What began as a slow tug-of-war has become a full-blown stream war. So how did we get here, and who’s winning in the race to be podcasting’s home base?

Apple: The Original Gatekeeper Fights Back

Apple was there at the very beginning. In 2005, it added podcasts to iTunes and, for a while, basically was the podcast industry. It gave the medium credibility and helped it scale – but for years, Apple did very little to evolve the platform. No original content, no monetisation tools, no strategic investment.

That changed in the early 2020s. By 2025, Apple Podcasts has repositioned itself as a premium, creator-focused platform. It now offers paid subscriptions, enhanced analytics, exclusive content, and improved discoverability features. The introduction of Apple Originals – high-quality, Apple-funded podcasts – was a major turning point, helping it claw back market share from Spotify.

Apple’s strength? Trust, long-standing brand loyalty, and tight integration across iPhones, Macs, and Siri-enabled devices. For many listeners, Apple Podcasts is still the default – and that’s a powerful position.

Spotify: From Streaming Giant to Audio Empire

Spotify, meanwhile, went all-in on podcasts years ago – and hasn’t let up.

Its strategy? Own the platform, own the content, own the audience. That’s why it spent big on exclusive deals with the likes of Joe Rogan, Call Her Daddy, and Emma Chamberlain. It snapped up production studios like Gimlet and Parcast, developed its own ad tech ecosystem (Spotify Audience Network), and built features like video podcasts and interactive polls directly into the app.

By 2025, Spotify has evolved into a podcast-first platform as much as it is a music service. Its algorithm-driven discovery, seamless UI, and exclusive content library continue to attract millions of younger, mobile-first users.

Spotify’s strength? Innovation, personalisation, and an aggressive push into new formats like live audio, video podcasting, and smart speaker integration.

Where the War Is Being Fought

Here’s where the Apple vs. Spotify podcast competition is heating up:

• Exclusives & Originals: Spotify still leads in sheer volume of exclusive content, but Apple’s focus on quality, prestige storytelling is winning over discerning listeners.
• User Experience: Spotify’s sleek, data-rich app offers intuitive navigation and smart recommendations. Apple, however, is catching up with a more streamlined app and better curation.
• Monetisation Tools: Both platforms now offer podcasters paid subscription options – but Apple takes a cut, while Spotify offers more flexible pricing and audience-building tools via Anchor (now Spotify for Podcasters).
• Global Reach: Spotify has pushed hard into global markets with translated content and region-specific shows. Apple, long dominant in the US and UK, is now fighting to stay relevant abroad.
• Search and Discovery: Spotify’s algorithmic recommendations remain more powerful, but Apple’s editorial playlists and human curation offer a more boutique experience.

What It Means for Creators and Listeners

For podcasters, the streaming war presents both opportunity and challenge.

More platforms competing means more investment, more monetisation options, and more chances to reach new audiences. But it also means navigating fragmentation. Do you go exclusive? Stay on all platforms? Build a community on Apple? Or double down on Spotify’s tools?

For listeners, the choice has never been more personal. Do you stick with the platform you’ve used for years – or go where your favourite show just signed an exclusive deal? Do you want algorithmic recommendations, or a more curated experience? And how many apps are you really willing to juggle?

Is There a Winner?

In short: not yet.

Spotify may have a lead in aggressive innovation and youth appeal, but Apple’s deep-rooted integration and emphasis on quality content still make it a dominant force. And with newer players like YouTube and Amazon Audible muscling into the space, the battle for your ears is far from over.

What’s clear is this: the future of podcasting will be shaped not just by creators, but by platforms – and the choices we make as listeners.

Final Thought: Power to the Pod

While Apple and Spotify fight it out in boardrooms and product updates, podcasting itself keeps growing – more voices, more stories, more listeners than ever before. And that’s the real win.

Because no matter who’s hosting your favourite show, the beauty of podcasting has always been the same: connection, creativity, and conversation – delivered straight to your ears.

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Adam’s here to run through the latest in podcasts, including chats with the people behind Decode, Stars In Your Ears and Two Twos!

THIS WEEKS GUESTS

Decode • Spotify

Stars In Your Ears • Acast • Spotify

Two Twos • Acast • Spotify

THIS WEEKS RECOMMENDATIONS

Drunk Women Solving Crime

Take Ten With Twiggy

PODBIBLE LINKS

Pod Bible Magazine

Pod Bible Twitter

Pod Bible Instagram

Pod Bible Facebook

Pod Bible Email

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We asked host Steff Garrero to tell us a bit more about the process, what listeners can expect – and what they hope subscriptions on Spotify can do for the podcast.

You’ve just launched The Socially Distant Sports Bar Extra on Spotify – tell us more about your bonus content offering and why you decided to launch this?

Distant Pod Extra is an extended version of The Socially Distant Sports Bar. We’re not going to just be adding content for the sake of it though – if people are paying for it then it needs to be even better than what we already create. So there’ll be a whole section in the middle of the podcast which is just for subscribers. There are 3 of us on the pod me, Mike Bubbins and Elis James and each week we bring 6 sports clips from YouTube, a documentary and a book for us to riff around, it’s a sports format but it’s very much a comedy podcast. So 3 of the sports clips we talk make up the bonus content.

Why did you decide to go with the type of bonus content that you chose to go with?

If you’re going to start asking people pay directly for content then you have to make sure that you’re providing them with something worthwhile – something which they feel happy about spending their money on. We wanted it to be a whole section of the show which is just for them – still a part of The Socially Distant Sports Bar – but not a tag on just to make money. The bonus content on its own is longer and hopefully funnier than most other pods! We also think that the bonus section being in the middle of the pod rather than the start or end makes it feel like you’re missing out on something if you don’t subscribe, rather than it being an add on if you do.

