Want 86 Million Listeners For Your Podcast? Better be on Spotify then!

So there’s been big news in the world of podcasting this week, because Spotify did their annual earnings call. And one of the really interesting stats that came out was the fact they’ve now got 325 million subscribers on the platform… and, this is where it gets exciting for podcast fans, 25% of those people, which is about 86 million listeners (I’ve done the math for you!) now listen to podcasts utilising the platform.

This is really exciting for a couple of reasons. Prior to a couple of years ago, there was really pretty much only Apple Podcasts in the game, there was only one a show in town. And therefore Apple didn’t really have to try very hard. The app wasn’t very user friendly, it wasn’t a very nice user experience — you had some charts and some categories but that was pretty much it.

But now they’ve had to up their game because they can see how much of a chunk of their market share that Spotify is taking from them.

And I think the competition within the space is a good thing!

Apple will have to focus more on user experience, curated content, sharability and ways to engage on and off the app. Plus, we’re about to go over a billion dollars in advertising revenue in the podcast sector and, as we know, where focus goes, the money flows and where the money flows, the focus also goes.

So I think we’re in a really interesting time right now.

The other thing that was interesting from Spotify’s earnings call is the angle that The Guardian have used for what this number means.

As mentioned, 25% of 325 million people are listening to podcast using Spotify but, as well as that, Spotify themselves have had 24% increase in the number of active subscribers within a year. And what the Guardian has said in their piece [which you can read here] is it that Spotify are putting a lot of that growth down to the podcasting sector.

They’ve obviously invested heavily recently, chucking almost a billion dollars towards acquisitions. Within the last 18 months or so they’ve bought onboard some really, really big hitters — Harry and Meghan, Michelle Obama and let’s not forget 190 million download-a-month heavyweight of the audio game Joe Rogan. They bought up production companies and content houses and they’ve got the anchor app as well — which is obviously getting a lot of newbie podcasters utilising the platform because it’s fundamentally designed to work best on Spotify.

So they’ve been making some big acquisitions, some big moves in the podcasting space and, based on the earnings report, it looks like it is working!

Again, the headline statistics:

325 million active subscribers and 25% of those people are now using Spotify to listen to podcasts. Not only that, but there’s been a 24% year on year increase in the number of active subscribers. And does that show us that the Spotify play for podcasting is having a big, dramatic effect on the power of the streaming giant? I think it does.