The podcast industry is in the process of becoming big business.
Parts are becoming like television. A network might sign you up for a season of your show and see how it resonates with listeners before investing in a second season. Many establishing actors, comedians, influencers and broadcasters have one, or two.
But it still can be niche, serving specific industries, like our Radio Today Tonight podcast or, a couple of other recent examples, Long Haul Legends – which celebrates the voices of the Australian road transport industry or Paddock Talk, which bring Australians closer to the people behind their food.
Last week, in the second biggest news for the US podcast industry, Podcast Movement, the longest-running US conference and community for the podcast industry, and Sounds Profitable, the trade publication for audio and podcasts similar to Radioinfo, merged in a seven-figure deal to ‘bring together key industry events, cutting-edge research, and expanded opportunities for creators and brands’.
I don’t think Bryan Barletta (pictured) who I spoke to this week, and who alongside Tom Webster owns and runs Sounds Profitable with now an additional role as President of Podcast Movement, would mind my saying it was the second biggest news.
The biggest was Taylor Swift ‘doing a fxxxing podcast’ alongside NFL playing brothers Travis and Jason Kelse.
I’ve tried to find out just how many people have listened to that episode on Spotify. A representative told The Hollywood Reporter that it generated a 3,000 percent increase in new listeners for New Heights, the Kelce brothers’ podcast, and the number of female listeners jumped 618 percent.
On YouTube the two hour plus episode peaked at around 1.3 million concurrent livestream viewers, more than any other podcast since YouTube officially launched a dedicated podcast platform in 2023. The episode now is up nearly 21 million views.
No only did Taylor do her partner Travis’s side hustle a huge favour, but she also made podcasts the buzz word of the week.
She also demonstrated, as Bryan pointed out to me, that the audience is not as confused about what a podcast is as the industry seems to be.
Indeed, a podcast has become a great many different things to a endlessly diverse group of people, not dissimilar to Taylor herself.
I’d reached out to Bryan after the merger to reflect on what I see as the second phase of podcasting.
There’s less demand for beginner workshops, podcast platforms like LiSTNR and Acast are becoming more discerning about the shows they take on board and the commitment they are willing to make. Long time success stories like Hamish and Andy are seeing small but significant drops to their listening audience. The last time they had over a million monthly listeners was November 2023. It’s not that what they’re making is any less wonderful than what it was before for their loyal audience, its just that there is so much more competition for a share of ear.
The aim, for a podcast such as Hamish and Andy, is ongoing incremental growth as new people discover the podcast.
The recent release of the annual survey into Australian podcast listening habits and behaviours, PodPoll 2025, conducted by podcast production house Deadset Studios and market research agency Insightfully, showed that 2.8 million of us are listening to a podcast daily. That is 10% of the population!
As a small nation we are punching above out weight in podcast listening, successful agencies – with Bryan noting that organisations like Omny and Whooshka have been picked up by overseas companies and SCA’s LiSTNR, which they built from the ground up, now making money for the network and based on this week’s FY25 results, something of the jewel in their crown.
Bryan said it was important that specialist podcasts weren’t daunted by numbers and remembered their value to their audiences:
“I met this amazing woman who’s dealing with stage four cancer and sharing her journey via a podcast talking with different medical groups and other cancer sufferers.
Is it therapeutic for her? Is it helping other people? Yes. Do the downloads matter? No. That’s the vendor side of it.
Creators just want to interact with someone who’s genuine, and visa versa and we need to create the right spaces and right expectations for those people. This particular woman, I’ve seen her at multiple events now sharing her story on stage.”
This is what I see Bryan bringing the focus back to in the US with the merger of Sounds Profitable and Podcast Movement. That not only are listeners from all ends of the spectrum, but the podcasts are too, and should be, to keep meeting the needs of listeners, some they aren’t yet aware of having.
Bryan said:
“I’ve recently fallen into a genre of podcast that I can only describe as 40 year old men talk about video games with their other 40 year old male friends. I listen to four podcasts like that, one called Into the Ether that I’ve only just discovered. It’s been going on for ten years and I just found it. I’ve been burning through the older episodes.
If you just started today, and I find you, and you only have one episode and release a new one every two weeks or something like that, your next episode is going to keep me. But this is like starting in season three of a TV show. It has caught my interest and now I can binge to catch up. I’m committed now to seeing it through.”
Podcasts are creating spaces for conversations that aren’t being heard through an audio medium, or there isn’t the time through linear radio. Australian audiences have made time in their busy lives for them. The next stage is to better the products, the relationship with advertisers who align with the podcast genre or host, and the introduction to new listeners to an established podcast:
“Every person listening is saying that they’d like to spend more time with you. YouTube consumption rates are 20-30% complete consumption for a 60 minute video. Podcasting is still kicking it in the 70 to 80% completion rate. That really says that when that person chooses to listen to you, chooses to buy in, they’re really consuming it.
The presenting sponsor of Pod Save America is SimpliSafe. But who are you? What’s Pod Save America? What is this podcast going to talk to? Why are you selling me something? My phone’s in my hand!
I think trailers are almost entirely ignored in a meaningful way. To the point where I’m trained off of checking out a trailer, because I assume it’s so out of date that I won’t be happy with it. Growing an audience, we are absolutely not taking advantage of the fact of how easy it is to say, if this is your first time, check this trailer and bio out!
You should be aware as a podcaster of where you choose to host your podcast and then who has control of your ad breaks, and who fills it. You should be listening and hearing for samples of the ads.
I encourage anybody with a podcast who is ever going to consider monetising, to read ads for yourself. Read an ad for your newsletter, read an ad for your e-book, read an ad for an episode that you did three years ago that is relevant to a current one. Just get used to it and get comfortable endorsing things. Read an ad for another podcast you want to recommend. That that’s really powerful, because you figure out how to weave it in and make it content. Once you get proficient at that and people expect it, then it really sinks in the same way the rest of your content does.”
Bryan had just returned from Podcast Movement 2025 in Dallas, Texas last week. He’ll take over from the 2026 event properly. Before that, like he would encourage anyone working in audio, he’s going to slowly build momentum, bring new and fresh eyes and ideas to the established brand and increase global awareness to just how much podcasts still have to offer.
You can find out more about Sounds Profitable and the Podcast Movement merger here: https://soundsprofitable.com/
Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and podcaster for Radioinfo. Email: [email protected]
Images supplied.