When you tune into a podcast, you probably don’t open the Netflix app — at least not yet.
That may change, if Netflix gets its way. The streamer signed deals with iHeartMedia and Barstool Sports this week, in addition to a recent deal with Spotify to get exclusive video rights to select shows. The company is also rumored to be in talks SiriusXM.
Podcasters see this as an offensive move with YouTube as the primary target. And the data provides a compelling argument. According to YouTube, viewers were watching 700 million hours podcasts every month on living room devices (like TVs) in 2025, up from 400 million a month last year.
“As people begin to spend less time watching traditional TV and more time watching short-form or low-cost, low-production-value content on YouTube, this could pose a long-term competitive threat to Netflix,” Matthew Dysart, an entertainment attorney and former head of podcast business at Spotify, told TechCrunch.
While podcasters may understand the motivation, not everyone is convinced by Netflix’s move. Some podcasters told TechCrunch they’re not sure there’s long-term value in video podcasts, while others worry that Netflix is contributing to a podcast bubble.
“They’re basically saying, ‘We want to be the king of content, and the only way we’re going to do that is if we sweep YouTube,'” podcaster Ronald Young Jr. said. at TechCrunch. Young Jr. he believes people turn on video podcasts and leave them playing in the background, noting that ESPN has been doing some version of this for far longer than we could name.
The video podcast buzz
When freelance podcasters Mike Schubert and Sequoia Simone started their new show “Professional Speakers” this year, they noticed the buzz around video podcasts and decided to launch the new show as a first-time video production on YouTube and Spotify.
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“Neither of us had done video before, so we said, ‘Why don’t we start over and make this video show?'” Schubert told TechCrunch.
Schubert found that his audience was ambivalent about video, perhaps because he’s spent nearly a decade releasing audio podcasts, cultivating a fan base that already enjoys and expects audio content.
“We released an audio-only episode, and it did the same, numerically,” he said. “So why put so much time and effort into video and then run the risk of delaying the episode when we can just do audio?”
Young Jr. he thought about investing more energy in video, but decided against it — like Schubert and Simone, he realized he’d built an audience that would rather listen to podcasts than watch them.
“I’m like, ‘So who am I spinning for?’ he said. “And I realized that the pivot would be for advertisers, for podcast executives, and for people who think this video is the direction everyone is going.”
However, there are some consumers who want to watch video—even as a passive broadcast to play in the background—as evidenced by YouTube’s staggering viewership statistics.
Mikah Sargent, podcast producer and host at TWiT.tvhas been working with shows like “This Week in Tech,” which have had a video component for more than 15 years. (Disclosure: I co-host a show on TWiT.tv once a month.)
“Something I regularly hear from our listeners is… ‘you’ve been my background when I’ve been going through a rough time or I’ve needed to travel across the country and listening to you there has helped pass the time,” Sargent told TechCrunch. “There’s a lot of time with podcasts. So Netflix can look at that and say, “Oh, we have this thing that in some cases takes more time and more streaming than you would get with a typical show.”
What is a podcast anyway?
There’s a disconnect between how creators and tech companies think about podcasts. For podcasters, a podcast can be a chat show like the ones on YouTube, but it can also be a format that doesn’t translate seamlessly to video, like scripted fiction with sound design and voice actors, or the kind of reportable, polished audio stories you’ll find on NPR.
“I think that has to do with how squished the word podcast is now,” podcaster Eric Silver told TechCrunch. “It means anything. It just means show now.”
For these independent creators, the corporate developments between Netflix and Spotify don’t immediately affect their daily lives. But podcasters remember what happened when Spotify bought and consolidated a major chunk of the industry, created a bubble, and then burst that same bubble. The impact reverberated throughout the industry with studio closing, layoffsand a perception among viewers that podcasting was “dead.” So when another Big Tech company comes waltzing into their industry, they’re skeptical.
“In any form of entertainment and media, when companies consolidate, the people who are currently in power continue to get richer and richer than the industry beneath it,” Silver said. “The future is becoming more and more hazy and has fewer and fewer resources.”
Netflix doesn’t go as extreme as Spotify. The latter company has spent billions acquiring several tech startups and studios, allowing Spotify to control the entire process of creating a podcast, from recording software to ad sales tools.
“I think what Netflix is doing is a little more calculated than what Spotify did,” Young Jr. said. “Spotify blindly threw money at top creators and that’s how they hit the market, because by the time you value Joe Rogan at $250 million … you value them so much that the average podcaster is like, where do I fall into this?”
But what’s seen as an industry-changing influx of money into the podcast industry isn’t really all that shocking for a company like Netflix, which is in orbit to make about $45 billion this year.
“Netflix and Spotify are similar that way — aggressive moves to test a new value proposition by targeting top performers and spending money that ultimately isn’t that important from a global technology platform perspective, but makes sense for the creator economy, to quickly find out if it’s there,” Dysart said.
Netflix has only made deals with media companies so far, rather than individual creators like Spotify, but Dysart believes Netflix’s investments are just getting started.
“I would expect Netflix at some point to try to make a nine-figure deal with a top podcast creator,” he added. “I would also expect Netflix to make very big changes with very high-profile personalities on original podcasts.”
If Netflix gets its way, our culture will shift away from watching daytime TV and scheduled talk shows and toward watching podcasts.
“Back in the day, my mom would play a soap opera in the background while she was doing things, and I was definitely the person who would play ‘The Office’ in the background while I was doing things,” Sargent said. “Now people can have a podcast playing in the background while they’re doing things, and if Netflix can be the place they go to do that, then I think it’s a win for the company.”
