Why 2025 Was A Great Year For Podcast Listeners

In this quick episode, we take a step back to appreciate how much podcast listening apps have improved and why that’s such a win for listeners and independent podcasters. 

Updates from Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Overcast, and Fountain, had three big themes:

• Discoverability: making it easier to find new shows you’ll actually want to listen to
• Interactivity: likes, comments, and recommendations that help great episodes spread
• Quality of life: smarter playback controls, enhanced dialogue, chapters, and fewer accidental taps

It feels like podcast apps are finally competing on listening experience and we think that’s a really good sign for the future of podcasting!

Don't forget to send in your tips as we start planning an episode on how to start a podcast in 2026. If there’s something you wish you’d known when you started, send it our way!

Contact Buzzcast

• Send us a text message
• Tweet us at @buzzcastpodcast, @albanbrooke, @kfinn, and @JordanPods

Thanks for listening and Keep Podcasting!

Transcript

Alban: 0:00

Jordan, how much YouTube do you watch?

Jordan: 0:02

I watch more than I did a year ago, but it's really not a ton.

Alban: 0:06

So did you see they've changed the controls? Like the play button is at a different spot. They've moved around like the title, the subscribe stuff. Like it's all started kind of moving around a little bit.

Jordan: 0:16

You know what's funny is I haven't noticed. So I guess that says how little I actually use it because I didn't notice a change.

Alban: 0:23

This might just be my personality type, but I love when these like UI elements, especially ones that are used so often, kind of shift. And then you posted, or maybe you tell us what you posted in the outline today. And I feel like it's uh it's apt for what I was thinking about.

Jordan: 0:36

Okay, so what I wanted to talk about today, we talk a lot about updates to things like as a podcaster. You know, we get like new tools and all these bells and whistles, but I've noticed as of this year that my life has improved immensely as a podcast listener. And so I thought that we could just like take some time this episode to like express gratitude to all the developers for making our lives so much better.

Alban: 1:03

Yeah, we have the years that were all about like all the news and podcasting was like, oh, somebody acquired this podcast and it's gonna be exclusive. And there was like this whole period of exclusives.

Jordan: 1:13

Oh, yeah.

Alban: 1:14

And now we're kind of in a season of all the listening apps getting better.

Jordan: 1:19

Yeah.

Alban: 1:19

And they're getting better in like different ways, and they're all kind of experimenting with different things.

Jordan: 1:23

And and it's beneficial to like independent podcasters as opposed to just the major ones.

Alban: 1:28

Yeah. And in my mind, I just it kind of juxtapose nicely with the YouTube world, maybe the Netflix world, where there's one player and it's really good. And I'm not even critiquing it, but there's one way of doing things, and everyone kind of just gripes, but they know that their complaints just go off into the universe and never heard. But over in this the podcasting world, like everyone's kind of trying different things this year. Yeah. And we're just trying some like natural experiments. And some of them, I don't know, you posted it here and I really, I really liked them. What's your favorite?

Jordan: 2:04

Okay, so I I kind of grouped these into different categories because I started going through like, okay, what did Spotify do this year? What did Apple do this year? What did Fountain do this year? Things like that. And then I realized that a lot of them are kind of playing into the same themes. And so I have them kind of like grouped together. So I put the categories as like interactivity. So these are improvements to the ways that like listeners are able to interact with an episode, discoverability, how we can find new episodes to listen to, and then also quality of life, which is just, you know, listening improvements, things like that. So I personally think that the discoverability improvements have been my favorite. So I'm gonna hop into like this section real quick. So Spotify, like they updated like a following feed where it was really hard to like keep up with podcasts that you were already subscribed to on Spotify. It didn't like update you if you had a new episode out or anything like that. And so they they cleaned that up, which made it a lot easier. Pocketcast has like a revamp search experience, and um, they also added playlists for listener curation, which I think a lot of people were really excited about. And then they also added smart playlists so that the app can like automatically gather episodes for you when you're listening.

Alban: 3:21

Yeah, and Apple did this too. So I ran into this a bit when I was doing that how to get new and noteworthy or boost your visibility in Apple Podcast blog. And one of the things they did was they had that browse section, which now they've just made new. And it's kind of like a combination of the podcast charts, but also the editorial pieces included. So they're kind of surfacing new episodes, what things they think you should be listening to next, kind of bringing it all together so that these are new, I guess to you shows and try to highlight things that they think you would like.

Jordan: 3:58

Yeah, I actually think that that's a really good improvement because before I would browse like their curated lists only, and I never even looked at the top charts. And so maybe they had that information. They were like, okay, we got to get charts like in front of people somehow. The other thing that they did to improve discoverability is just with this newest 26.2 update, when they added the ability to look at podcasts mentioned in a podcast episode. So, like in our BuzzCast episode last week, we reviewed a whole bunch of podcasts, and those are gonna be featured on Apple Podcasts on that episode, which is super cool. And they'll be timestamped and stuff. So we're gonna see how it like pops up on the now playing screen. I just I really think that that, along with having those linked in the actual transcript, because the transcript's now interactive. You can click on it, you can like explore other podcasts. I think that that is just such a huge discoverability improvement for Apple.

