Is "Be Everywhere" The WORST Podcasting Advice Now That YouTube 'Dominates'?

YouTube just overtook Spotify as the UK's most-used podcast platform. By one point. Everyone reported the crossover — almost nobody read the rest of the data, which says your podcast is effectively now a radio station, and you're broadcasting on every frequency at once.

Hi, I'm Neal Veglio, founder of Podknows Podcasting and the Podmastery community.

Edison Research's latest UK numbers gave the podcasting press its headline: YouTube 29%, Spotify 28%. Tectonic plates, apparently. One percentage point.

I spent 25 years in radio before I ever touched a podcast, and the first thing that world drums into you is that a station is never for everyone. Which is exactly what this data is saying — if you read past the crossover.

Different platforms. Different people. Different reasons. This is Radio 1 and Radio 4 all over again, just dressed up with an app icon instead of a frequency. And a lot of podcasters are currently trying to be all three stations at once.

In this one:

• The four-year trend that matters far more than the 1% headline (YouTube 19 → 29; Spotify 33 → 28)
• BBC Sounds, the station that didn't panic — and what its flat 15% is quietly teaching everyone
• Why these aren't the same listeners switching apps: the age, gender and trust splits nobody quoted
• The platform growing fastest is also the one people trust the least. Amazing.
• The Sheffield podcaster making three versions of one episode every week — while 80% of her downloads come from a platform she barely thinks about
• Why “post everywhere equally” is busy work wearing a growth strategy's coat
• “But won't narrowing my focus lose me everyone else?” — no, and here's why
• Today's tip: the five-minute hosting-dashboard check that tells you which radio station you already are

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Speaker: 00:00:00

I always remember my dad's car when I was growing up, an ancient Austin

Allegro that smelled permanently of rust and Trebor mints.

And there was a radio dial, AM radio, no FM yet, no presets, an actual dial

with a little red line that you nudged with your thumb, hunting around for a

signal like you were turning a submarine And the radio diet was very simple.

Radio one for me,

radio two for him and my mom.

Radio four, the second any adult in the car wanted to feel superior

about what they listened to.

Nobody ever suggested that we all just listen to one station.

That would've been completely mad.

And yet, that's the strategy that half of us podcasters have been running with.

I'll explain more in a moment

Hi, this is Podmastery Podcasting Insights.

I'm Neal Veglio.

I started in radio before I started podcasting.

My radio career was around 25 years, and one thing that that world drums

into you really early on is that a radio station is never for everyone.

As much as they want it to be, what they say and play is intended

for someone quite specific.

Now, new data out of the UK recently accidentally proves that podcasting is

heading in exactly the same direction.

Edison Research just published their latest stats for the UK market, and the

headline finding is that YouTube has overtaken Spotify as the most used

platform for podcast listening in the UK.

29% versus 28%.

So one percentage point in it.

That's the entire thing.

Enough to make every podcasting newsletter and podcasting podcast on the planet,

including, let's be honest, this one, include it, as a talking point.

Now, the other publications have acted like tectonic plates have shifted.

Not quite enough that you'd notice if you were just, you know, living

your life, but massive news if you're active in the podcasting

space as a coach or a consultant.

But for me, it's not really about that one point.

It's about the four years it took to get there.

See, in 2023, YouTube was only on 19%.

Spotify was miles ahead on 33.

Apple Podcasts was trailing way ahead as well.

But since then, YouTube's crept up 20, 25, now 29, while Spotify has

slid the other way, 33, 34, 30, 28.

Slow bleed.

And then we probably have to talk about BBC Sounds.

13% in 2023, 15% every year since.

It's just sat there, steady as she goes.

It didn't chase any trends.

It didn't panic.

It didn't launch a Patreon to cover its costs.

It just held onto its 15% like it had absolutely nothing else to do right then

Here's the bit that actually matters though, and it's the bit that most of

the coverage that I've seen has skipped past to get to that shiny crossover

between Spotify and YouTube headline.

These aren't the same 15% of people switching platforms every year.

They're different people on different platforms doing different

things for different reasons.

Look at who's actually listening and where.

Shows tied to the BBC, so that's The Archers, Newscast, that whole legacy

broadcast audience has massively over-indexed with listeners over 55.

Meanwhile, the biggest shows on the platforms growing fastest, so like

your Rogans, your Diary of a CEOs, they skew heavily younger and heavily male.

And this is the one that I genuinely laughed at.

People who use YouTube for podcast listening , report trusting what

they hear less than average.

BBC Sounds listeners trust it more, 51% versus 45.

So the platform that's growing the fastest is also the one people

trust the least for content while they're growing fastest on it.

Amazing.

We're off to a wonderful start here

But do you see what's actually happening here?

This isn't platforms competing for one identical audience.

This is Radio 1 and Radio 4 all over again.

So different stations, different moods, different times of the day, different

people entirely, just dressed with an app icon instead of a frequency.

