The state of the podcasting industry in 2019, including key trends and monetization strategies of audio apps in China
In the world of podcasting, the flywheel is spinning: new technologies including AirPods, connected cars, and smart speakers have made it much easier for consumers to listen … Tweets: @ljin18 , @mwmoretti , @patricialclark , @kartvee , and @cheriehu42 Tweets: Li Jin / @ljin18 : New post! Over 30% of Americans now regularly listen to podcasts, and here's my (with inputs from consumer team and research) 68-page overview + investment analysis on the industry. Thread 👇 https://a16z.com/... Marcus Moretti / @mwmoretti : “There are now over 700K free podcasts available and thousands more launching each week.” https://a16z.com/... Patricia Clark / @patricialclark : 65% of active listeners only starting listening in the last 3 years: Investing in the #Podcast Ecosystem in 2019 https://a16z.com/... via @a16z Karthik Vijayakumar / @kartvee : Investing in the Podcast Ecosystem in 2019: What may surprise people living in heavy commuter markets is that listening primarily happens at home, which represents almost half of all podcast consumption. https://a16z.com/... Cherie Hu / @cheriehu42 : this is required reading. love all of @ljin18's analysis, and especially appreciate how she looks beyond the Western podcast bubble (e.g. did you know that online audio market users grew faster than mobile video users in China last year??!) >> https://a16z.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This a16z consumer-team overview lands at the moment podcasting stops being a hobby market: an earlier Chartable survey already put roughly half of US adults listening monthly, and the team's own relationships note that 65% of active listeners started within three years — a young audience still forming habits around AirPods, connected cars, and smart speakers.
The report also looks West-to-East for monetization: a companion a16z piece had just mapped how Chinese entertainment apps layer tips, micropayments, and coupons on top of ads and subscriptions, with online audio users in China growing faster than mobile video users last year. The investment framing matters because ad dollars were already chasing the audience.
First-order effects
- Advertisers follow the flywheel directly: US podcast ad spend hit $479.1M in 2018, up 53% year over year, and was forecast to reach $678.7M in 2019 — the demand side of the market a16z is underwriting.
- Hardware distribution shifts listening behavior now: with almost half of podcast listening happening at home, AirPods, smart speakers, and connected cars lower the friction that previously capped audience growth past 30% of Americans.
Second-order effects
- Chinese audio apps become the template for escaping pure advertising: their tips-and-micropayments stacks give Western platforms a live counterexample as some worry about falling ad prices even while budgets grow.
- Supply explodes alongside demand — over 700,000 free podcasts are already available — which pressures discovery and pricing power toward whoever owns distribution rather than whoever makes shows.
Third-order effects
- The crowding a16z flagged as opportunity hardens into constraint: by 2022, competition has made nearly everything in the podcast business harder, with some arguing no one is taking creative risks — the maturity stage the medium was entering in 2018-19 playing out fully.
- China's trajectory vindicates the East-looking thesis structurally: its podcast audience is projected to reach 150M in 2025, up from under 700K five years earlier, built on grassroots hosts navigating local red lines rather than imported formats.
The trend: Podcasting is consolidating from a fragmented creator gold rush into a distribution-owned market, with hardware gatekeepers in the West and super-app monetization in China setting two different paths for who captures the value.