2025 was “best year yet” for Apple Podcasts

• Apple Podcasts had its “best year yet” in 2025, achieving record listeners, plays and subscribers, said the company. 2025 was Apple Podcasts’ twentieth year, launching automated chapters, timed links, and dialog enhancement tools. It was also the year that Apple Podcasts made its submission process easier, and spoke at a podcast event for what the company said was the first time ever. It also remained the #1 podcast app for consumption in the US.

  • Apple also launched a subscription for its creator apps, including Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, for $12.99 a month.

• YouTube is used by more people in the UK than BBC television, according to some new analysis. The data measured so-called “three-minute” monthly reach: people who have used each platform for at least three minutes a month. However, in a parallel with podcasting figures, people don’t use YouTube for long - if you compare a “fifteen-minute” monthly reach, BBC tv still comfortably beats YouTube by 6 million users (and then there’s the radio and podcasts to add in).

• In Canada, 40% of podcast consumers “use YouTube most often for podcasts” according to new data from Signal Hill Insights released today. 24% say they only consume video podcasts in the country, though.

• Megyn Kelly, who didn’t win the Golden Globes podcast category, claims she “withdrew from the event” after “she was nominated” because she was asked to “engage in promotional tactics”, and called the show embarrassing and disrespectful. Embarrassingly, while eligible for nomination, she didn’t actually get nominated: so there wasn’t much withdrawing to do. Disrespectfully, in a rant on her YouTube show, she claimed the winner, Amy Poehler, “bought” the award. The only person we saw spending money for promotion was Ben Shapiro - and neither Kelly nor Poehler took part in the round table event by The Hollywood Reporter, which is owned by the same company as the Golden Globes.

• Edison Research is to present a webinar called The Evolving Ear: How New Listeners are Shaping Podcasting’s Next Chapter. You can register here; it’s on Jan 27 at 2pm ET. “Listener trends offer the best clues about where it’s headed. Drawing from over 20 years of Edison Research data, Senior Research Director Gabriel Soto will explore how the next wave of podcast consumers is shaping the medium.”

• What better for Podnews to cover than news of The Pod, a brand new mobile podcast studio, made of cedar and recycled plastic bottles? The new mobile studio is based in the Midlands in the UK, and is fully video-ready. It’s taken more than two years to build.

• Good Tape published its cover story on Nicole Byer to its website. Nicole shares the story of her rise to podcast queendom, which started with an edible at LAX and spawned a veritable multiverse of comedy shows. Read why Nicole isn’t interested in recreating the manosphere, why she’s so often propositioned by fans after shows, and why she’s never been afraid to evolve." (Save on a Good Tape subscription).

• After launching a podcast, the thing that’s more work is growing it. Fatima Zaidi (Quill & CoHost) and Jeff Umbro (The Podglomerate) will join forces on Jan 27 to share real-world lessons and proven strategies for building a loyal podcast audience in 2026. The free webinar includes detail about promotion tactics, audience retention, and metrics.

• Triton Digital renewed its decade-long agreement with Salem Media.

People News

• John Wordock is to join Washington DC’s WTOP as its next business reporter. Wordock is familiar to Podnews readers as the owner of John Wordock Media, a podcast consultancy firm, and was the Executive Editor and SVP of Podcasting at Westwood One.

• In the UK, sports broadcaster talkSPORT appointed a Head of Podcasts, Abi Paterson. She joins from The Athletic and has also worked for the BBC. The station has rights to the FIFA World Cup later this year, and will produce visualised shows.

Enter The Webbys. Be Big on What’s Next.

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For 30 years, The Webby Awards has set the standard for Internet excellence. Since 1996, it has been recognized as the preeminent international honor for the best of the Internet, with last year’s Webbys receiving nearly 13,000 entries from all 50 states and more than 70 countries worldwide. This milestone year celebrates three decades of honoring the innovators, creators, and visionaries who have shaped culture online and the next generation of groundbreaking work.

By participating in The Webbys, you place your work on the same stage as boundary-pushing talent, like past Webby Winners Audible, Crooked Media, iHeart Podcasts, PRX, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Lemonada Media, Vox Media, Jay Shetty, Mel Robbins, Las Cultaristas, and many more.

New this year: Expanded offerings in Podcasts, including Best New Podcast, Best Video Podcast, Best Video Podcast Host, Interview or Talk Show – Entertainment & Culture, and Interview or Talk Show – News, Business & Society. New Creator honors now also include Podcast Creators, further spotlighting the voices and stories shaping today’s digital culture.

Learn more, and enter the 30th Annual Webby Awards by the Extended Entry Deadline on Febuary 6th, 2025.

Podcast News - with Airwave

With Airwave: This Week in Tech has joined Airwave - hosted by Leo Laporte, it’s the top-ranked flagship tech podcast from TWiT.tv, and is one of the most recognised brands in tech media.

You can learn a lot about a place from its drinks, and nowhere is that more true than in Japan. Between Drinks returns for a new season, diving into sake, shochu, and, of course, whisky. The podcast spends four weeks travelling across the country to talk to brewers, distillers, and bartenders who can trace Japan’s story through its world-famous drinks.

The Business Owner’s Journey launches season three today, with host Nick Berry shifting the conversation to the internal work of leadership. The new season focuses on the producer-to-leader transition, exploring how elite business owners think about identity, standards, current trends, and decision-making as the true constraint on scale. Season 3 kicks off with former NFL athlete and entrepreneur Anthony Trucks.

Why are so many people traveling in isolation in 2026? In this week’s episode of Curious Tourism, Erin and Kattie review some of the most interesting predictions for travel this year, from “Noctourism” and “Hushpitality”, to cold-weather travel and divorce retreats.

Rae Review: Dark Stories is the new podcast from the true crime influencer, exploring darkest histories, the most depraved people, and the unsettling depths of human behavior. These are the stories you wish didn’t exist, but can’t stop listening to. New episodes every Wednesday.

Mike and Jaymo are back for Season Four of The Old SwitchAroo to keep exploring all the retro video games available on Nintendo Classics. This season, the nearly 100 NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, N64, and Sega Genesis games they’ve covered so far will be joined by two new consoles: the GameCube on Switch 2 and 90s Nintendo black sheep, the Virtual Boy.

In the new and final season of microfiction podcast Apocalypse Radio, you’ll follow main characters Will and Mason back down to Earth to investigate the moon colonies’ founder and the source of the apocalypse. A mostly lighthearted queer show, it’s about finding loyalty, laughter, and love in the zombie apocalypse.