Podcasts prediction for 2019

I predict Amazon and Netflix will launch a podcasting app this year and bundle it with Prime and Netflix subscriptions respectively. And the strategy for Amazon will mostly likely be through an acquisition of one of the smaller players(overcast, stitcher or pocket casts maybe?).

Podcasting has seen a tremendous growth since past 4 years. The podcasting industry reached $314 million in revenue in 2017 — a figure that’s up 86 percent from the $169 million in 2016 and is expected to hit $1 billion by 2020.

Currently, the primary channels through which consumers discover podcasts are through Apple podcasts, Spotify and few other minor players like overcast, stitcher etc. With Amazon and Netflix, the penetration of Prime and Netflix subscriptions are much more and they can cleverly use this as a beach-head to introduce podcasting to the masses.

The other key factor here is, they have already forged strong relationships with the media industry for their video content and if anyone could navigate that industry to create and deliver great audio content, it is definitely Netflix or Amazon. As we have seen in the past, “Content is the king”.

Whether Apple and Spotify realize the potential of their head-starts is something worth a watch as this race is only getting started