It has become somewhat of a running joke among some members of the podcasting community that YouTubedespite its strength as a major player in the creator economy, it has been a slow burn — if not a disappointment — for podcasters.
YouTube’s status as the most preferred or most commonly used platform for podcast listeners, could be described more as a happy coincidence, according to some studies, given the relative lack of resources the company seems to be devoting to podcasting — especially when compared to rivals such as Spotify, which has spent more than $1 billion on the medium in recent years, or even toward YouTube’s other product offerings such as Shorts.
In September 2021, YouTube appeared to be making some progress by promoting Kai Chuk, a longtime YouTube executive who focuses on partnerships, to oversee his podcasting efforts. But in the year since, YouTube has remained relatively quiet with its podcasting efforts; the company quietly rolled out a pretty barebones podcast homepage in July 2022 with a selection of featured videos and playlists. In October of the same year, YouTube said marketers could buy 30 seconds audio ads and build ad campaigns based on podcast categories.
This week, the company offered another update The Verges Hot Pod summit in Brooklyn. Chuk and Steve McClendon, the podcasting product leader at Google, announced this on stage podcasts will be added to the YouTube Music streaming service “in the near future”.
In other words, listeners get a similar podcast listening experience on YouTube Music as on platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts, where background listening, downloads, and search and discovery tools are available for podcasts. “We’re really trying to give the user this kind of control and choice in terms of how they consume podcasts and bridge that gap between video and audio,” Chuk said.
Despite all the bullishness surrounding video podcasting, Chuk seemed to pour cold water on the idea that YouTube would be the one to champion that medium. “The message I hope people take away is that YouTube, in general, independently of YouTube Music, is looking to better support podcasters and [recognizes] that podcasting is generally an audio-first medium,” he said, adding that the platform is also experimenting with more podcast-specific features and creator studio insights.
But more obvious functionality, like supporting RSS feeds to automatically populate YouTube with newly uploaded shows, hasn’t come to fruition yet. “YouTube is an interesting product, isn’t it? It’s open in the sense that anyone can generally post anything on YouTube, but it’s also a bit of this walled garden,” he said. “Support for RSS is definitely something we’re looking at. I’d say we’ll probably use RSS initially to make it easier for podcasters to bring shows to YouTube. In terms of future plans, things like that, we explore what our goal should be.
However, the executive made it clear that YouTube is not interested in following Spotify in making exclusive licensing deals with top podcasters or commissioning original shows. The platform remains the focus for the video giant, particularly for its ability to drive discoverability and “help creators find an audience however they find an audience, whether you’re on or off the platform,” Chuk said.
Details on how podcasters can leverage YouTube’s strengths as a monetization platform also remain unclear, though it appears YouTube is avoiding a reinventing the wheel approach.
“Ultimately, the monetization model is still based on our ability to sell ads, the ability of creators to make money, whether it’s through AVOD, through ads, or through other alternative ways to monetize, such as memberships,” Chuk said. “We created a multi-billion dollar video content company that has paid out $50 billion over the past few years to creators, artists and partners. How do we take that infrastructure and that capability and bring it [over to] audio, to podcasts?”
Until then, it remains to be seen for podcasters both in front of and behind the microphone. “I don’t think that was the exciting announcement the venue was waiting for,” said one spectator THR. “That was the murmur in the room [we’ve] heard this story before.