25% market share is a bit lackluster, though?

Podcasting has also been called the slowest growing new medium in the history of new media. I can't imagine it's earning its keep, relative to those big initial payouts. Meanwhile, the shows that are brought into subscription-only world systematically fail to attract new listeners; it is hard to use podcast exclusives to grow market share. Especially the talking head variety, which exist in abundance outside the pay wall.

I both agree and disagree with you here. The expectation of the podcasting business to be full of great opportunities and monetary gain was (probably) misguided, but 25% market share in an established market in just a couple of years when there were big players holding a majority share is still a huge feat.

Will it pay off? Probably not. But is 25% a big share? Yes.

Apple Music (Jun 2015) and Google Play Music (Nov 2011) launched after Spotify (Jul 2011 in the US). I think the 4 year delay by Apple is what allowed Spotify to become so popular in the first place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Music

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Play_Music

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify

The problem for Spotify is that they need a far bigger share of the market to be able to have negotiating power against the 3 record labels that they have to buy the music from. Apple/Alphabet/Amazon do not care as much because re-selling the music at cost or even as a loss leader is not a big deal to them.

This whole subthread is about podcasts, and in that space apple was pretty early (2005 in itunes, 2012 as a standalone app) and spotify was very late.

Oops, I missed that distinction. Thanks for correction.

Apple and Google have 20% and 16% respectively. Considering the amazing platform boost that those two giants have I think 25% is very impressive.

But I agree that podcastings growth has been very slow. I think that there are a lot of factors influencing that. The biggest in my opinion is that listening to a podcast is more intimate than any other media (including broadcast radio) and that factor both slows uptake and decreases churn. Not a marketer though so just making that up.