Remember Who You Are by Tom Webster
Instead of chasing growth at all costs, Webster suggests a goal for 2026: less chasing someone else’s idea of what podcasting should become. The Creators 2025 found those who started creating podcasts and then left the industry look demographically like video creators, matching them in 9 of 12 measured segments. It’s fair to infer these lapsed creators were likely producing video podcasts, yet their consumption habits show only 0.8% of them consumed podcasts video-only on YouTube. A quote from the article:
“Sit with that number for a moment. Less than one percent. These creators were producing video content while preferring audio consumption — making something they themselves wouldn’t choose to engage with. The production demands of video are considerable. The reward, for most of these creators, was apparently not worth it. They burned out. They left.”
Thus the problem emerges: video is causing people – even those who prefer audio – to overextend under the idea they HAVE to optimize for a hypothetical video audience (which might not even exist).
And that optimization can overwrite what made audio podcasting appealing in the first place. Amplifi Media’s Steven Goldstein, speaking with The Economist, also points to how the over-investment in video has siphoned money and attention from scripted and narrative podcasts. Beloved series like The Bright Sessions or Dr. Death can’t easily make the jump to video like influencer/celebrity-hosted chat podcasts can. Which circles back to that 0.8% of former podcast creators. As Tom Webster says, experimentation is not inherently a bad thing, but the data shows audiences want good podcasts, not expensive and taxing reinvention of podcasts they already enjoy. To thrive in 2026 is to remember what about the medium is worth protecting.
Why Doesn’t AI Recommend Indie Podcasts by Frank Racioppi
A look at how generative AI chatbots, despite being the new hotness, leave some big blind spots when used for podcast curation/recommendation. When asked for the “best podcasts of 2025” ChatGPT returned a list of chart-toppers like New Heights and The Daily. Only when specifically prompted for best “independent” podcasts of the year did it begin to return shows that were critically acclaimed despite relatively low chart performance. Which, only then, appears to be the result of the AI trawling best-of lists on popular sites. GenAI bots, philosophically, give users the most likely answer to get a positive response. As a result, without discoverability strategies specifically tuned to grabbing the attention of chatbots, there’s a potential future where discoverability takes a step backwards. A future where AI searches gatekeep podcasts behind the prerequisite it has to be a chart-topper or have been mentioned in a Vulture list or written up in The Atlantic.
Luckily, there’s some new hard numbers looking into that. Search engine optimization platform PodSEO has published findings from a four-week study systematically querying ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. One key takeaway is chatbot LLMs prefer their podcasting data spoon-fed, as they pulled 79% of podcast recommendations/data from editorial and listicle pages, versus 21% pulled from listening platforms. Player.FM and Goodpods account for 10.6% of AI citations throughout PodSEO’s experiment.
By comparison, Spotify and Apple Podcasts combined accounted for 8.3%. To get ones’ podcast recommended in a chatbot is a bit of a Wild West scenario as early adopters of GPT-friendly SEO float to the top. Leading to quirks like the 35th most popular Business podcast on Apple Podcasts becoming the #1 overall podcast rec in general from all four AI assistants.
Why Podcasting Is a Must-Have For Rights Holders and Brands by Jim Salveson
A new thought leadership piece on Sounds Profitable from Sports Social Podcast Network Director of Sport Jim Salveson. Sports media has evolved significantly in recent years, with a noticeable shift from rights holders working with broadcasters to more direct fan relationships. Something podcasting delivers in spades, as they’re an intimate part of the audiences’ day. A quote from Salveson:
“In a fragmented attention economy, podcasts offer something rare: time and trust. That makes them one of the most strategically valuable channels for rights holders and brands today.”
And a single podcast episode has the ability to itself be a content engine as it can generate everything from simple clips for social media to written features based on the episode. Podcasts and their associated ephemeral content are meeting sports fans directly where they are and forming strong relationships with them. Exactly what rights holders and brands wanting to tap into those fanbases want.
Making It Easier for Video Podcasters to Earn on Spotify
With the first Golden Globes acknowledging podcasting set for this Sunday, Spotify has rolled out a few updates. Chief among them is new eligibility to join the Spotify Partner Program and monetize video podcasts similarly to monetizing YouTube videos. The threshold is now 1,000 engaged audience members, 2,000 hours consumed in the past 30 days, and three published episodes minimum.
In addition, SPP members can now have the ability to add and remove dynamically-inserted host-read ad content from video episodes, allowing sponsorship changes over time instead of permanently baking them into the episode (along with delivery metrics that accompany most DAI ads).
A new API is also coming in the near future that will allow video podcasters hosting on select platforms to directly publish and monetize episodes from their hosting platform (the initial partnered hosting providers are Acast, Audioboom, Libsyn, Omny, and Podigee). Spotify has also announced they recently crossed the threshold of contributing $10 billion USD to the podcast industry since 2019.
The tool copying podcasts, stripping the ads, and selling them by James Cridland
An investigation into a website called PodcastAdBlock. Cridland finds the site is using AI to copy podcasts, strip the ads, and sell the new ad-free feed back to users. For $9.99/month USD users can have unlimited ad-free versions of podcast feeds. A spokesperson also told Podnews there is no way for publishers to opt out of their feeds being stripped and publishers receive none of the revenue collected. A quote from Cridland:
“Some publishers promoted on the website offer their own ad-free versions through Apple Podcasts, SupportingCast or others. This tool could remove that revenue from publishers. The list of publishers on the website is broad enough to include most large podcast publishers – from WNYC Studios to Audiochuck, Pushkin Industries to Global, Wondery to The Guardian. We’re not convinced that such a large variety of publishers would give their agreement to a tool like this.”
Which means this service represents two revenue streams lost at once: both the ads, and the premium ad-free feeds. Ironically, YouTuber and entrepreneur Ben Bowler, the creator of PAB, also has a startup designed to protect music from unlicensed AI training. For which Bowler spoke passionately about how GenAI has scraped musicians “relentlessly” to train and ultimately replace musicians with AI models. Cridland argues doing something quite similar, scraping free podcasts to use the audio without permission in an AI tool, is equally unethical.
As for the rest of the news…
- iHeartMedia has announced they are giving creators the ability to distribute full-length video podcasts directly into iHeartRadio’s ecosystem.
- YouTube celebrates having reached 700 million watch-hours of video podcasts on TVs in October.
- ADOPTER Media weighs in on the PodcastAdBlock story with an op-ed looking at ways the podcast ad experience, especially on larger shows, could be improved to disincentivize audiences seeking out tools like PAB in the first place.
- Meta’s microblogging platform Threads announced in late December the platform is rolling out podcast previews (snippets of shows that play directly in user feeds).
- DAX United States has partnered with advertising effectiveness measurement platform DISQO to bring brand lift measurement to digital audio and cross-channel campaigns.
