May 08, 2025

Bigger than you think: podcast revenue is $7.3bn worldwide

3 minutes

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The podcast industry might be bigger than you think. New research from Hernan Lopez’s Owl & Co suggests that the global podcast economy is $7.3bn - and says that the US makes up two-thirds of that. The enlarged figure comes from including video and “consumer revenue” (like Patreon and others).

Exclusive: The London Standard newspaper has partnered with podcast producer Message Heard, to lead the development and production of The Standard’s award-winning audio output. It’s the first such partnership for a UK news brand.

What are “plays” on Spotify? Since the announcement yesterday that Spotify is adding a play count to its app, we’ve been trying to learn how a “play” is defined. However, Spotify don’t want to say; just that it’s intended to capture user intent, using a number of proprietary signals. As a by-product, “starts” will disappear from the creator dashboard. YouTube has also never published how it calculates “plays”; so, both companies are now using opaque, proprietary numbers as the primary consumption metric for creators.

> > > Read more of today’s podcast industry news stories on the Podnews website: and get our free daily newsletter.

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