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Amazon and Spotify Boost Podcast Offerings, and Audiences Soar

There aren’t enough advertising dollars to go around, and popular shows soak up most of the money. 

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Illustration: George Wylesol for Bloomberg Businessweek
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The Covid-19 lockdowns were a boon to those in the business of producing content. People had more time at home, benefiting vast swaths of the media industry, from video streamers to news websites. The podcasting industry was no different: Audience numbers soared, and the ad dollars followed.

In the US alone, advertising revenue more than doubled, to $1.5 billion, from 2019 to 2021, according to PwC. Globally the number of podcast listeners jumped 40%, to 384 million, in the same period, EMarketer estimates.