Is Netflix Now a Podcast Platform?

What the report is, and what did not change

The Podcast Landscape is Sounds Profitable's annual study of how Americans consume podcasts. Sounds Profitable is a trade organisation funded by podcasting companies; the 2026 edition was produced with Signal Hill Insights and sponsored by BetterHelp, NPR, ESPN Podcasts, American Public Media, the SiriusXM Podcast Network, DAX and Signal Hill. Part One, released on 1 October, covers the core numbers. Later parts on discovery, advertising, content and AI are due in the coming weeks.

The headline figures barely moved. Of US adults, 74 per cent have ever consumed a podcast, 55 per cent did so in the past month and 39 per cent in the past week, each within a point of 2025. The report uses “consume” rather than “listen” throughout, deliberately, because a growing part of the audience watches. How these survey figures compare with other measures of the audience, and why they differ, is covered in how many Americans actually listen to podcasts; the split between watching and listening in video or audio. This guide is about what is new in 2026: where the audience consumes podcasts, and what that means for anyone trying to appear on them.

Beneath the stable total the audience is turning over. A third of podcast consumers (34 per cent) say they started within the past year, up from 28 per cent in 2025, and 11 per cent say they started within the past 30 days. Familiarity with the word “podcast” slipped from 96 to 93 per cent of adults.

Netflix in third place

For the first time, the survey asked every podcast consumer to name all the services they had used for podcasts in the past 12 months. The answer that made the news was the third one.

Netflix added podcasts at the start of 2026, so 21 per cent is a first-year figure. Tom Webster, the Sounds Profitable partner who leads the study, cautioned in a 23 September essay that the question “is a low bar”: it asks only whether someone consumed a podcast there at some point in the year, not how much or how often. Netflix is very large, and a fifth of podcast consumers encountering a show there is, in his word, “entirely plausible”. What he found notable was the ranking: ahead of Apple Podcasts, for two decades the default podcast app.

The most-used question gives the other side. Asked which single platform they use most, only 5 per cent of podcast consumers named Netflix.

YouTube's share as the main platform was flat at 40 per cent. The bigger movement was among apps built for podcasts, which lost a fifth of their share in a year. Some of that drop is mechanical, because new answers were added to the list, but Apple Podcasts' fall from 11 to 8 per cent is larger than dilution alone would easily explain. The report does not try to separate the two.

Why Netflix is different from YouTube and Spotify

Any podcaster can publish to YouTube or Spotify and stay there as long as it keeps to the terms of service. Netflix does not work that way. It licenses shows through deals with producers and commissions its own; Variety reported on 1 September that it offered “more than 60 video podcasts”, had renewed its whole original line-up and had ordered new shows from Katt Williams and Harlan Coben. Netflix's vice-president of nonfiction series, Brandon Riegg, described the offer as “a curated selection of podcasts”.

Webster's essay, written for the trade, puts the consequence bluntly: “your podcast is not on Netflix, and it can't be.” The shows Netflix carries, he writes, were “already the upper echelon by audience, which is precisely why Netflix picked them”, and that makes Netflix “the great gatekeeper of this business”. He is equally clear that nobody's listening is being rerouted yet: 21 per cent touched a podcast there, 5 per cent use it most.

For a company that books executives onto podcasts, two consequences follow. First, a Netflix podcast is not a category of show one can target in volume; it is a few dozen large productions, some of which take guests. Coben said his forthcoming show will talk to “writers and artists to entrepreneurs, actors, athletes, and everyday people with extraordinary stories”. Second, an episode that exists only on Netflix can be watched only by Netflix subscribers. We did not test how Netflix's podcast pages are indexed by search engines or read by AI systems, but the openness of a platform's pages is what decides whether an appearance can be found later, as our measurement of what each podcast platform publishes as readable text showed for Spotify, Apple and YouTube.

The television, and how people find shows

The report's device figures explain why Netflix could reach a fifth of the audience so fast. Asked which device they use most for podcasts, 57 per cent of consumers named a smartphone. The smart TV was the only device to gain share three years running: 8 per cent in 2024, 9 per cent in 2025, 12 per cent in 2026. Desktops and laptops fell from 16 to 13 per cent over the same period.

On the television, YouTube dominates. Among consumers who use more than one app for podcasts on a smart TV, 71 per cent named YouTube their main one, down from 76 per cent, and 12 per cent named Netflix, up from 10 per cent. Spotify fell from 7 to 4 per cent. Other video measures moved the same way: 44 per cent of consumers watched a video podcast in the past week, up from 40 per cent; the share who have never watched one fell from 14 to 10 per cent; and only 17 per cent of adults who know the word now expect a podcast to be audio-only, down from 21 per cent. Forty per cent of consumers at least occasionally consume podcasts with other people, up from 37 per cent.

Time spent did not rise with video. The typical weekly consumer spent four hours a week with podcasts in both years, while the average fell from 6.3 to 5.7 hours as very long listening weeks became rarer.

