While Spotify becomes the top dog in podcast directories, Google is lagging behind

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BRAZIL – 2019/09/11: In this photo illustration the Google Podcasts logo is displayed on a … [+] smartphone. (Photo illustration by Rafael Henrique / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images)

SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images

Recent data from Buzzsprout shows that Spotify is the new king of podcast directories.

Just over a third (31.7%) of all podcast listeners used Spotify to access their favorite shows, with nearly 25 million downloads in August 2021.

Behind Spotify is Apple Podcasts, the default podcasting app on all iOS devices. Apple recorded 21.1 million downloads for August 2021, with a market share of 26.9%.

Google Podcasts lagged behind the competition, with a download share of 2.9%, around 2.2 million. It’s worth noting that Google Podcasts comes pre-installed on many Android devices and is even suggested as the default podcast listening app.

Not far from Google Podcasts is Castbox, a directory that also produces its own podcasts, with 2,258,895 downloads. There is only a difference of 32,176 downloads between Google Podcasts and Castbox.

Castbox CEO Renee Wang depicts a portrait that follows a Bloomberg … [+] Television interview at the Rise conference in Hong Kong, China on Tuesday, July 9, 2019. The conference will run until July 11. Photographer: Anthony Kwan / Bloomberg

2019 Bloomberg Finance LP

These findings could suggest that Spotify and other competitors’ investments in the podcast world, which have involved several acquisitions and large payments to content creators, are paying off. It could also mean that Google failed to draw attention to its podcast app, which was relaunched in 2018.

Prior to that, Google added a podcast directory to Search in 2016. It later added podcasts to its music streaming service, Google Play Music, in the same year. Google continued to fold Google Play Music into its new YouTube Music service launched two years later, in 2018. However, YouTube Music doesn’t offer podcasts.

Ari Lightman, a professor of digital media and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University Heinz College, believes that competitors were able to grow their market share faster than Google because podcasting was a natural extension of services such as Spotify.

Spotify, as a streaming media platform, has had a logical extension into the podcast market and has been able to acquire podcast providers and supporting applications including Gimlet, Anchor, Parcast, The Ringer and now, Megaphone, giving them a entire ecosystem around podcast delivery and monetization, he said. With their experience building communities and content streaming recommendations, it offers them further differentiation. Google has been a slow competitor in the space, and many of its users have found other applications to provide them with access to podcasts.

Sharon Taylor, chief executive of Triton Digital, said these are several business priorities among the companies.

Spotify’s entire business is dedicated to audio, which means they are focused on increasing podcast users in their already popular audio app, he said. Google has very isolated business units and historically hedges their bets on all of them, which is why it took so long to shut down Google Play and make Google Podcasts the only way to consume shows. Google’s business is in search and from there they were starting to see an increase in podcast consumption.

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