Alban: 4:55

Yeah, I think that people are not as likely to remember the podcast name that they hear about and then go click through. But if it's popping up on the podcast player, the chances they click through are going to be quite a bit better. So maybe we'll see more people doing feed drops or promo swaps or you know, guesting on other podcasts to get the, you know, their podcast exposed to the world a bit more. In the world of interactivity, my number one update was actually a I don't know, what's the opposite of interactivity?

Jordan: 5:28

No.

Alban: 5:28

Not interacting. Um, so Overcast had this thing where on the lock screen you could like scrub along an episode.

Jordan: 5:36

Oh my gosh.

Alban: 5:38

If you do that, every once in a while, I'd be like running, or I'd do something, I'd put my pop phone in my pocket, and then we'd like jump. And so now it's like just less accidental taps. Yeah. So sometimes interactivity goes the other way and it's an improvement.

Jordan: 5:55

This is just kind of like a quick one, but Fountain added some interactivity and they kind of did it a different way than the other one. So, like, uh, so Spotify, you know, they have comments, they added threads, so they like really expanded upon the interactivity ability. Like you can add emojis and like boost comments and things like that. And then Fountain, I think that they just did something that was like really understated, but it's in a cool way. So when you like an episode in Fountain, anyone who follows you will also see that you like that. So I think that that kind of goes with the like recommendation algorithm a little bit more. It's kind of cool because if you like something and someone else enjoys some of the same things you do and they see that in your feed you liked it. I think that good pods was very similar.

Alban: 6:40

Yeah, I think good pods really leaned into this early on. It's a shame that not more people got into good pods because the ability to follow people and someone to be kind of like a podcast taste maker.

Jordan: 6:53

Yeah.

Alban: 6:53

Uh was definitely there. And it would have been fun just to see, you know, people liking shows and you're like, oh, four of my friends. I mean, this is how I use Goodreads.

Jordan: 7:02

Yeah.

Alban: 7:02

When I go on Goodreads and I'm looking at a book, I'll natur I'll just see like five friends on Goodreads have read the book. And there's a few people, like if different people from different areas of my life all liked the book, it's like a hundred percent guarantee it's gonna be good.

Jordan: 7:20

Yes.

Alban: 7:21

That still is there for podcasts. It would be so much fun if I could go on there and be like, oh, like Jordan really liked this episode. Also, my uncle liked this episode. Also, a friend from college liked it. Okay, that's three very different people. If they all liked it, there's probably something really interesting here uh for me to listen to.

Jordan: 7:42

Yeah. Okay, so in the quality of life section, I'm really gonna focus hard on Apple Podcasts for this because this last update has just been amazing. They improved their speed control and they like boosted it up to 3x playback. Obviously, I'm not a fan of that. I'm probably not gonna ever gonna use that. I think the only person out of the three of us who's gonna use it might be Kevin.

Alban: 8:07

We don't encourage what are you doing?

Jordan: 8:09

I know, like, why?

Alban: 8:10

So when we did the research for this episode, this is like the most common update of the year, was people are like enhance playback speed controls. Uh and it's like you can now go 0.5 and you can now go up to, and then they like put a whatever number, three.

Jordan: 8:27

Yeah, I think YouTube like increased it to like 4.5 or something. It's like insanity mode.

Alban: 8:34

I think this that's a maybe a bad sign for the podcast apps. If you're like, hey, our big update this year is you can go 4.5 times as fast as you used to, um, that actually might be uh a bear case.

unknown: 8:47

Yeah.

Jordan: 8:48

But one of the things that they added that I am so happy with, and I know other podcast apps already had this, but I use Apple Podcasts all the time. And a lot of the podcasts I listen to on Apple Podcasts maybe don't have magic mastering, and so they don't have the auto-leveling and things like that. Uh, one of the things that they added is the enhanced dialogue, and you can like turn it on for specific uh podcasts. And there's one podcast that I just love, but I actually stopped listening to them for probably like two or three months because their audio was so much quieter than the ads that they had. And I was so pumped to like try this out on it. And I could hear their podcast perfectly. And when an ad came on, it didn't like blow my ears out. So they kind of like auto-leveled it a little bit for me. That was kind of a huge one for me because now I can listen to this podcast I love again.

Alban: 9:38

Yeah. Well, I I love that people when they you have something you can clean up the audio because sometimes the content is really good and it's really what you want to listen to. I'm uh riding high. The Jacksonville Jaguars are winning a bunch of games, and they actually look kind of good right now. And so I found a daily Jacksonville Jaguars podcast, and I've been listening to it, but the audio is not like all the way there.

Jordan: 10:03

Yeah.

Alban: 10:03

So it's really nice. Um, Overcast has some tools like this. You're using the one from Apple Podcasts. It's just nice to turn it on, clean up the audio a little bit. It's mostly not that bad on headphones. But what I find is if I'm driving in my Jeep where there's just lots of road noise, bad audio quality plus road noise, plus being in a truck. The combination is just you can barely understand what people are saying. Oh, yeah, even when it's like too loud.

