Podcast Listeners Use YouTube & Social Media For Podcast Discovery

A new study by Sounds Profitable and JAR Podcast Solutions reveals a significant shift in podcast discovery and consumption. YouTube has emerged as the dominant platform, with 40% of listeners discovering their favorite podcasts there and 40% using it as their primary listening destination, outperforming Spotify and Apple Podcasts. When combined with other social media platforms like Facebook and TikTok, YouTube and social channels account for 61% of all podcast discoveries. The research emphasizes that organic content shared by followers drives discovery more than sponsored posts. Personal recommendations from friends and family also remain highly influential, with nearly two-thirds of listeners receiving them and most acting on them. The study suggests that podcasters must adapt their strategies, focusing on these diverse channels rather than solely traditional podcast apps, to reach new audiences. It also highlights that different platforms attract distinct listener segments, and branded podcasts show strong trial intent.

Measurement in any media is always a tricky business, fraught with persistent mythologies, assumptions over data, and guesstimates instead of data-driven insights.

Television has been the sole province of Nielsen TV ratings, with its odd combination of hard and soft data. The advent of streaming was supposed to unleash TV metrics, yet streaming services like Netflix protect and shield that information as if it were the secret formula to Coke.

Radio has always had a measurement problem, relying on listener self reporting. In mid-June, iHeartMedia unveiled AudioGraph, a new suite of advertising capabilities built by its Triton Digital subsidiary that aims to bring digital-style targeting, planning, and measurement to broadcast radio for the first time. Terrestrial radio, despite attracting a substantially larger audience than streaming audio, has historically been limited in its appeal to marketers because of its outdated infrastructure, a drawback AudioGraph claims to address.

Music streaming has a high degree of numerical accuracy even though fake content is still a chronic problem and, according to Music Business Worldwide, Spotify commissions musicians, producers, and AI companies to create instrumental and mood-based tracks to populate highly streamed playlists.

For all of podcasting’s impressive metrics – from downloads to listens/views to completion rate – the industry still suffers from data looseness when it comes to how listeners discover podcasts. After all, there are about 40,000 podcasts in varying degrees of activity. How an audience discovers that needle in the haystack requires research rigor requiring access to a multiplicity of data streams. In other words, it’s hard.

Thankfully, the podcasting industry has its own version of M.I.T. and Harvard for research called Sounds Profitable. The organization is a prominent research, advocacy, and trade organization founded by Bryan Barletta and featuring industry experts like Tom Webster. The platform functions as an educational resource to help publishers, content creators, and advertisers maximize listenership and revenue.

The organization partnered with JAR Podcast Solutions to release new study findings on podcast discovery. Here is a summary of those findings:

Tom Webster, partner at Sounds Profitable interprets the results this way: “According to the results, YouTube has become both the leading discovery platform and the most-used platform for podcast consumption. Forty percent of listeners said they discovered their favorite podcast on YouTube, more than double any other source. Additionally, 40% identified YouTube as their most-used podcast platform, surpassing both Spotify (18%) and Apple Podcasts (11%).”

When social platforms including Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram are added to the equation, 61% of listeners attribute discovering their favorite podcast to either YouTube or social media.

The research also found that discovery is increasingly driven by organic content rather than paid promotion. Among listeners who discovered a favorite podcast through social media, 60% found it through content shared by someone they follow, compared to 33% who discovered it through sponsored content.

“Podcasting has spent years optimizing for podcast apps while audience behavior has been shifting elsewhere,” said Tom Webster, Partner at Sounds Profitable. “What this research makes clear is that discovery is happening where people already spend their time. YouTube, social feeds, search, and personal recommendations have become the front door to podcasting. If you’re relying primarily on trailers, chart positions, or cross-promotion within podcast apps, you’re missing where most new listeners are actually entering the medium.”

The study also revealed significant differences between discovery channels, demonstrating that platforms function not only as distribution channels but also as audience segments.

TikTok discovery is nearly seven times more common among listeners ages 18–34 than among those 55 and older.

Spotify-discovered listeners represent one of podcasting’s most engaged and brand-responsive audiences, with 61% listening weekly.

Apple Podcasts browsing remains a key discovery mechanism among affluent, audio-first listeners, particularly in news and technology categories.

Host recommendations continue to deliver highly engaged “super-fan” audiences, despite representing a smaller share of overall discovery.

The report also revealed the powerful role that personal recommendations continue to play in podcasting. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of podcast listeners receive recommendations from friends, family members, or colleagues, while 72% say they are likely to act on those recommendations.

“Discovery isn’t one challenge anymore, it’s many different challenges depending on who you’re trying to reach,” said Roger Nairn, Co-Founder and CEO of JAR Podcast Solutions. “What excites us about these findings is that they give brands and creators a much clearer roadmap. The audience discovering podcasts on TikTok behaves differently than the audience discovering them through Apple Podcasts, YouTube search, or host recommendations. Understanding those differences allows marketers to build smarter strategies and invest in the channels that actually align with their goals.”

For advertisers, the study found that listeners are increasingly receptive to branded podcast content. Brand-produced podcasts generated a 27-point net lift in trial intent overall, with significantly higher performance among highly engaged podcast audiences.

The full report explores how discovery channels shape audience behavior, which platforms deliver scale versus engagement, and what publishers, creators, and brands should prioritize when launching and growing podcasts in today’s fragmented media environment.

What this recent research on podcast discovery by Sounds Profitable / JAR Research punctuates is that the avenues of finding new podcasts aren’t formalized and rigid, but dependent on age, income, background, and lifestyle.

For example, Sounds Profitable Head Of Communications Molly DeMellier is an experienced marathon runner and love to listen to podcasts while training.

Davey Cortes watches video podcasts on YouTube on his daily commute from central New Jersey into Manhattan.

Avni Chauhan catches his sports podcasts on YouTube via his Smart TV after a long day at work.

When podcasting began approximately 20 years, people listened by manually downloading audio files to their desktop computers using feed readers or dedicated catchers like iPodder. They would then physically connect their MP3 players to their computers via USB and sync the episodes to take the audio on the go. Today, options continue to expand on how to consume podcasts.

For podcasters, this expansion of access options enables the industry to attract a wider spectrum of people who find and enjoy podcasts in video and audio formats and on devices from smartphones to smart TVs.