Spotify may surpass Apple Podcasts this year: Report

San Francisco: Music streaming giant Spotify will have more US users listening to podcasts on its service than Apple Podcasts by the end of 2021, according to a new report.

In a report published this week, eMarketer predicts Spotify will average 28.2 million monthly podcast listeners by the end of the year. That figure compares to an expected 28 million monthly listeners for Apple Podcasts.

While the research firm expects the market to decelerate in the coming years, Spotify is anticipated to gobble up a bigger slice of the pie through 2025.

The streaming giant is predicted to grow its podcast listener base incrementally over the next four years to land at 43.6 million users a month, or about 12.7 per cent of the US population, reports AppleInsider.

Apple Podcasts, meanwhile, has "essentially stagnated" and will reach 29.1 million monthly listeners by 2025, according to the report.

Currently, 117.8 million people in the US listen to at least one podcast per month, equating to 35.2 per cent of the population. That number is predicted to increase to 131.2 million listeners in 2023.

Likewise, 40 per cent of internet users will listen to a podcast at least once a month this year, a figure expected to increase to 45 per cent in 2024, the report said.

Despite having a hand in the creation of podcasting, Apple only recently made definitive moves to capitalise on the medium by introducing a podcast subscription mechanism in June.

Spotify, which has aggressively built up its podcasting platform over the past couple of years, launched a similar feature in August.