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YouTube has recently revealed that over one billion people actively watch podcast content on the platform each month. According to the company statement, users consumed over 400 million hours of podcast content every month in 2024. The video-streaming giant stated on February 26:
“This milestone underscores how YouTube has come to play an essential role in podcasting for creators and audiences, and how our investments to improve the podcast experience on YouTube are paying off... Video-based podcasts are more than just a fad; they reach viewers on YouTube, where they are already."
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The most popular podcast on YouTube in the U.S is the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
Joe Rogan Experience is the most viewed podcast on YouTube in America
Comedian Joe Rogan hosts the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, which is a lengthy discussion with friends and guests that has featured comedians, actors, musicians, mixed martial arts athletes, writers, artists, and more.
According to data from the JRE Library, the JRE has been around for 15 years and has a total of 2524 episodes at the time of writing. This includes podcasts shot on a plane, in a car, in a hotel room, Joe Rogan Questions Everything, Fight Companions, Fight Recaps/Breakdowns, JRE MMA Shows, normal JRE podcasts, and more.
The number of JRE podcasts peaked at 221 episodes in 2019. However, this number fell to 184 in 2023. JRE is now publishing three to four episodes per week, with the rare additional podcast. The number of JRE podcasts then increased marginally in 2024.
As per JRE library, the average episode lasts 2 hours, 38 minutes, and 50 seconds, making the total length of all 2524 JRE podcasts 6,682 hours. The podcast has featured 1,163 different guests.
However, episode 1169 of the podcast, which was released in September 2018, has now received the most views (68 million) because of Elon Musk's appearance. During the 2.5-hour discussion, Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, talked about his personal goals, business endeavors, and AI technologies.
He further agreed to Rogan's invitation to smoke marijuana, which allegedly led to a sharp decline in Tesla shares. There were many other subjects discussed as well, such as ambitions to colonize Mars.
Due to the Joe Rogan Experience's significant contribution, YouTube now has one billion monthly podcast listeners, exceeding Spotify's 675 million monthly active users by the end of 2024.
On the other hand, as per Variety’s February 11 report, in his yearly letter to the community, the company's CEO Neal Mohan wrote:
“We’ve long invested in the podcast experience and creators have found that video makes this format even more compelling. This year we’ll roll out more tools to support podcasters, improve monetization for creators, and make it even easier to discover podcasts.”
Another Variety report from February 26 states that the increase in the podcast consumption of the video-streaming platform follows Google Podcasts' phase-out in mid-2024.
According to the statistics published in October by Edison Podcast Metrics, about 31% of weekly podcast listeners in the United States select YouTube as their preferred service, surpassing Spotify (27%) and Apple Podcasts (15%).
