The State of Podcasts 2025

tl;dr: The state of my podcast feeds to start 2025, including the problem of too much and pricing models.

It's a new year (happy 2025) and a good chance to review the state of my podcast feeds. I'm a major podcast listener, with something running in the background a lot of the time that I'm working or playing Xbox or cleaning or on a bus or a lot of other times.

So here are a few scattered thoughts about podcasts:

Is This Healthy?

First it is fair to ask whether it is good for me that I listen to podcasts for large portions of the day. We also have a YouTube Music subscription. I could be listening to ad-free music instead, and I often think I should be doing that more, or even gasp allow myself some occasional silence.

This is a subset of the general problem of "there's too much content" which also applies to other types of media. There just isn't nearly enough time in a day to listen to all the good podcasts and watch all the good shows and read the good books and listen to all the good audiobooks and play the good games. And I think I'm starting to lean toward wanting to have less podcast content (and maybe less TV) but be more picky about it being the best, freeing up the other time for books or music or silence.

Pricing Models

That leads into revenue models, because I don't really want to be paying for a lot of stuff that I can't even keep up with anyway. So with that in mind, it got me thinking about the state of podcast pricing models, because there is some wild variety.

There are three general ways to make money off podcasts that I have encountered, and they may be combined in various ways:

1. Ads, in a couple of varieties: in the more user-friendly case, these are host-read ads. Those are context sensitive (e.g. if it's a tech podcast, it has ads that are relevant to tech professionals, in the same way that it is impossible to watch sports without getting sports gambling ads). I don't mind those most of the time, but they are getting less and less common. In the worse case, they are targeted surveillance ads, based on tracking you all over the Internet and inserted as you download/listen. They also tend to be precorded and inserted, which is more jarring than hearing the hosts read it. I really have a limit on how many surveillance ads I'll put up with.
2. Paid subscription tiers: it's pretty common to have some content be free and then more bonus content be behind a subscription paywall. There's a spectrum here between how much they try to sell you on additional content vs how much it is treated more like a donation appeal. This is where some of the comparisons I'll make below get really interesting.
3. Loss leader for something else: the podcast itself could essentially be an ad for a larger product that the podcast is associated with, like a newspaper's podcasts that are consistently if subtly pushing toward getting a newspaper subscription, or a university's podcasts that might subtly convince you to take classes there or donate.

Of course there are also a handful of podcasts that are purely a labour of love and don't make any money, but that's tough to maintain because they can't even buy things like quality equipment. I don't think I have any of those anymore.

So here's the breakdown of the pricing models of the podcasts I currently have in my queue.

This Week in Tech

I'll start with my tech podcasts since this a tech blog.

The TWiT (This Week in Tech) network is a great bargain compared to anything else in my feeds, with their Club TWiT offering. It's only $7 (all prices USD) a month for a lot of good shows. Even before I joined the paid level, a couple of their shows - Windows Weekly and the flagship This Week in Tech - were the only tech shows I was still listening to. Everything else died for some reason or another; at least some were because they did not have sustainable revenue models. Before subscribing I only listened to those two. Now subscribed I'm trying out at least a few more: This Week in Google (great host chemistry and not really that focused on Google), Tech News Weekly (very interesting so far), Security Now (great topics but a bit harder to listen to with only one speaker for the most part), Home Theatre Geeks (some episodes are really interesting to me, but not others). The subscription unlocks a few things:

• Ad-free episodes. That opts out of both host read ads and surveillance ads, although they do interestingly provide an extra feed for the host read ads for those who do still want them, since they are actually relevant and screened by their experts.
• A Discord community with a channel for each show that allows things like submitting questions, as well as live chats while the shows are airing live. I usually listen after the fact via podcast, not live, so that isn't a huge selling point for me, but I did sign up.
• Some odds and ends of bonus content, like a book club and Ask Me Anything interviews. Some of these are interesting.

In other words, that's a pretty good balance of carrot (some bonus content and community) and stick (ads you have to listen to if not).

Nebula

I'll reference Nebula in its own category. I follow three of their podcasts, using the Nebula exclusive feed. This means no ads. Nebula is an excellent deal at $30/year. For that, you get:

• Ad-free videos from some of the best educational content creators out there.
• Extended versions of those videos.
• Exclusive content from those creators, including some short movies they have produced.
• Ad-free on any of the podcasts.

That's a pretty great deal, compared to YouTube Premium to avoid ads there, which is $14/month for an individual or $23/month for a family. Nebula is barely more for a year than YouTube Premium Family is for a month, and they have almost all of my favourite YouTube creators (we still have YouTube Premium as well, primarily for music).

