Netflix Just Became One of America's Top Three Podcast Platforms. Nobody Saw That Coming.

A year ago, Netflix didn't carry podcasts at all. Now it's the third most-used podcast platform in America, named by 21% of podcast consumers as somewhere they've gone for a show in the past 12 months.

That's not a typo. That's YouTube at 63%, Spotify at 33%, and then Netflix — a company that built its entire reputation on movies and binge-worthy drama — sliding into third place ahead of YouTube Music, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music.

I've been traveling full-time since 2017, and one thing I've learned on the road is that the platforms you think are permanent rarely stay that way. Podcasting just proved it again.

The numbers come from Sounds Profitable, a trade group for the podcasting industry, which surveyed 5,473 US adults in August 2026 for the first part of its Podcast Landscape 2026 report. And here's the twist: the overall size of the podcast audience barely moved. Reach sits at 74%, basically flat from 75% in 2025 and 74% in 2024. So this isn't a story about more people listening. It's a story about where they're going to listen — and increasingly, to watch.

Because that's the other big shift buried in this data. Video podcasts are growing fast. Among people who've ever consumed a podcast, 44% watched a video version in the past week, up from 40% a year earlier. Only 10% say they've never watched one, down from 14%. Meanwhile, dedicated podcast apps are losing ground. Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Overcast — the apps built specifically for this format — dropped from 19% to 15% of people's "most used" platform.

What happens when the native home for an entire medium starts losing to platforms that were never built for it? That's the question Sounds Profitable itself raises in a companion article: podcasting was built without gatekeepers, so what does it mean when the third biggest place people find podcasts is gated behind a Netflix subscription?

The Netflix story didn't happen overnight. Spotify and Netflix struck a deal in October 2025 to bring 17 video podcast properties from Spotify Studios and The Ringer onto Netflix starting early 2026. Then in August, iHeartMedia put two Martha Stewart shows on Netflix exclusively on video, while keeping the audio versions open on regular RSS feeds. Disney+ and Hulu picked up six iHeartPodcasts titles the same month. Everyone's circling the same opportunity.

Tom Webster, a partner at Sounds Profitable, put it simply: "Podcasting's audience isn't standing still." Platforms like Netflix, he said, are changing where people find and consume shows, and the challenge is embracing that shift without losing the openness that let independent creators reach audiences anywhere they chose.

That openness is exactly what I care about when I think about my own work on the road — the freedom to build something without someone else controlling the only door in. Podcasting has always been the last wide-open media format. No app store approval, no algorithm gatekeeping who gets heard. If that starts closing even a little, it's worth paying attention to.

There's a device story hiding in here too. Smart TVs are the only device category gaining ground for podcast consumption, up to 12% from 8% two years ago. On smart TVs specifically, YouTube's share actually slipped from 76% to 71%, while Netflix climbed from 10% to 12%. People are increasingly treating podcasts like television — something you watch on the big screen, not just something playing in your ears during a walk or a drive.

And that changes the math on listening itself. The typical weekly consumer still spends about four hours a week with podcasts, but the heaviest listeners are listening less — the average dropped from 6.3 hours to 5.7. Sounds Profitable's theory: long listening sessions are a background-audio habit, something you do while driving or cleaning the house. Watching is a foreground activity. You can't half-watch a video the way you can half-listen to audio in the background.

So what does this mean if you're someone who makes, sponsors, or just loves podcasts? The medium isn't shrinking. It's just no longer confined to the apps that invented it. The map is changing even though the headcount isn't.

I've found that the most interesting developments rarely show up where you expect them. Nobody predicted Netflix would crack the top three podcast platforms in its very first year in the category. What's the next unlikely platform that sneaks into your daily habits? Keep your eyes open. That's half the fun of paying attention.

Source: PPC Land

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