Jordan: 10:30

Or when you're doing the dishes and like the water's running.

Alban: 10:32

Yeah. I need to get some uh, you know, the noise canceling headphones. Maybe some of those would clean it up a bit.

Jordan: 10:38

Maybe.

Alban: 10:39

All right. Let me ask you about this one. Okay. Um, I didn't see this in your outline, and we never have talked about this, but Overcast made this update. It's called like promo and rerun filter. So maybe you can guess what this is. Yeah. The idea was you turn it on and Overcast tries to identify hey, this episode is just a rerun of an old episode. This episode is actually just a feed drop promoing their other new show. And to eliminate that feeling of frustration where you're like, I thought my favorite podcast ever is back. No, they're just reminding me that they did do episodes back in like 2012.

Jordan: 11:18

Yeah.

Alban: 11:19

So they're filtering it out. What's your take on that?

Jordan: 11:22

I have to be honest, like, this one gives me mixed feelings. As a listener, I'm going, yes, there are a few podcasts I'm subscribed to that I've thought very seriously about unsubscribing from because they run so many reruns, like it's like one or two a week. But at the same time, as a podcaster, there are times where I'm actually like promoting something that is really important to me. And I'm saying, you know, for example, if I have a subscriber-only episode and I need to take a break that week, and I'm saying, hey, you know, if you subscribe, you get more episodes like this. I have over a hundred subscriber episodes like this one. Would it filter that out for the people that I am trying to show how good my subscription is?

Alban: 12:03

Only if they've turned it on. So I've never, I have not turned it on.

Jordan: 12:06

Oh.

Alban: 12:07

My feeling is if you're going to abuse the podcast inbox that I have and post a bunch of promos, I might just unsubscribe to the whole show and move on.

Jordan: 12:19

Yeah.

Alban: 12:19

But it just was interesting because it feels like a spam filter, but with email, anybody can send you an email. And so spam is a really big problem. With podcasting, it's all opt-in. Yes. And so it's kind of a known person. You're like, oh, Gimlet did it to me again. They gave you another promo drop.

Jordan: 12:36

Whereas require all.

Alban: 12:38

Yeah. So I'm just going to, you know, complain to Gimlet.

Jordan: 12:41

Yes.

Alban: 12:42

Sorry, Gimlet that they may not be able to do that. But you know what I'm saying? Like that I know who did it. And so I feel like I can just unsubscribe. And then we've got a few quality of life improvements. And I think the biggest has got to be these chapters that Apple Podcasts is doing.

Jordan: 12:59

Yeah.

Alban: 13:00

Um, where they're going to be doing chapters automatically. And I think that just not only encourages podcasters to actually create chapters even more now that they can see chapters are available more often, but it's just nice as the listener. There's plenty of podcasts that they'll do like an interview and some news, or they'll do different segments. Buzzcast, we have lots of segments. I'm sure the people are like, I enjoy the podcast bits, but I don't really like the personal talk. So they can just skip past those sections.

Jordan: 13:32

Yeah.

Alban: 13:32

I think this is a great way to do it. You respect whatever the podcasters put in the feed by default, but if they don't put anything in, then Apple fills it in so that there's more adoption for listeners. So they know, oh, if I'm getting kind of bored, I can just skip the chapter rather than bouncing around hoping I can find a place where things get good again.

Jordan: 13:53

Another um improvement that they had with chapters that I was personally really excited about is that they changed the way that they do chapter artwork. So you no longer have to have the artwork embedded in the audio file. Is that right, Alban?

Alban: 14:05

Oh, yeah. This is one that was funny. I feel like this snuck past me because we added chapter artwork to the MP3 files, like right at the same time that Apple said, fine, we'll use the ones in the RSS feed. So we did them together. So now Apple could pick them up two different ways.

Jordan: 14:24

Yeah.

Alban: 14:24

Overall, just you know, a little bit more support for chapter artwork. Uh, we are doing right before we started recording, you asked me for a picture we mentioned uh during a different episode of Buzzcast because you're gonna put it in the chapter artwork. So uh I think it enhances the experience a little bit. Not everyone's gonna look at it, but for the times that you do, it's nice to have the little bit of a bonus.

Jordan: 14:48

Yeah. All right. Well, I think that is probably enough of us gushing about all the awesome updates this year. So thanks again to all the developers of the podcast apps for constantly improving our listening experience. We appreciate you so much.

Alban: 15:03

And if you have any recommendations on how to start a podcast, things you wish you knew, tools that you wish were there when you started, let us know. We're gonna do a whole episode on how to start a podcast in 2026. And we would love to include your info, your tips, your strategies. So tap text the show in the description, send us your tip, send us your strategy, send us what you would have liked to have known, and we'll mention you and your tip in the next episode. So you'll see your podcast show up in those beautiful podcast banners that we have been talking about in Apple Podcasts. But until next time, keep podcasting.