Are Promo Swaps Still the Way to Grow?
Promo swaps have always been one of the cleanest ways to grow inside the podcast ecosystem… you suggest someone else’s podcast to your listeners and they do the same for you. But the Canadian Podcast Listener 2025 report suggests that advantage is fading.
In 2020, 22% of Canadian podcast listeners said they discovered their most recent new show on another podcast.
By 2025, that dropped to 13% overall, while in-app discovery has climbed to fill the gap.
That shift matters because it suggests growth is increasingly won or lost inside the platforms themselves, through recommendations, search, and paid placements.
Promo swaps still have a place, but the bigger question now is whether your show is packaged and positioned to be found where discovery is actually happening.
We did a full interview on this with the author of the study Matt Hird, VP Research Signal Hill Insights.
“At Home” is still HQ for Podcasts
Nearly two-thirds of weekly podcast listening continues to happen at home. That might surprise you if your default mental model is “podcasts = commuting,” but Edison Research data shows at-home has never stopped being the biggest habit. In 2019, 48% of weekly U.S. podcast listeners said they listened most often at home. That jumped to 58% in 2020, and Edison’s latest estimate puts it at 63% today. Edison suggests growth in at-home contexts, including listening or viewing podcasts on TVs, is helping keep these levels from sliding back to pre-COVID norms.
Podcasting Trends
Signal Hill Insights’ 2025 surveying suggests podcasting is being reshaped by platforms and screens, with listener behavior changing faster than most creators expect. The big message: plan for multiple formats and don’t anchor your strategy to last year’s assumptions.
Video is mainstream: YouTube momentum, brand demand follows.
Narrative still holds: Story-led shows keep attention.
Smart TVs matter: More listening and watching in the living room.
French Canada rebounded: One-year dips can be noise.
News audiences shift: Listener mix can flip quickly.
Apple Podcasts Hits a New High in 2025
Apple Podcasts just wrapped a standout 2025, with Apple reporting all-time highs in listeners, plays, and subscribers for the service. Timed to its 20th anniversary, Apple also pushed meaningful product upgrades that make shows easier to follow and stick with, like automatically generated chapters, improved dialogue, timed links, and much broader transcript coverage across episodes and languages. The signal for podcasters is simple: Apple is leaning harder into listening quality and in-app navigation, not just “having a player.”
In our experience as a podcast producer, the majority of our clients still see their strongest consumption (downloads and hours listened) coming from Apple Podcasts today. That said, Spotify and YouTube are becoming serious contenders, especially as discovery and video keep reshaping how audiences find new shows.
YouTube Overtakes the BBC on Audience Reach in the UK
YouTube has crossed a historic line in the UK, overtaking the BBC on monthly audience reach for the first time, according to official Barb ratings.
The shift is driven by reach, not depth: YouTube now touches more people in a month, largely through short and mixed-format viewing across phones, TVs, and computers.
The BBC still leads by a wide margin on time spent and longer-form viewing, underscoring that this is about discovery rather than engagement. For podcasters, the signal is clear: YouTube is becoming a dominant discovery engine, even if deep listening still lives elsewhere.
Here’s an interview we did with Matt Hird of Signal Hill Insights looking at how in-app discovery is now outpacing promo swaps
