Podcasting Is Still A Massive, Untapped Market Opportunity
Facebook, Spotify, and Apple are all prioritizing podcasts. What’s behind the recent emphasis?
For at least the past five years, most experts would tell you the podcast market was saturated. Everyone has a podcast, they’d say, and the window of opportunity to break in was closed. Podcasting technology had some room to grow, but an RSS feed and a Play button mostly did the trick. Apple, the company that put the ‘pod’ in ‘podcasts,’ even seemed to forget the genre existed. It updated its podcasting app about as often as Tim Cook praised Mark Zuckerberg.
But recently, and seemingly out of nowhere, some of the world’s largest tech companies have made podcasting a priority. Apple rediscovered its app, updating it with paid subscriptions and better discovery. Spotify built podcasting into its core product and signed deals for exclusive shows (the latest of which it announced this week). Facebook decided it wanted to be the home of podcast discovery. And Twitter waded in with audio tweets and Spaces.
Behind this surge of interest is an increasing recognition that podcasting has far more room for growth than many anticipated. New technology has made listening more accessible. New business models are opening up opportunities for a middle…
