Amazon Music Expands Video Podcasts With iHeartMedia, SiriusXM.

Amazon Music is widening its video podcast push, adding more publishers and hosting platforms while expanding the format beyond the U.S. into five additional countries.

New partnerships will bring video shows hosted by ART19, Triton Digital’s Omny Studio and Flightcast to Amazon Music, with SiriusXM’s hosting technology, Spotify’s Megaphone and Libsyn expected to follow in the coming months. The agreements will add video from publishers including iHeartMedia, SiriusXM, Spotify, NBC Sports and Headgum.

Among the shows coming to the expanded catalog are “Hey Jonas!,” “Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb,” “Pro Football Talk Live with Mike Florio” and “Solved with Mark Manson.”

At the same time, Amazon Music is taking video podcasts international. Previously available in the U.S., they’re now being offered in Canada, the UK, Mexico, Brazil and Japan across all Amazon Music subscription tiers.

“Industry data confirms what our customers have been telling us — they want the flexibility to watch their favorite podcasts, in addition to listening,” Amazon Music Head of Spoken Word Shea Simpson says. “As video consumption continues to grow, we’re constantly looking for ways to expand our offerings for customers to engage across formats.”

The expansion is notable not only for the additional video inventory but for how Amazon is handling monetization. Amazon Music now supports dynamically inserted video advertising while allowing creators to retain their existing sponsorships and baked-in ads. Publishers and creators will also maintain control of their hosting, advertising inventory and audience targeting.

“Just as importantly, we’ve built this in a way that lets creators keep full ownership of their hosting, ad inventory, and audience monetization,” Simpson says.

That approach allows podcast companies to add Amazon Music as another video distribution outlet without moving their shows onto Amazon’s hosting infrastructure or handing the service control of their advertising business.

For iHeartMedia, the agreement adds another distribution point as it increasingly produces podcasts for both watching and listening.

“Our strategy is simple: make the world’s best creators and content available wherever consumers choose to listen, watch and engage,” says iHeartMedia CEO Bob Pittman, who continues to view video as a “complementary extension” of the audio listening experience.

“As the industry’s leading audio platform, iHeart is focused on creating new opportunities for our talent and helping them build deeper connections with fans,” Pittman says. “This collaboration with Amazon Music expands the reach of our creators and programming, helps grow the podcast ecosystem, and creates new ways for audiences to discover and engage with the content they love.”

The Amazon Music expansion comes as podcast hosting companies increasingly adapt their infrastructure for video distribution rather than requiring creators to separately upload and manage versions of shows for individual platforms. In a move that could accelerate growth for video podcasts, Spotify announced in May that it will begin supporting Apple Podcasts’ HLS video technology, calling the decision a “major step toward truly platform-agnostic video distribution” across the podcast industry.

Amazon Music is also adding more of the features audiences expect from an on-demand video service. Users can download video podcast episodes for offline viewing and switch between audio and video within the app. Customers will be able to discover featured video podcast recommendations, search for “video podcasts,” or browse shows to find video podcasts, and seamlessly toggle between video and audio formats directly in the app.

The expanded video offering is available through Amazon Music’s iOS and Android apps across all subscription tiers.