU Business of Podcasting students, many of whom asked a simple question: “Why can’t we get podcasts on YouTube?” Now they can.
The head snapper — big-screen viewing has also emerged as a meaningful behavior shift, with podcasts moving from phones and laptops to connected TVs.
Spotify Pushed Into Video
Spotify spent much of 2025 reinforcing a clear message: podcasts are no longer just audio experiences. With expanded support for video uploads, improved creator tools, and more in-app promotion of video podcasts, Spotify made it clear it sees YouTube as competition.
Importantly, Spotify put real money behind their strategy sharing revenue with podcasters based upon video watch time.
Vertical Video = Mandatory for Podcast Growth
In 2025, vertical video was no longer a “nice-to-have” for podcast promotion. It became foundational. TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels now function as the front door to podcast discovery, particularly for younger audiences.
Wondery Was Absorbed into Audible
One of the most telling stories of the year about the changing podcast business is: Amazon dissolved Wondery’s independent operations into its audiobook company Audible. While the Wondery name remains as a content label, back-end teams, ad sales, and executive leadership were consolidated.
Wondery was once the gold standard for premium narrative podcasting and a masterclass in marketing. Amazon paid $300 million for Wondery in 2021.
Podcasts Become an Asset in the Video Streaming Wars
Netflix’s growing interest in podcast-style programming underscored a new reality: long-form conversational content now competes directly with traditional TV.
In early 2026, Netflix will carry a curated slate of video podcasts through deals with Spotify/The Ringer and iHeartMedia. Titles include shows like The Bill Simmons Podcast and The Rewatchables and long-running cultural favorites like The Breakfast Club or My Favorite Murder. These shows give up the YouTube platform for the much smaller and walled Netflix environment. We’ll see how this works – but Netflix rarely shares audience data, so watch this space.
Among the media giants, the ambitions are clear. Spotify wants to be YouTube, YouTube wants to be Netflix, and Netflix increasingly wants to be YouTube.
AI Podcasts Move From Curiosity to Category
In 2025, fully AI-generated and AI-assisted podcasts became a thing. Companies like Inception Point AI demonstrated how synthetic hosts, automated episode generation, translation, and voice cloning could scale audio at unprecedented speed.
The implications for the podcasting business are profound. AI lowers production costs and expands output. It’s relatively easy and inexpensive to scale lots of content. AI also raises hard questions about originality, trust, authenticity and emotional connection. Notably, when my students evaluated AI-generated shows this year, their reactions suggested both fascination and skepticism. The food “podcaster” admitted she has never eaten food. How could she? She’s AI.
The Golden Globes Recognize Podcasts
The introduction of a Golden Globe category for podcasts marked a symbolic moment for the medium. While largely ceremonial, it underscored how podcasts are now viewed as mainstream entertainment alongside film and television.
Marc Maron Sunsets WTF
Marc Maron’s WTF was not just early — it was foundational. Launched in 2009, the show helped define what podcasting could be: intimate, vulnerable, unscripted, and deeply human. After more than 1,600 episodes, Maron chose to bring the show to a close in October 2025, with Barack Obama as his final guest — a fitting bookend for a podcast that consistently punched above its weight culturally.
The scale of that run is worth pausing on. One thousand six hundred episodes is an extraordinary creative output. For context, Seinfeld produced 180 episodes over nine seasons. I Love Lucy delivered a similar number. Television isn’t podcasting, but the comparison is instructive. WTF didn’t simply endure; it helped establish the long-form interview as a defining format of the medium.. The show was honest, messy, self-aware, and personal. Bravo to Mark and producer Brendan McDonald.
The Download Is No Longer Enough
The podcast industry is under growing pressure to move beyond the download. As consumption spreads across YouTube, Spotify video, social media, and connected TVs, podcasting is confronting the limits of the download as its defining metric.
Downloads still matter, but they no longer capture reach, engagement, or impact. Watch time, completion, retention, and cross-platform engagement are critical, especially for advertisers and partners. We’re working with organizations dedicated pushing this shift forward, and expect 2026 to be a pivotal year in redefining how success is measured.
Connoisseur Media Acquired Alpha Media
Over the past few years, we’ve gotten used to a familiar pattern in radio: troubled groups quietly selling off individual stations, often at steep discounts, just to keep things moving. In May 2025, Connoisseur Media was on the other side of that equation, stepping in to acquire the much larger Alpha Media portfolio.
The deal — completed with no upfront cash — was one of the more sobering, and frankly instructive, radio stories of the year. It put a spotlight on the pressure legacy broadcast groups are under and how differently these assets are being valued today. Jeff Warshaw has built a reputation as a disciplined, thoughtful operator, and strong management can absolutely make a difference. But the bigger takeaway is hard to ignore: radio’s future won’t be determined by scale alone. It will hinge on reinvention, digital extension, and finding ways to stay relevant beyond the dial.
One analyst summed it up to me this way: radio companies carrying growing debt and shrinking cash flow are only a few years away from functionally becoming not-for-profits.
Ouch.
Podcasts Are the New Press Tour
Did podcasting kill late-night television? That may be an overstatement, but 2025 marked a clear tipping point in cultural relevance. Comedians, actors, athletes, and politicians prioritized long-form podcast appearances over traditional eight-minute TV segments with canned questions.
What This Means for 2026
Looking back, 2025 was about audio changing shape. Formats collided. The lines between audio and video blurred. Podcasts showed up as social content, discovery tools, and, in many cases, as substitutes for traditional television.
AI sped up production and lowered barriers. Platforms gained influence. And while the download still matters, it no longer tells the whole story. Podcast episodes aren’t the finish line anymore — for many, they are a starting point.
Increasingly, we’re seeing liquid content become part of the formula: ideas and conversations designed to move easily across platforms, formats, and moments. A podcast episode becomes clips, shorts, social posts, video, newsletters, and sometimes even television — not as an afterthought, but by design.
As we head into 2026, the advantage will go to creators and companies who spend less time debating what a podcast is and more time paying attention to how audiences actually behave — what they watch, where they discover, and how they choose to engage.