And this is where I need to have a slightly uncomfortable go at some

people in the space, because I know what a chunk of people doing podcasts

are doing right now, and it's the audio equivalent of broadcasting on every

frequency in the country simultaneously and hoping somebody somewhere wants

to tune in at exactly the right moment

I talked to one particular podcaster, a lovely person doing a personal

finance show out of Sheffield.

Probably good content.

She knows her stuff inside out.

She spends every single week producing three completely equal versions of the

same episode, so the full video cut for YouTube, the clean audio for Apple,

and a slightly different thumbnail version for the Spotify episode that

she manually uploads because someone on a course once told her that Spotify

audiences respond to more color.

So three near identical products with equal love, equal hours, and equal energy.

Meanwhile, her actual downloads are 80% coming from Apple Podcasts, always

have been, because her audience is, roughly speaking, people in their

40s managing their own money on the school run, and that's exactly the

crowd still loyal to Apple Podcasts' simple click and listen model.

So she sat there polishing a YouTube channel almost nobody in her actual

audience is bothering to watch at the expense of doing something more

useful with that time on the platform where 80% of her people already are.

And I get why.

All we hear is be everywhere, and it feels like a strategy.

It feels productive.

Ticking a box on every platform gives you something to point at and say, "Look,

here I am. I'm doing the work." But spreading identical effort evenly across

platforms that serve genuinely different audiences is not really a growth strategy.

It's doing busy work, wearing a growth strategy's coat.

Think about what that would actually look like in radio terms.

Imagine running Radio 1, Radio 2, and Radio 4 out of the same podcast booth at

the same time with the same presenter.

Same person between three different microphones, changing their voice,

their pace, their entire personality every four minutes between songs.

Cardigan goes on for Radio 4, cardigan off, trainers on, screaming into

the mic like an excited teenager for Radio 1, and somewhere in

between both of those for Radio 2.

You know, whatever in between even means when you're doing it at a sprint.

They'd last a week maybe, and every single audience member would

clock instantly that none of it was actually geared towards them.

It's for everyone, which… I mean, I really need you to think about

this one, is functionally the same as being for no one, and that's

what a lot of "post everywhere equally" advice actually leads to.

Not reach, diluted identity three times over with none

of it quite landing anywhere.

Nobody running a radio station in 1995 tried to make Radio 1 sound exactly

like Radio 4 just to be everywhere.

They picked their audience, and they built it for them properly on purpose.

And as someone who grew up listening to Radio 1 as a teenager in the mid-'90s and

heard The Prodigy screaming out of the speakers during Radio 1's Big Weekend, I

can imagine how quickly I'd have tuned out if No Good (Start The Dance) was suddenly

replaced with Let It Be by The Beatles.

And I say that as someone who has massively grown to appreciate

the genius of The Beatles in my older, wiser, more mature years.

So podcasting really is just catching up to a lesson that radio

figured out about 70 years ago.

Now, the objection I always get at this point, and it is a fair

one, is, "But doesn't narrowing my focus mean I lose everyone else?"

And my answer is genuinely no.

Your audio still goes out to every app that carries it.

Nobody's getting cut out here.

What changes is where you spend the two or three extra hours per week you've

actually got for improving the show.

So, you know, the outreach, the thing that convinces someone who

stumbled across it once to actually follow the thing and become a fan,

listening almost as religiously as my born again Christian first serious

girlfriend listened to her reverend

the bottom line is that extra effort has to be focused somewhere.

Right now, for most podcasters like you, it's smeared thinly across

three very different platforms instead of concentrated on the one

that your people already call home.

I'm gonna give you an actionable tip in a moment, but first I'm gonna

play you a podcast trailer from one of our Podmastery community members.

We're gonna be opening the doors to the public soon.

If you'd like to join the founding members, go to podmastery.co/waitlist.

Fill in the form and ask me to add you to that waiting list so you can be one of

the first to get in with lifetime perks.

Okay, so here's the thing that I want you to think about today.

Not eventually, not when you get round to it, today.

Open your hosting dashboard, wherever you're hosting.

Find the platform where the actual majority of your

listens are already happening.

Not where you wish they were, where they genuinely are.

Is that Apple Podcasts?

Is that Spotify?

Is that Pocket Casts?

Is it something else?

Then take whatever time you'd have spent this week promoting your podcast in

general, and pour all that energy into marketing your show on the platform

that's already leading for you.

Make reference to it when you're doing your call to actions.

You know, instead of, "You can get this wherever you get your podcasts," change it

for a while to, "If you're one of the many people listening to us in Apple Podcasts

but you haven't yet clicked follow, please do so, so you never miss an episode."

Stop trying to be Radio 1, Radio 2, and Radio 4 at the same time.

Just work out which radio station you already are, and

get brilliant at being that one.

That's it from me this week.

If this saved you from spending next Sunday cloning your episode

three different ways for no good reason, I'll call that a win.

Good luck with your continuing journey towards attaining podmastery.