YouTube is now the UK's most-used podcast app. What that changes for a business show

By James Jones, founder of Granary Digital · 28 September 2026

On 16 July 2026 Edison Research at SSRS presented The UK Podcast Consumer 2026, and one line in it reordered the podcast apps. Asked which service they use most for podcasts, 29% of UK weekly podcast consumers aged 15 and over said YouTube. Spotify was on 28%, BBC Sounds on 15% and Apple Podcasts on 10%. In Edison's 2023 figures YouTube had 19% and Spotify 33%.

The same study found that 72% of UK weekly podcast consumers actively watch video podcasts, up from 58% in 2023. Listening on a smart TV has gone from 4% to 10% over the same period.

Two surveys asking two different questions

Before anyone rebuilds a content plan around one number, it helps to know what was asked. Ofcom's Audio listening in the UK 2026, published on 20 May, measured which services weekly podcast listeners use at all. On that measure Spotify leads with 49%, BBC Sounds has 45% and YouTube is third on 38%. Edison measured the one people use most. Both can be true at once: plenty of people have three podcast apps and open one far more than the others.

Ofcom also found the audience growing. In the first quarter of 2026, 27% of people aged 15 and over listened to podcasts every week, up from 23% a year earlier.

Every big app plays video now

YouTube is the headline, but this has been the year the others caught up.

• Apple Podcasts switched on HLS video with iOS 26.4 on 25 March, in more than 170 countries and regions, with no distribution fee for creators.
• Spotify's Partner Program has paid video podcasters in the UK since January 2025. On 7 January 2026 it cut the entry bar to 1,000 engaged listeners, 2,000 hours consumed in 30 days and three episodes. The old bar was 2,000 listeners, 10,000 hours and twelve episodes.
• Netflix ran The Rest Is Football daily from 10 June for the World Cup, and on 20 July extended the deal for two years. Edison's UK chart for the second quarter, published on 3 September, credits Netflix with lifting the show to number five, its highest ranking yet.

What it means for a business podcast

A show recorded audio-only can still go up on YouTube as a still image with a waveform. It will sit in the app more UK listeners open first than any other, looking like a radio left on in an empty room. Business podcasts are usually made to be found by people who don't know the host yet, and on YouTube that happens through the picture: the thumbnail, the clip in the feed, a face mid-sentence.

The part people underestimate is the clips. A vertical clip needs one face filling the frame. From a single wide camera you crop in and lose resolution. With a tight 4K camera on each seat you have a clean vertical frame of whoever is talking, which is why three cameras rather than one is the difference between ten usable clips and thirty.

The audio still has to carry it

Here is the figure that stops this turning into a video-only argument. Ofcom asked weekly listeners who come across podcasts with video how they prefer to take them. Of those, 27% prefer to watch, 39% prefer audio only, and another 26% play the video in the background. Nearly two thirds of that audience, in other words, are mostly listening.

So the video is a second way in, and the sound is still the product. A show that looks good and sounds like a meeting room will lose everyone doing the washing up. In our podcast studio the cameras sit on top of a proper audio chain: Shure broadcast microphones into a Dante-networked digital desk, recorded straight to the DAW, with an engineer riding levels for the whole session in a 4.5m by 4.5m room that is double-insulated and foam-tiled.

What to do with the next recording

1. Record picture even if you publish audio first. Cameras can't be added afterwards.
2. Put the full episode on YouTube as video, not as a still. That is the app Edison says UK listeners use most.
3. Frame for clips. A tight camera on each speaker is what turns one conversation into a month of vertical posts.
4. Mix for the ear. Most of the video audience is listening more than watching, so levels, noise and pace matter as much as the grade.
5. Look again at Spotify. If you publish video, 1,000 engaged listeners and three episodes is a much nearer target than the old 2,000 and twelve.

What it costs here

A produced episode on our Classic package is £395+VAT: up to 90 minutes of recording on three 4K cameras, the audio and video edit, thirty short-form cuts, an engineer and a producer, and files within five working days. If you'd rather have the room, the kit and an engineer by the hour and edit it yourselves, Solo is from £108+VAT an hour. What is in a produced episode walks through where the difference goes, and how much a video podcast costs sets it against the other ways of doing it. Everything else is on the podcast production page.

If you have an audio show and wonder what it would look like with cameras on it, send us an episode and we'll tell you honestly whether it needs them.

Sources

• Edison Research at SSRS, The UK Podcast Consumer 2026, 16 July 2026
• ExchangeWire, Digest: YouTube tops UK podcast market (2023 comparison figures), 9 July 2026
• Ofcom, Audio listening in the UK 2026, 20 May 2026
• Apple Newsroom, Apple introduces a new video podcast experience on Apple Podcasts, 16 February 2026
• Podnews, Apple Podcasts HLS video goes live, 25 March 2026
• Spotify Newsroom, The Spotify Partner Program is here, 2 January 2025
• Spotify Newsroom, Spotify Partner Program updates, 7 January 2026
• Netflix Tudum, The Rest Is Football on Netflix, 2026
• Goal, The Rest Is Football Netflix deal for 2026-27, 20 July 2026
• Edison Research at SSRS, The top 25 podcasts in the UK for Q2 2026, 3 September 2026

More from the Journal

• How much does a video podcast cost to make in the UK?
• Planning the first six episodes of a business podcast
• Five generations, one message: what 4,067 people told me about being understood at work
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The picture at the top of this article is an illustration generated to show the set-up. It is not a photograph of a client or of a real job.