Did you already have a subscription content offering prior to launching on Spotify?

We’ve been running a Patreon subscription for the past 15 months or so and it works really well in terms connecting with the audience. We’ve been offering various different levels of subscription which get you various different gifts. The audience have been amazing in supporting us financially via Patreon – Global DAX have been great with bringing in a regular advert revenue for us too.

The only drawback of Patreon is that the RSS feeds don’t work on Spotify – we have a large section of our audience who want to support us financially but love the way that Spotify app works. Linking up with Spotify makes perfect sense for us and adds to the ways in which we can reach the biggest possible audience. They were amazing at promoting us when we first launched in March 2020. We’re an independent podcast with no huge media machine behind us, so the help Spotify gave us at the start meant a lot.

Do you think there is an ideal time/audience size you think creators should consider before they go ahead with bonus content?

I don‘t think it’s about size or timescale when it comes to bonus content or asking for subscriptions.

It’s about engagement. If people are reacting to what you’re creating then there’s an emotional response – they like you a lot (or they don’t!) If your completion rate percentages are very high then your audience like what you’re doing and 5-10% of them might be prepared to pay for more content.

Realistically, unless you’re in the top 10 podcasts in the UK then the advertising revenue alone isn’t going to sustain your product long term.

Have you tweaked your bonus content based on audience feedback? Why and how?

When we started our subscription model we spread the bonus content throughout the episodes. The audience would get 30 minutes more than the free version but it was hard for them to identify where the content was within the pod – it was longer but it was too slick. So we rejigged it so that one of the sections of the show went fully behind a pay wall. The length of the free version stayed exactly the same, but moving part of the show to subscription only worked really well for us in two ways. The audience we already had could identify where the bonus content was and make a decision on the quality of it more easily; it also provided the incentive for far more of our audience to subscribe to the bonus content because they felt they were missing out.

Are there any best practices you’d like to share for podcasters looking to produce their own bonus content, but haven’t started yet?

It has to be part of the product you’re already creating and your heart needs to be in the extra content too. If it’s just an add on to make money then people will feel short changed pretty quickly. The same production values, the same effort & energy from your hosts are needed for it to be a success.

There are a million podcasts out there, streaming platforms and subscription channels – what makes your content stand out for your audience demographic? Podcast listeners are, on the whole, a loyal bunch. But that loyalty and trust goes two ways. If you launch something substandard just to get money in, it will damage your brand.

Listen and subscribe to The Socially Distanced Sports Bar Extra on SPOTIFY!

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This post was created in partnership with Spotify.

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Sorry. But puns aside, they really are. The magic of hearing a ghost story isn’t in what’s being said as such, but in the images being conjured up. Your brain is capable of forming terrors far more terrible than anything you could actually see, and around the virtual campfire those images are that much more vivid with artfully deployed sound design.

We’ve been living through a mini-golden age of audio horror lately too. Led by the megahit The Battersea Poltergeist, a strain of podcasts which mix real-life spookiness with dramatic reimaginings has hit a nerve with listeners, and more and more producers and writers are taking advantage of the uniquely chilling atmosphere that they can create in sound.

As well as that, though, there’s long been a vibrant line-up of paranormally inclined shows which follow the My Favourite Murder format of hosts chatting amiably about something horrific. However you want to be chilled this Halloween, there’s a lot out there for you.

The Battersea Poltergeist

It’s not often that a Radio 4 drama-doc becomes so vast that it gets its own live show, but The Battersea Poltergeist is exactly that Radio 4 drama-doc. Part paranormal cold case, part dramatic reconstruction, it follows Danny Robins and his team as they go back to 63 Wycliffe Road in south London to investigate a haunting which gripped the UK in the fifties.

The Harrowing

The frame of this audio drama is a police investigation into a mysterious tragedy on a remote island off the west coast of Scotland called Toll Mòr. A growling stranger walks into a church warning of doomsday and demons, and local police sergeant Jackie O’Hara (Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt) arrives just as a huge storm rolls in.

Welcome to Night Vale

This was one of the very first fiction podcasts to make it really, really big. The hook is that we’re listening to radio broadcasts to a small community somewhere in America – adverts for carnivals, local election reminders, that sort of thing. Except the carnival sounds horrific and the only vote in the election comes from disembodied voices in a hidden gorge. Both funny ha-ha and funny peculiar.

Alice Isn’t Dead

This horror-leaning thriller from Welcome to Night Vale’s co-author Joseph Fink follows a lonely trucker as she traverses America on the search for her wife, who’s gone missing. Their relationship isn’t straightforward, but then neither is this America: it’s full of ghostly no-places lost in time, not-quite-human serial killers and, at its heart, a sprawling conspiracy.

Lore

Though the horror pod wave has been driven by mixtures of fact and faction, some of the most spine-tingling are those like Lore, which meticulously research true scary stories which inspire folklore. Each time there’s a different theme – opportunity, confidence, music – which are explored by the tales different cultures tell each other about them. There’s a truly vast back catalogue of nearly 200 episodes here to creep into.

A Podcast to the Curious

This one started out as an exploration of the life and work of MR James, the master of the English ghost story. It’s literary rather than alarming, digging into the context and the story of how each story was written as well as dissecting the tales themselves. They’ve tip-toed into the dimly lit library of other English ghost stories too, from Dickens to writers who followed James’ lead.

Did we miss your favourite podcast? Let us know on Twitter!

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