Podcasting Just Became a Two-Horse Race, and YouTube's Winning

Who do you think of when someone says "podcast app"? Apple, right? That's the assumption most of us grew up with.

Turns out that's not where the race is anymore.

New numbers from Midia Research show podcasting had 965.4 million monthly listeners worldwide in the last quarter of 2025. That's a massive audience. And sitting at the top of it isn't Apple at all. It's YouTube.

I find that fascinating, because I don't even think of YouTube as a podcast platform. I think of it as a place to watch videos of people fixing motorcycles or explaining why my internet router hates me. But apparently millions of people are pulling up their podcasts there too, and the shift has been quick.

According to Midia, YouTube added 27 million net monthly podcast listeners in 2025 alone, pushing its total to 308.2 million by year's end. That's a 32% share of the entire global podcast market. Nobody else is close to that.

Spotify comes in next for the Western market, adding about 10.8 million net new listeners over the same year. Together, YouTube and Spotify now account for exactly half of all podcast listening worldwide. Half. Two companies. That's the "two-horse race" Midia's talking about.

Here's the twist, though. There's actually a platform with a bigger slice of the pie than Spotify, and most of us outside China have probably never used it. It's called Ximalaya FM, and it holds 29.2% of the global market, sandwiched right between YouTube and Spotify in the rankings. Midia still calls this a two-horse race because Ximalaya's audience lives almost entirely inside China, so on the global stage it's really YouTube and Spotify slugging it out for everyone else's attention.

And Apple? The company that basically invented the podcast as we know it, back when it was still called iTunes? Midia says Apple added just two million net new listeners in 2025. Two million, compared to YouTube's 27 million. That's not a rounding error, that's a trend line.

So what happened? I think it comes down to something simple: people don't want to switch apps. If you're already on YouTube watching something, and the podcast you want shows up right there with video, why open a separate app at all? Convenience usually beats loyalty. I've seen that play out in my own habits traveling full-time since 2017. I don't carry ten apps for ten jobs anymore. I want fewer tools that do more.

Laura Fisher, Midia's audio and entertainment analyst, put some context around the bigger picture. She said podcasting is still "a nascent industry" with strong growth, pointing out that monthly active accounts globally have grown 184% since 2020. That's not a market slowing down. That's a market that's still figuring out what it wants to be.

Why does any of this matter if you're not running a podcast network or chasing ad dollars? Because it says something about how we all consume information and stories now. I've recorded interviews on the road, from hostels in Southeast Asia to quiet mornings in small European towns, and I've watched the same shift in my own listeners. More of them tell me they watched the episode on YouTube rather than streamed the audio. Five years ago, almost nobody said that.

It also raises a question worth sitting with: is podcasting even still "audio-first"? Or is it quietly becoming video with really good conversation attached? Midia's numbers suggest the second option is winning, at least globally.

I like watching an industry change shape in real time. It reminds me that nothing stays fixed, not technology, not habits, not even what we think a "podcast" is supposed to be. The companies that assumed Apple would always lead got surprised. The ones paying attention adjusted.

So here's my question for you: next time you hit play on a podcast, where are you actually listening? You might be part of the shift without even realizing it.

Source: Music Ally

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