Podcasting is bigger than ever—but not without its growing pains

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On August 4, Amazon announced that it was restructuring its Wondery podcast studio. The company’s CEO and about 110 employees are leaving. Those who remain are being divvied between Amazon’s audiobook arm Audible and a new group called Creator Services, reported The New York Times’s Jessica Testa.

Observers, including my colleague Grace Snelling, connected Amazon’s reevaluation of Wondery’s future with YouTube’s emergence as, arguably, podcasting’s dominant platform. As of October 2024, according to Edison Research, the video giant had more podcast listeners than Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Calling podcast fans “listeners” may already be an anachronism, though: In February of this year, YouTube itself claimed 1 bill