Movies and Comedy

I listen to all five shows from the From Superheroes network. There is no network bundle price. Each show has their own Patreon, with different tiers. The tier to avoid ads and get bonus content, on the ones that offer that, are up around $10/month. Per show. They do have some other small perks as well, like being able to vote on audience choice episodes. I really like their shows, but they are the worst value for the money from my feed, and it feels even more ridiculous if you start comparing it to things like video streaming platforms. That's a high barrier of entry, so they have a lot less paid subscribers.

The "You're Wrong About" Family

You're Wrong About was the first podcast with Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes. Michael is no longer on that one, but hosts If Books Could Kill that I also listen to. Sarah also hosts You Are Good. All three of these follow the same model. They're ad-free for anybody. Then they have a Patreon that is mostly pitched as a way to support them, only $2-4 a month (depending on the podcast) to get bonus episodes. If Books Could Kill also has a couple higher tiers to join a Discord and vote on books. So they're leaning heavily toward the carrot, with no real penalty to listening for free, but a low cost to get bonus episodes, meaning they probably get by mostly on a massive number of subscribers at a small price per person.

Christian

Homebrewed Christianity and The Bible for Normal People have a similar model: the main podcast feed has ads - both host-read and surveillance - and there is also a paid subscription option. In both cases, you get a lot for the paid subscription:

• ad-free podcasts
• extensive classes taught by experts in theology/biblical studies
• online community
• extra written content (Homebrewed Christianity)

TB4P is cheaper, at $12 USD per month, or $11 if you commit to a year up front, while Homebrewed is $25/month if you commit to a year. Homebrewed does also have a cheaper tier for just ad-free podcasts but not the classes. It's a little pricey but not so much when you compare to auditing a seminary course, which is basically what the classes are offering.

Reclaiming My Theology and Inverse have a model similar to the "You're Wrong About" group, or somewhere between those and the two above. There are no ads for the general public feed, then they have Patreon options that include things like extra content and more direct connection to community.

Then there are a few I listen to in the third category I mentioned above:

• Woodland Hills Church is a podcast sermon feed, so no ads there but they would take donations to the church from the virtual congregation.
• ReKnew's Apologies and Explanations come from roughly the same group of people, also ad-free but does accept donations.
• Yale Divinity School has an occasional podcast that is ad-free but definitely helps build good will to their seminary.

Sports

Sports skews the most heavily towards ads, mostly surveillance, being the only option. That is a big part of why I've cut down my sports podcasts, along with there simply being so many, even though other than the ads they do tend to make great white noise while working.

I have two from The Athletic: No Dunks primarily focused on men's basketball and The Athletic Women's Basketball Show as the name suggests primarily focused on women. They both have ads, both surveillance and host-read. When The Athletic was independent, you could subscribe and get the writing and the podcasts ad-free, but you had to use their app - there was no way to put the podcast into your regular feed - which meant other limitations like not being able to cast to a speaker or put in a queue with other episodes. I haven't tried subscribing again, but from what I have been able to read online, a subscription is now twice as expensive and doesn't avoid ads and I don't know if they solved the feed problem.

The Pickup is a WNBA comedy podcast. That's all surveillance ads. The Raptors Show is some surveillance and some host ads. Raptors Republic was all surveillance ads. I might drop all of those from my rotation.

Newly added to check out: Katie Nolan has a new podcast. I loved her old podcast with ESPN. I can guarantee that will be ad-based, some combination of host-read (she's a great comedic ad reader) and surveillance.

Bringing Home the W is a very specific show about the start of the Toronto Tempo WNBA team, giving a look behind the scenes. This has no ads, because the entire thing is essentially an ad to be excited for the upcoming team (and I am).

Conclusion

So we've got a wide range of pricing models. Some only give you options for ads, especially the sports ones, maybe because they know that they're more often white noise, unlike some of these other categories where you're more likely to be listening and taking notes. When you are listening and taking notes, the ads are more jarring and you're more invested so more willing to pay to get rid of them and/or to get bonus content. Some other are all-in with the bonus content paid model and no ads, which I love to see. Some combine the two, with a large difference in price between the two networks I have doing that, TWiT and From Superheroes.

What Now

I already added Club TWiT recently. That's a good deal for a lot of good podcasts.

I'm tempted by the "You're Wrong About" family, because they are so cheap to get the bonuses, and I do kind of want to encourage that model.

I'm likely going to subscribe for the extra classes from either Homebrewed Christianity or Bible for Normal People. But it's probably a bit too much (both in money and in time to keep up) to do both of them at the same time, so maybe I go for a year of B4NP and then a year of Homebrewed.

I'm likely going the other way on sports, cutting back significantly because there are just too many of them with too many surveillance ads, and if I have to cut something to make some time, those are the most obvious to go.