If you tune in to a podcast, you’re in all probability not opening the Netflix app – at the very least for now.
Which may change, if Netflix will get its approach. The streamer signed offers with iHeartMedia and Barstool Sports activities this week, along with a current cope with Spotify, to realize unique video rights to pick out exhibits. The corporate can also be rumored to be in talks with SiriusXM.
Podcasters see this as an offensive transfer with YouTube as the first goal. And the info offers a convincing argument. YouTube shared this week that viewers watched over 700 million hours of podcasts on front room units (like TVs) in 2025, up from 400 million final 12 months.
“As folks start to spend much less time watching conventional tv, and extra time watching quick type or low value, low manufacturing worth content material on YouTube, which may current a long run aggressive risk to Netflix,” Matthew Dysart, an leisure lawyer and former head of podcast enterprise affairs at Spotify, advised TechCrunch.
Whereas podcasters may perceive the motivation, not everyone seems to be satisfied about Netflix’s transfer. Some podcasters advised TechCrunch they’re unsure there may be long-term worth in video podcasts, whereas others are frightened Netflix is contributing to a podcast bubble.
“They’re mainly saying, ‘we wish to be the king of content material, and the one approach we’re going to try this is that if we take a swipe at YouTube,’” podcaster Ronald Younger Jr. advised TechCrunch. Nonetheless, Younger Jr. thinks individuals are turning on video podcasts and letting them play within the background, noting that ESPN has been doing a little model of this for for much longer than we’ve been in a position to identify it.
The thrill of video podcasts
When unbiased podcasters Mike Schubert and Sequoia Simone launched their new present “Skilled Talkers” this 12 months, they famous the thrill round video podcasts and determined to start out the brand new present as a video-first manufacturing on YouTube and Spotify.
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“Neither of us had achieved video earlier than, so we have been like, ‘Why don’t we simply begin from the start and make this a video present?’” Schubert advised TechCrunch.
Schubert discovered that his viewers was ambivalent towards the video, maybe as a result of he has spent practically a decade releasing audio podcasts, cultivating a fanbase that already enjoys and expects audio content material.
“We posted an audio-only episode, and it did fairly equally, numbers-wise,” he mentioned. “So why would we put a lot effort and time into the video after which run the chance of the episode being late after we can simply do audio solely?”
Younger Jr. thought of investing extra power into video, however determined towards it – like Schubert and Simone, he realized that he constructed an viewers that prefers listening to podcasts than viewing them.
“I’m like, ‘Effectively who am I pivoting for?’” he mentioned. “And I spotted that the pivot can be for advertisers, for podcast executives, and for individuals who suppose that video is the route that everybody’s going.”
Nonetheless, there are some customers who wish to see video — whilst a passive present to activate within the background — as evidenced by YouTube’s staggering viewership stats.
Mikah Sargent, a podcast producer and host at TWiT.television, works with exhibits like “This Week in Tech,” which have had a video element for greater than fifteen years. (Disclosure: I co-host a present at TWiT.television as soon as per thirty days.)
“One thing that I repeatedly hear from our listeners is… ‘you have been my background after I was going by a tough time, or I wanted to journey throughout the nation, and having you there to hearken to helped me go the time,’” Sargent advised TechCrunch. “There’s a variety of handed time with podcasts. So Netflix can take a look at that and go, ‘Ooh, we get to have this factor that in some circumstances takes up extra time and extra streaming than you’ll get with a typical present.’”
What’s a podcast anyway?
There’s a disconnect between how creators and tech corporations every take into consideration podcasts. For individuals who make podcasts, a podcast is usually a conversational present like those on YouTube, however it can be a format that doesn’t translate seamlessly to video, like scripted fiction with sound design and voice actors, or the form of reported, refined audio tales you’d discover on NPR.
“I feel this has to do with how squishy the phrase podcast is now,” podcaster Eric Silver advised TechCrunch. “It means something. It simply means present now.”
For these unbiased creators, the company goings-on between Netflix and Spotify don’t instantly impression their day-to-day. However podcasters bear in mind what occurred when Spotify purchased up and consolidated a big chunk of the {industry}, created a bubble, then burst that very same bubble itself. The impression reverberated throughout the {industry} with studio closures, layoffs, and a conception amongst onlookers that podcasting was “useless.” So when one other massive tech firm comes waltzing into their {industry}, they’re skeptical.
“In any type of leisure and media, when corporations consolidate, the individuals who presently have energy proceed to get richer and richer than the {industry} beneath it,” Silver mentioned. “The long run will get increasingly more murky, and has much less and fewer assets.”
Netflix isn’t making as excessive strikes as Spotify. The latter firm spent billions buying a number of tech startups and studios, permitting Spotify to manage your complete course of of creating a podcast, from the recording software program to the advert gross sales instruments.
“I feel that what Netflix is doing is a bit of bit extra calculated than what Spotify did,” Younger Jr. mentioned. “Spotify blindly threw cash on the high creators, and so they form of cratered the market in doing so, as a result of the minute you worth Joe Rogan at $250 million… you worth them so extremely that the common podcaster is like, the place do I fall on this?”
However what’s seen as an industry-changing infusion of cash into the podcast {industry} isn’t really that staggering for an organization like Netflix, which is on observe to make about $45 billion this 12 months.
“Netflix and Spotify are comparable in that approach – aggressive strikes to check a brand new worth proposition by focusing on high performers and spending cash that in the end is just not that substantial from the angle of a world tech platform, however is significant to the creator financial system, to shortly study if there’s a ‘there’ there.” Dysart mentioned.
Netflix has solely made offers with media corporations so far, slightly than particular person creators like Spotify did, however Dysart thinks Netflix’s investments are solely starting.
“I might anticipate Netflix to in some unspecified time in the future go attempt to strike a nine-figure cope with a high podcast creator,” he added. “I might additionally anticipate Netflix to take actually massive swings with very excessive profile personalities on authentic podcasts.”
If Netflix will get its approach, our tradition will shift away from watching programmatic daytime TV and discuss exhibits, and towards watching podcasts.
“Again within the day, my mother would have a cleaning soap opera enjoying within the background whereas she was doing issues, and I used to be undoubtedly the one that would have ‘The Workplace’ enjoying within the background whereas I’m doing issues,” Sargent mentioned. “Now, folks get to have a podcast enjoying within the background whereas they’re doing issues, and if Netflix may be the place the place they go to try this, then I feel it’s a win for the corporate.”