One figure from Webster's essay matters more to a guest than any platform share. Asked how they discovered a podcast on YouTube, people most often said they had searched for a specific show or topic, followed by searching for a specific host or celebrity; together, he writes, those account for 77 per cent of YouTube discovery. Discovery there is largely deliberate search, which is why a guest's name and company in an episode's title and description matter, a point covered in why Google doesn't show your podcast interview. Sounds Profitable says the full discovery findings will appear in a later part of the report.

What this means for choosing shows

The report does not address guest bookings; what follows is our reading of it.

Audiences are loyal to a few shows. About two thirds of monthly consumers regularly follow three podcasts or fewer. An appearance reaches the people who already follow that show, so fit between the show's audience and the company's buyers counts for more than the platform the show sits on. The same logic underlies how guest spots are priced, in what a podcast guest appearance costs.

YouTube is the platform to check first. It is the most-used platform for 40 per cent of consumers, the main podcast app on television, and where discovery runs through search. A show that publishes full episodes there, as well as in an open RSS feed, puts a guest in front of more of the audience the report describes than one that does not.

Netflix is an outcome, not a channel. A guest reaches Netflix's podcast audience only by appearing on one of the few shows Netflix has chosen. Those shows are large, selective about guests, and partly behind a subscription. For most companies that is a reason not to plan around Netflix, rather than a reason to chase it.

New listeners are arriving through video. With a third of consumers new in the past year and video rising, the clip and the full video episode are increasingly the way a new listener first meets a show. How charts and rankings reflect that, and how they can mislead, is in how podcast charts work.

Methodology and limitations

This guide is based on Sounds Profitable's report page and 27-slide deck The Podcast Landscape 2026, Part One: Core Podcast Metrics, read on 1 October 2026. The deck is published as images; we read each figure from the slides themselves. We also read Sounds Profitable's press release as published by Podnews on 1 October, and three essays by Tom Webster on the Sounds Profitable site: “Smart TV Killed the Smart Speaker Star” (9 September), the 23 September essay on Netflix (published at the address “tu-dum”) and “The Podcast Landscape 2026 – The Core Numbers” (1 October). The 77 per cent YouTube discovery figure comes from Webster's 23 September essay, not from the Part One deck, and we have not seen its base or question wording. Netflix's slate and the Riegg and Coben quotations are from Variety's report of 1 September 2026; we did not read a Netflix announcement directly. Podnews, Barrett Media and Net Influencer coverage of 1 October was used only to cross-check figures; where Net Influencer gave a device figure that differed from the deck, we used the deck. Five limitations apply. The figures are self-reported survey answers, weighted to Census targets, not measurements of behaviour. Most platform and device questions are asked of everyone who has ever consumed a podcast, a broad group. The question on all platforms used was new in 2026, so it has no trend. The 2026 answer list added four streaming services, which affects comparisons of the most-used platform. And Sounds Profitable is a trade body funded by podcasting companies, some of whose businesses the findings concern; we have not seen the questionnaire or full cross-tabulations.

Conclusion

Netflix is a podcast platform in the sense that matters to audiences: a fifth of American podcast consumers used it for podcasts in its first year, more than used Apple Podcasts. It is not one in the sense that matters to podcasters, because no show can put itself there, and only 5 per cent of consumers treat it as their main place for podcasts. The more durable findings in Sounds Profitable's 2026 report are the ones around Netflix: a stable audience renewing itself, purpose-built podcast apps losing ground, YouTube holding 40 per cent as the main platform, and the television becoming the place where podcasts are watched, sometimes together. For a company deciding where an executive should appear, those findings point to well-matched shows that publish on YouTube and in open feeds. A Netflix appearance is a welcome result of being on a large show, not a channel to plan around.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

1. trade body Sounds Profitable with Signal Hill Insights, The Podcast Landscape 2026 — Part One: Core Podcast Metrics, report page and 27-slide deck, 1 October 2026. Survey of 5,473 US adults, August 2026; reach, platforms used, most-used platform, devices, smart-TV apps, video, tenure, shows followed. Read 1 October 2026.
2. trade body Sounds Profitable, Sounds Profitable's Podcast Landscape 2026: Podcast Reach Holds Steady as Netflix and Video Reshape How Americans Consume Podcasts, press release published by Podnews, 1 October 2026. Read 1 October 2026.
3. trade body Tom Webster, Sounds Profitable, essay on Netflix and podcasting, 23 September 2026; Smart TV Killed the Smart Speaker Star, 9 September 2026; and The Podcast Landscape 2026 – The Core Numbers, 1 October 2026. “The great gatekeeper”; the 77 per cent YouTube search-discovery figure. Read 1 October 2026.
4. trade press Variety, Netflix Doubles Down on Podcasts: Streamer Orders New Shows From Katt Williams and Harlan Coben, Renews Full Slate of Originals, 1 September 2026. More than 60 video podcasts; Riegg and Coben quotations. Read 1 October 2026.
5. trade press Podnews, Reach of podcasts stays steady: The Podcast Landscape 2026; Barrett Media, 65% of Podcast Consumers Follow 3 or Fewer Shows; Net Influencer, Netflix Cracks The Podcast Top 3 In Its First Year; all 1 October 2026. Used to cross-check figures. Read 1 October 2026.