YouTube is now the most-used platform for podcast consumption in the UK, overtaking Spotify for the first time. Edison Research at SSRS confirms it in its UK Podcast Consumer 2026 data, due for full presentation in a webinar on 16 July. Just as notable: Apple Podcasts sits fourth, behind BBC Sounds. In the UK market, a broadcaster’s own app beats Apple’s dedicated podcast product.
This happened in the US two years ago. It has now landed in the UK, and it should change how you think about where your podcast lives, not just what it says.
Your audio-only feed is now a minority format
If your B2B podcast is still audio-only, distributed to Apple Podcasts and Spotify with a static cover image, you’re optimising for a shrinking share of consumption. YouTube isn’t just another RSS destination. It’s a video platform with its own search engine, its own recommendation logic, and its own audience habits, most of which reward watching over listening.
The mechanism matters here. A prospect searching “supply chain risk 2026” on YouTube is a different buying signal than someone browsing a podcast app. They’re doing discovery, not habitual listening. If your show isn’t there as video, with a thumbnail, a title, and chapter markers built for search, you’re invisible to that behaviour entirely. Audio distribution alone no longer reaches the audience doing the browsing.
Apple’s video push proves the infrastructure isn’t the blocker, habit is
Apple Podcasts has been pushing video hard, and Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman reports that shows with video are seeing higher consumption, partly thanks to in-app promotion. But only ten shows in the US top 200 chart currently offer video. Ten. Out of two hundred.
That gap is the opportunity. Most creators, including most B2B teams, haven’t moved. Tools have caught up: Riverside now supports Apple Podcasts’ HLS video integration for hosts on its Grow plan, meaning the production friction that used to justify staying audio-only is mostly gone. The blocker isn’t technical anymore. It’s that most marketing teams still think of podcasts as an audio product with a video afterthought, when the platform data says the opposite is now true.
BBC Sounds beating Apple Podcasts is a lesson in not assuming US behaviour transfers
If you run a UK or European B2B podcast strategy built on US platform assumptions, this ranking should unsettle you a little. Apple Podcasts, the default reference point for most podcast production briefs, is fourth in the UK. A public broadcaster’s proprietary app outranks it. That’s a market-specific behaviour that a generic “publish everywhere” distribution plan won’t catch.
If your buyers are UK-based, your distribution priorities need UK data behind them, not a assumption copied from a US case study or a US-built distribution checklist.
The practical move here isn’t complicated. Record your next season with a camera in the room, publish full episodes to YouTube with real chapter markers and searchable titles, and check where your actual UK audience is listening before you assume Apple Podcasts is still the default home for your show.
