When you tune in to a podcast, you’re probably not opening the Netflix app – at least for now.
That might 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 gain exclusive video rights to select shows. The company is also rumored to be in talks with SiriusXM.
Podcasters see this as an offensive move with YouTube as the primary target. And the data provides a convincing argument. YouTube shared this week that viewers watched over 700 million hours of podcasts on living room devices (like TVs) in 2025, up from 400 million last year.
“As people begin to spend less time watching traditional television, and more time watching short form or low cost, low production value content on YouTube, that might present a long term competitive threat to Netflix,” Matthew Dysart, an entertainment attorney and former head of podcast business affairs at Spotify, told TechCrunch.
While podcasters might understand the motivation, not everyone is convinced about Netflix’s move. Some podcasters told TechCrunch they’re not sure there is long-term value in video podcasts, while others are worried 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 take a swipe at YouTube,’” podcaster Ronald Young Jr. told TechCrunch. Still, Young Jr. thinks people are turning on video podcasts and letting them play in the background, noting that ESPN has been doing some version of this for much longer than we’ve been able to name it.
The buzz of video podcasts
When independent podcasters Mike Schubert and Sequoia Simone launched their new show “Professional Talkers” this year, they noted the buzz around video podcasts and decided to start the new show as a video-first production on YouTube and Spotify.
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“Neither of us had done video before, so we were like, ‘Why don’t we just start from the beginning and make this a video show?’” Schubert told TechCrunch.
Schubert found that his audience was ambivalent toward the video, perhaps because he has spent nearly a decade releasing audio podcasts, cultivating a fanbase that already enjoys and expects audio content.
“We posted an audio-only episode, and it did pretty similarly, numbers-wise,” he said. “So why would we put so much time and effort into the video and then run the risk of the episode being late when we can just do audio only?”
Young Jr. considered investing more energy into video, but decided against it – like Schubert and Simone, he realized that he built an audience that prefers listening to podcasts than viewing them.
“I’m like, ‘Well who am I pivoting for?’” he said. “And I realized that the pivot would be for advertisers, for podcast executives, and for people who think that video is the direction that everyone’s going.”
Still, there are some consumers who want to see video — even as a passive show to turn on in the background — as evidenced by YouTube’s staggering viewership stats.
Mikah Sargent, a podcast producer and host at TWiT.tv, works with shows like “This Week in Tech,” which have had a video component for more than fifteen years. (Disclosure: I co-host a show at TWiT.tv once per month.)
“Something that I regularly hear from our listeners is… ‘you were my background when I was going through a rough time, or I needed to travel across the country, and having you there to listen to helped me pass the time,’” Sargent told TechCrunch. “There’s a lot of passed time with podcasts. So Netflix can look at that and go, ‘Ooh, we get to have this thing that in some cases takes up 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 each think about podcasts. For people who make podcasts, a podcast can be a conversational 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 reported, refined audio stories you’d find on NPR.
“I think this has to do with how squishy the word podcast is now,” podcaster Eric Silver told TechCrunch. “It means anything. It just means show now.”
For these independent creators, the corporate goings-on between Netflix and Spotify don’t immediately impact their day-to-day. But podcasters remember what happened when Spotify bought up and consolidated a significant chunk of the industry, created a bubble, then burst that same bubble itself. The impact reverberated across the industry with studio closures, layoffs, and a conception among onlookers 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 currently have power continue to get richer and richer than the industry underneath it,” Silver said. “The future gets more and more murky, and has less and less resources.”
Netflix isn’t making as extreme moves as Spotify. The latter company spent billions acquiring several tech startups and studios, allowing Spotify to control the entire process of making a podcast, from the recording software to the ad sales tools.
“I think that what Netflix is doing is a little bit more calculated than what Spotify did,” Young Jr. said. “Spotify blindly threw money at the top creators, and they kind of cratered the market in doing so, because the minute you value Joe Rogan at $250 million… you value them so highly that the regular podcaster is like, where do I fall on this?”
But what’s seen as an industry-changing infusion of money into the podcast industry isn’t actually that staggering for a company like Netflix, which is on track to make about $45 billion this year.
“Netflix and Spotify are similar in that way – aggressive moves to test a new value proposition by targeting top performers and spending money that ultimately is not that substantial from the perspective of a global tech platform, but is meaningful to the creator economy, to quickly learn if there’s a ‘there’ there.” Dysart said.
Netflix has only made deals with media companies thus far, rather than individual creators like Spotify did, but Dysart thinks Netflix’s investments are only beginning.
“I would expect Netflix to at some point go try to strike a nine-figure deal with a top podcast creator,” he added. “I would also expect Netflix to take really big swings with very high profile personalities on original podcasts.”
If Netflix gets its way, our culture will shift away from watching programmatic daytime TV and talk shows, and toward watching podcasts.
“Back in the day, my mom would have a soap opera playing in the background while she was doing things, and I was definitely the person who would have ‘The Office’ playing in the background while I’m doing things,” Sargent said. “Now, people get to have a podcast playing in the background while they’re doing things, and if Netflix can be the place where they go to do that, then I think it’s a win for the company.”
