Predicting Podcast Trends for 2025

2024 has come to an end - an extremely exciting year for podcast creators and brands who cooperate with podcasters. Almost all of the relevant numbers saw significant growth in 2024, faster than even before. If you're just as excited as we are for 2025, you've come to the right place.

What will 2025 bring for podcasting and podcast marketing? Will we see another sharp increase in popularity, or will things start to slow down?

Join us in our 2025 podcasting trends predictions to find out more!

The Average Content Quality Is Sure to Rise

As more and more podcasts are created (we've had in total over 2 million podcasts and 48 million episodes in 2025), the competition is bound to get fiercer and fiercer. If you were hoping that podcasting will be easier to get into in the upcoming years, it might just be the opposite.

You'll need a much better podcast quality to come on top of your competitors, and podcasting platforms are bound to tighten up their ranking criteria even more. If you're still thinking about starting your own podcast - now is the best time to do so.

We'll See a Sharp Rise in Podcast Marketing

While companies are still relatively hesitant to spend money on sponsored promotions in podcasts, some brands have already established themselves in the minds of millions of people with smart podcast marketing. Knowing which content creators to cooperate with is the key to effective marketing using podcasts, and we're predicting many more companies to try this out in 2025.

It's also possible that this trend will increase the expectations of brands from cooperating podcasters - it may no longer be enough to include a cut-out segment during your podcast that briefly talks about a given brand.

Listeners Will Have More to Say About Created Content

The podcasting industry definitely isn't done growing - and as it grows, podcasters will be forced to listen closer and closer to their audiences, choosing which direction to follow and adjusting their content to the current trends. Listener niches are going to get better defined, and you might have to narrow down your audience even more to keep growing.

We think that in 2025, many podcasters will increase their community outreach for ideas - be prepared to see more Q&A sessions, more polls for the audience to choose a topic of the next episode, and so on.

Podcasting Hosts Will Become Like Influencers

Just like being a Youtuber or an Instagram model, hosting a podcast often means creating a personal brand around yourself. As podcasts gain more and more coverage in the media, the people behind each show will in time become icons to many, attracting even more listeners and brands who want to promote their products and services.

Prepare to see your favorite podcast hosts appear more frequently in social media and news articles - it's only a matter of time before podcasts become a mainstream activity and influencers who started with podcasting will start to emerge - now it's still mostly the other way round.

We'll Get Better Podcasting Data Analysis Tools

With growing competition grows the effort and resources necessary to stay near the top - making use of podcasting data when preparing your show's strategy will be even more crucial for achieving success.

Effective analysis of reliable data can give you a ton of helpful insights and predictions about the latest podcasting trends. In 2025, we'll definitely see more useful tools that can be used to automate that process - in fact, Hintech does just that!

Hintech is a podcast analytics and monitoring app that's constantly being worked on and expanded. Currently in beta phase, Hintech lets you instantly know what's hot in the podcasting world and what podcast authors have to say about any brand, company, or product.

We May See a New, Better Podcasting Platform

Right now, podcasting is still a little complicated to do on your own without any experience. You first need to purchase a podcast hosting plan from one of the companies that provide these services, and then connect to one or more of the podcast dictionaries like Google Podcasts or Apple Podcasts.

In 2025, as the demand for a unified platform rises, a new one might just appear - or one of the already existing ones will get redesigned to better fulfill the needs of the developing industry. Guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.

More Premium Shows Will Start to Pop-Up

There are already a couple of high-budget corporate productions available on a variety of streaming platforms - podcasts created by news companies, investment companies, and other big fishes. As podcasting will keep getting more and more lucrative, expect even more corporate agenda driven podcasts to appear on your favorite podcast app.

Increase in budget will mean better productions, but will also make it more difficult for independent creators to keep up, as they most likely don't have such resources to spend on their show as international corporations do. You should also expect to see more subscription-based podcasts floating around, requiring you to pay a monthly or weekly fee for access.

Don't worry though - we're sure free podcasts aren't going anywhere in the recent future.

Even More Competition Between Streaming Platforms

As it is right now, companies like Spotify and Apple tend to not invade each other's territory when it comes to podcasting - but that might just change in 2025 as more people start listening to podcasts and their monetary potential sharply rises.

We can already notice the emergence of new, smaller podcasting apps and services, providing alternatives to one of the big players. We're hoping these independent initiatives achieve success, but the media giants are sure to keep a stricter watch on their influence over the market.

Sponsored Content in Podcasts Will Change

We already know that podcast marketing will grow in numbers in 2025 - but there is a very real possibility of the whole formula of sponsoring changing. Instead of briefly promoting many brands without diving into the details, we'll be seeing a change into a more exclusive approach. Companies will want podcasters for their own to promote their product, but also increase brand intimacy and connection with the audience.

A podcaster advertising 5 different VPN services in each episode won't convert into a successful image-building campaign. However, a podcaster talking only about our company, and not only in short, hastily added segments, might do wonders - prepare to see more of that in 2025.

Companies Will Have to Keep a Keen Eye on Their Promotions

As more companies will enter the budding podcast marketing opportunity, there will be countless more mentions of each product, company, or service. This might make it difficult to keep track of who says what about your brand and how effective it is.

Thankfully, we have tools like Hintech that allow brand managers to quickly analyze millions of episodes for every mention of a specific keyword. With a user-friendly interface and extensive functionality, Hintech is an advanced tool that can be used by virtually anyone - even without being tech savvy!