• There are over 546 million podcast listeners worldwide.
• 47% of the US population 12+ listen to a podcast at least once a month.
• In 2024, worldwide podcast ad spending is estimated to hit $4.02 billion.
• Video podcasts are on the rise, with as many as 33% of US podcast listeners opting for watchable podcasts.
• YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts lead the pack for global podcast dominance.
• Audio vs Video preference is very similar, 36% of weekly podcast consumers prefer audio-only podcasts, while 33% claim they like to actively watch a video podcast. Another 31% of podcast consumers express a preference to listen to a podcast while the video is playing in the background or minimized.
• Millennials and Gen Z make up 61.6% of US podcast listeners
• The most popular podcast genre worldwide by share of listening hours is comedy, with a 30% share

Company Studies

• Overlap - https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/overlap
• Podcastle - https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/05/podcastle-raises-7m-for-its-all-in-one-platform-for-podcast-production-and-publishing/
• Podeo - https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/30/podeo-5-4m-series-a/
• Podchaser - https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/19/podchaser-raises-4m-to-build-a-comprehensive-podcast-database/
• Riverside.fm - https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/22/podcasting-platform-riverside-fm-raises-9-5m/
• CastBox - https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/25/podcast-app-castbox-raises-13-5-million-launches-its-own-original-programming/
• Acast - https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/04/podcast-series-c/

Overlap

Overlap is a YC based company which aims to solve the problem of finding the best clips that are lost in the large array of podcasts that are released each week. They are focusing on search and trying to improve video search specifically with LLMs. A cool idea but I definitely think it could be done a lot better, but it is still very early days for them. The main issue I think is that they are focusing too much on search and not enough on actually listening to podcasts.