YouTube is the new Headline Partner of the Independent Podcast Awards, the British prize set up in 2023 for creators who work without a network behind them. A YouTube representative will hand over the night’s biggest prize, Independent Podcast of the Year, at the ceremony at Kings Place in London on Wednesday 4 November.
The awards confirmed the partnership on 9 September. YouTube is already the service more weekly UK podcast listeners use than any other, ahead of Spotify and well ahead of BBC Sounds.
540 entries and a shortlist due this month
This is the fourth edition of the awards, co-founded by whynow Media and the team behind the Verbal Diorama podcast. Since 2023 the awards say they have taken more than 1,400 entries, shortlisted over 500 shows and named 75 winners.
This year has been the biggest yet, with more than 540 entries. Judging is under way and the shortlist is due to be published in mid-September, so listeners looking for something new will soon have several hundred independent shows to work through.
The awards describe their constituency as “the backroom creators that aren’t funded by big brands”, which they put at around 75% of the UK podcast market. That is the organisers’ own estimate, unaudited, though few would dispute that most British podcasts are made by very small teams or by one person.
Neither party has disclosed what the partnership is worth, or whether it runs beyond this year’s ceremony.
Alison Lomax and Emma Turner on the deal
Alison Lomax, Managing Director of YouTube UK and Ireland, said “podcast creators are a key part of the UK’s creator ecosystem, and YouTube has become a home where they are now building sustainable businesses”.
Emma Turner, co-founder of the awards, said: “We’re delighted to have YouTube as our Headline Partner for this year’s event. To have such an esteemed brand supporting the awards shows just how important indie creators are in the podcasting world.”
YouTube also says more than 100 million hours of podcast content are watched on the platform every day, by more than a billion monthly active podcast users. Those are global company figures, not UK ones, and they are not independently verified.
Why YouTube wants the independents
Edison Research at SSRS found that 29% of weekly British podcast listeners aged 15 and over now name YouTube as the service they use most for podcasts, against 28% for Spotify, 15% for BBC Sounds and 10% for Apple Podcasts.
Download figures put Apple Podcasts first instead, with around 37.5% of UK downloads against Spotify’s 31.7%, on data from the open analytics service OP3 as analysed by Podnews. Download data does not see YouTube at all, so the two measures count different behaviour.
The big British networks have their commercial arrangements settled. A solo true crime host with 4,000 downloads an episode has not, and is deciding right now whether to buy a camera. We think the sponsorship is aimed squarely at that decision. The shortlist will include plenty of shows like the ones in our best true crime podcasts lists, with no network name anywhere near them.
Video raises what an independent show has to spend: a camera, lighting, somewhere that does not look like a spare bedroom, and the editing hours that go with it. We think the push to video will widen the gap between indies who can absorb that and indies who cannot.
YouTube changed how it counts a view
In August YouTube changed how it counts a public view. A view now registers from the first frame across all formats, and the older “engaged views” number has moved into the analytics dashboard. Podcast networks have spent the weeks since working out what their numbers now mean.
Glenn Rubenstein of the American ad agency ADOPTER Media put the objection bluntly in a post on 10 September: “Sure, now it makes it look like every video has more views, but each counted view now means less.” YouTube has not accepted the criticism, but an independent creator selling a sponsorship on a YouTube view count will hear that argument.
In Our Time goes video on iPlayer
The BBC is taking a different route. In Our Time, the Radio 4 show that has run since 1998, becomes a video podcast on BBC iPlayer from Thursday 17 September with Misha Glenny hosting, BBC Studios confirmed. Audio editions continue on Radio 4, BBC Sounds and podcast apps worldwide, and a curated archive episode introduced by Glenny will be added to the BBC Sounds feed each week.
Mohit Bakaya, Controller of BBC Radio 4, said the video version “will preserve the programme’s hugely popular format while helping it reach new audiences as listening and viewing habits continue to evolve”. The BBC says it is one of BBC Sounds’ most popular podcasts with under-35s.
iPlayer is UK-only, so the video is for British viewers alone. In the US and Canada it goes first to paying subscribers on BBC.com and BBC Select, and only later to the BBC Podcasts channel on YouTube, outside the UK. Independents have no iPlayer of their own, so they cannot copy that route.
The shortlist and the 4 November ceremony
The shortlist will be one of the better guides to what British independents are making, from the comedy doubles and niche obsessives who turn up in the best comedy podcasts before anyone commissions them.
The winners are named at Kings Place on Wednesday 4 November.
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