According to a new report from TechCrunch, Spotify has surpassed Apple Podcasts in terms of U.S. podcast listenership.
Spotify made the claim during their Q3 earnings call, citing data from internal sources (Spotify’s own Podcast Consumer Tracker) and a recent Q2 report from Edison Research — saying that Spotify “recently became the No. 1 podcast platform U.S. listeners use the most.”
“We started our journey three years ago in podcasting with a catalog of about 185,000 podcasts. And we were really nowhere, compared to the largest players in the industry. Today, we have 3.2 million podcasts on the platform, a growth rate of over 1,500%”
– Daniel Ek, Spotify CEO
TechCrunch did reach out to Edison Research to confirm the story, and they were told that this new information is based on “usage” and not actual downloads.
Spotify has dumped A TON into podcasts in the last few years. Buying out existing podcasts to make them exclusive to Spotify was one of their biggest acts of leverage — *cough* Joe Rogan “cough*. So their strategies worked? Spotify now leads in U.S. podcast listenership? Well, maybe, but maybe not.
Apple doesn’t make their numbers public and Spotify is just sort of self-proclaiming their lead. I wouldn’t be surprised either way, but competition is competition, and competition is good.
