Apple podcasts now does video. Here’s what that means…

Cue the usual crowd screaming, “SEE! You NEED video! Audio is DEAD!”

No. Sit down. Let me explain what’s actually happening here, because the data tells a very different story to the one the YouTube evangelists want you to hear.

Sounds Profitable’s Podcast Landscape 2025 study surveyed over 5,000 Americans. And some of what it found should make every podcaster sit up and pay attention.

96% of Americans now know what a podcast is. 55% have listened in the past month. 38% are listening weekly. The average listener is clocking about 6 hours a week.

Six hours a week.

That’s not a new up and coming fad, like ‘LinkedIn Podcasting’ was, or… well, remember Clubhouse? Yeah, unlike those, podcasting is a proper, established, mainstream medium.

Finally.

Now here’s where the video conversation gets interesting.

According to the Podcast Landscape 2025 report, audience expectations for what a podcast even looks like have shifted 5% year on year away from “audio only” towards “could be audio or video.” People are increasingly open to either format. They want choice.

And Apple just gave it to them.

But before you go panic-buying a ring light and doing your hair before every recording session, let’s look at where people are actually consuming podcasts.

The Podcast Landscape report found that 76% of monthly podcast consumers are using YouTube. Which, on paper, is enormous. Spotify’s at 18%. Apple Podcasts at 11% according to this report. But I urge you to bear in mind the data from the hosting companies, which flies in the face of that. They all put Apple Podcasts far above Spotify, and obviously don’t have any data from YouTube, so all we have is what people tell us, and the propaganda filled data from YouTube themselves. Either way, YouTube is clearly seen as a big shop window. 

No argument from me there it is. You can’t avoid it everywhere you go. People are watching YouTube. And if your podcast isn’t on YouTube in some form or another, you are missing from a platform that gathers crowds of eyeballs.

But — and this is the bit the YouTube-or-nothing brigade conveniently skip over — the same study found that nearly half of the people watching video podcasts on YouTube still consume most of their podcast content as audio. In other words, YouTube forms part of their content diet that is dominated by audio content on audio platforms like…. Wait for it… yep, you guessed it; Apple Podcasts!

Even among those enjoying a video-first platform, audio still wins.

That should tell you something about where your actual priorities need to be.

It means the three biggest platforms — Apple, Spotify, YouTube — are now all offering video podcasts. Three different audiences. Three different consumption habits. Three doors into the same room.

Someone sees a clip of your show on TikTok or Instagram. They perhaps get curious. They open Apple Podcasts because that’s their app. Previously, they’d find… just audio. Even if you’d spent real money on video production. That clip that hooked them? Nowhere to be found in the app they actually use. So there was a disconnect.

That disconnect is all but gone now. Or at least it will be when this video element is rolled out to everyone.

Word of mouth is still the number one way people discover new podcasts, according to the Podcast Landscape 2025 report. YouTube and paid ads play their part too. But the point is, the discovery pipeline from social video clip to full episode just got smoother across all three major platforms. That matters. And once we see this in full swing, it might actually quieten my ridiculing of all the AI clips bros on LinkedIn who keep peddling their services of chopping up 30 minute episodes into 30 thirty second clips! Maybe.

The same report found that the average listener follows 3.4 podcasts. And 75% go hunting for something new after finishing a limited series.

That’s your window. These people are browsing. And if your podcast is easy to find, properly optimised, and actually gives them what they’re looking for, you’re in the running.

But here’s the thing I really want you to hear:

The Podcast Landscape 2025 study makes it clear: listener loyalty is going down, not up. People have less time. They’re fussier about what they give that time to. The report found that retention now depends on quality and whether the listening experience is worth it. Not just blind loyalty because they hit follow six months ago.

In other words, people aren’t sticking around because they followed you once. They’re sticking around because your content is worth their 6 hours a week. And if it’s not? They’ll find someone whose content is.

According to the same Sounds Profitable research, 17% of Americans have had a crack at creating a podcast at some point. Between 20 and 24% of them are actively producing right now, in audio, video, or both.

That’s a lot of competition.

Which means the bar for quality is not coming down.

Your audio still needs to sound professional. Your content still needs to speak to the actual people you’re trying to reach. Your podcast SEO still needs to be doing its job so those 75% of people looking for their next show can actually find yours.

If your show is already in decent shape and you’re wondering whether video might add something, this Apple move gives you another reason to explore it. Your video episodes can now reach people across all three major platforms instead of just YouTube. That’s genuinely useful.

And if you haven’t started a podcast yet? You should be encouraged by all of this.

The Podcast Landscape 2025 report shows 55% of the US listened to a podcast last month. 65% of Hispanic audiences. 66% of Asia-Pacific (APAC) audiences. 62% of Black audiences. The medium isn’t just growing. It’s growing across every demographic.

And let’s not forget about Edison Research’s Share of Ear report’s data; Americans are now spending 773 million hours a week listening to podcasts. Up from 170 million in 2015. That’s a 355% increase in a decade.

More platforms are supporting video. There are more ways than ever for people to find you and your podcast… or, to appease the OGs who hate including video in the term podcast… show.

The people who’ll benefit most from this aren’t the opportunists rushing to set up a YouTube studio.

They’re the ones who’ve already got something worth watching. And listening to.

And that’s coming from the guy who is currently — at time of writing this — in the middle of setting up a video enabled podcast studio.

If you want to make sure your podcast is actually ready for where things are heading, that usually starts with an honest look at what you’ve already got. 

My podcast improvement audits exist for exactly this. Here’s the link.